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Q Should phones and PDAs be banned from exams?

As a high school teacher of English and other languages for more than 40 years, I must say that the current English exam scam is really down to the poor setting of exam questions. Cheating has always been around, and with new technology will only increase.

The type of question where a mobile phone can be used to get answers shows the examiner is not really testing the students' level in English. I always set questions where it would be impossible to cheat: ones where thought is required or where sentences need to be written. The type of questions where a one-word answer is needed has no place in a test at this level. This type of question is endemic in Asia, particularly Japan, where the right cram school will kindly provide the answers for the fiercely competitive university entrance exam. This testing method does not test a student's English ability and should be discarded as well in Hong Kong.

The examiner should include in this exam a passage in Chinese which should be translated into English. Students in Shenzhen reveal clearly to me that their weakness is mostly in verb usage and few can write even one sentence accurately. Listening to Chinese 'academics' in Hong Kong only convinces me that they were successful exam takers, not really able to write a correct sentence, or even produce one orally. Let's get rid of the university's BEd courses in English. They are only exacerbating this problem by teaching about English instead of the subject itself.

There are too many average students getting into university to study English. Their teachers often can't speak fluently (and I know some Filipinos and Malaysians whose English is very acceptable to me; some Singaporeans here have an accent problem) and what is more distressing, can't write well.

You learn any foreign language (for exam purposes) by reading thoroughly in that language, but not potted versions. I read the Chinese newspapers and pick up all sorts of words. I read Japanese from the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, which would be on a par with the London Times, in my opinion the best written English newspaper in the world. You must read well-written prose to learn English thoroughly, and an examination at the level of last week's fiasco demonstrates that the examiner is pandering to the very average. Let's have a passage from Jane Austen and Charles Dickens to test our students.

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