Advertisement

Exemptions in exam unavoidable

Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0

YOUR correspondent, Tsui Kai-ming (South China Morning Post, February 28) wrote to criticise the Hong Kong Examinations Authority (HKEA) for giving 'candidates with blindness many compassionate, but groundless exemptions from most sections of the AS-level Use of English examination'.

The HKEA does exempt visually handicapped candidates from Section A (listening), Section E (practical skills for work and study) and the second part of Section D (oral English).

In the listening test, the candidates have to take part in a role play (for example, as a secretary taking notes in a meeting) and listen to a number of people talking while at the same time dealing with many pages of written material.

Given the stress of listening to unfamiliar material in a reasonably life-like situation, it is not always easy for a sighted person to locate the material being referred to since it is seldom in the same order as in the discussion.

Asking a visually handicapped person to do this using brailled documents is virtually impossible.

Introducing lots of long pauses to allow time for searching would destroy the essential character of skills being tested.

Advertisement