Comment by ben509
6 years ago
This feels like the literary version of the "what in tarnation would you ever need this new-fangled multiplication for" critiques of common core math.
> Holbrook wrote that asking students to guess an author's intent in writing a piece of literature is doomed to be a pointless exercise.
It's pedagogy! Students aren't trying to divine the One True Meaning of the piece. They're trying to learn how to read a piece of literature, identify literary techniques, and think critically about it. If a student can produce a justifiable answer, they're winning.
I agree that dissecting literature is not fun, and I agree this is probably not the optimal way to teach it. But these are precursors to learning how to read and analyze critically, and we need more of that in society.
But they're not being asked to produce a justifiable answer. This is multiple choice with only 1 'correct' answer.
The only way to really test comprehension is through essay questions but then the complaints on subjectivity are raised and we're back at standardised multiple choice
Britain manages to set questions for the exams taken at ages 16, (17) and 18 with essay-type questions, for most questions of all subjects.
There's a complete paper for GCSE (at 16) English here. Choose the June 2017 one, as the November one has the source material omitted due to copyright.
https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/english/gcse/english-languag...
You can skip to the last few pages of the mark scheme to get the idea of how the long-form answers are marked. "Varied and inventive use of structural features, Writing is compelling, incorporating a range of convincing and complex ideas, Fluently linked paragraphs with seamlessly integrated discourse markers"
Likewise the AP English Literature exam in the US features graded essays. https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap18-frq-english-lite...
> omitted due to copyright
It is actually omitted due to testcenter policy, to enable reuse. You cannot reuse an exam with its answer key published.
2 replies →
yeah, but there's few things as insufferable (well ok, reading YouTube comments or something) as reading someone's writing who's learnt to write according to standardised essay marking procedures...
They are given a set of answers and are trying to find the most justifiable among them (note that the questions pretty much all have most likely or some other variant of the phrase in them). The student is tasked with evaluating these interpretations of the poem and picking the one which is most justified, which at least required some understanding of the poem and literary terms.
For example,
The poet includes these lines most likely to suggest that the speaker
—F does not wish to be pushed on a swing
-G wants to deal with the situation alone
-H does not often receive help from others
-J is not physically strong
J is the most obviously wrong, as it is at best irrelevant to the lines in question. F is reasonable if you accept the lines as literal, but it's fairly obviously metaphorical (punning off of the phrase 'mood swing'). H seems relevant in that the passage is about receiving help from others, but it's clearly commenting on how she would react to help, not about the likelyhood of receiving it. J seems the most reasonable: the passage is saying she would push back against attempt to cheer her up, and so concluding she would like to be left alone in this mood is a reasonable interpretation.
Note that the final answer doesn't have to be the one the person taking the test would, it just has to be the most justified and reasonable of the one presented. In terms of evaluating skill at interpreting writing and in terms of evaluating interpretations of this writing, this seems a reasonable approach. Essay questions may be better, and indeed the push to multiple choice is almost certainly to reduce the cost of marking as opposed to any other concerns, but these don't seem like terribly designed multiple choice questions.
If you look at the original article[1], it quickly becomes clear that no answer really makes sense, and for many of the questions there are multiple answers that could reasonably be justified, not to mention that the test conflates interpretation with authorial intent.
1: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-bad...
they're not being taught to read a piece of literature, identify literary techniques, or think critically; they're being taught how to choose one "correct" answer from a selection of garbage. whether they can justify that choice or not never enters the picture, this is a standardized test and there is only one acceptable answer.
> If a student can produce a justifiable answer, they're winning.
A multiple-choice, norm-referenced test doesn't measure justifiable answers.
>This feels like the literary version of the "what in tarnation would you ever need this new-fangled multiplication for" critiques of common core math.
Don't even get me started on the way mathematics is taught at most schools. For one thing, it isn't. If English were taught the same way, the lessons would consist only of spelling, grammar and punctuation.
<the lessons would consist only of spelling, grammar and punctuation.>
Now I for, 1 wood, find that too be useful!
>They're trying to learn how to read a piece of literature, identify literary techniques, and think critically about it. If a student can produce a justifiable answer, they're winning.
Perfectly correct, only that's not what's happening here.
It’s a poem meant to be performed, not so much just read. On paper, it’s rather lifeless. I definitely buy her arguments, in that context. Perhaps if the people at Pearson had actually considered that, they could have picked something more appropriate to the task.