Six
down, two to go! One today, one tomorrow.
 |
| To view full size, right click and select "Open image in new tab/window" |
On
Friday I had Japanese reading, composition, and Japan politicoeconomics.
Reading was easy, but that means I had to be extra careful not to lose marks on
silly errors. The composition was fairly ok, but I won't be expecting a perfect
score. The question was easy enough - pick any experience in Japan so far, and
write a structured, coherent piece 600-800 characters in length in 70 minutes.
The time pressure was very stressful for some people though. The girl sitting
next to me in the exam was from the top class (class A). With 20 minutes left
to go, she had only written 400 characters. One friend only managed to write
400 characters in total when time was up (incomplete composition). So it was
definitely not an easy test.
The
politicoeconomics test has been the worst by far. The reason why it was so bad
wasn't primarily due to difficulty. The worst thing about this subject was the
course structure, from week 1 to final exam. As someone aspiring to become a
teacher, I have a lot of criticism about how this subject was run. It's obvious
that all of us are still getting a grasp of Japanese, so we will struggle with
language. But instead of going through and explaining possibly difficult
concepts in the written material (which, goes without saying, should then be
assessed), the teacher chose to use a mix of sparse Japanese and poor English
to talk about topics largely unrelated to the written content. Having poor
English wasn't the teacher's fault, but forcing us to computate unfamiliar
content in near unintelligible English wasn't a very smart teaching method in
my opinion.
Furthermore,
this has been the only class so far where the learning objectives of the course
haven't been clearly outlined. We found out which topics covered in class would
come up in the exam, and still, we didn't know what the exam structure would be
- will we be writing short response? Multiple choice? Calculations? We were all
caught unawares when what we were assessed on was largely our ability to write
kanji, our mathematical ability, and ability to memorise tables of figures.
Firstly, fair enough that we should be expected to know the Japanese word for
GDP and GNI (gross national income). Of course we touched upon them in class,
but not once did he write out those kanji for us, or hint that it was of great
importance. I studied them because I personally wanted to learn them, but I
never expected a direct question asking "write the kanji for GDP".
Also, this is not a subject testing our mathematic capability. However, I
literally spent 3/4 of the one hour we had for the test trying to divide
28,980/58,460 to find the ageing index and figuring out which three foreign
nationalities in Japan had the greatest increase between 1960 and 2010, using a
table of 30 countries. Again, it would not have been so bad if we had been told
beforehand of our expectations for this course. But I honestly had not idea we
would be required to calculate figures on such a minute scale, and I have a
feeling I wasn't alone. On top of all of that, there was even one question
directly asking us to identify the four countries whose names had been removed
from that table, by looking at their population growth from 1960-2010. China,
Korea and Brazil were countries brought up in class, and they were reasonable
to assess us on. But why Philippines…? As far as every member of our class is
concerned, we did NOT talk about the population of Filipinos in Japan. I am
VERY annoyed that not only did he never hint at our need to study the six
(ridiculously) detailed tables we'd been handed out in the possibility we'd be
asked to fill in one of them, but that he even chose a piece of detail that
wasn't of prime importance.
Lastly,
and most importantly, there was not one question testing our understanding of
politicoeconomic concepts. It would have been nice to be asked to explain what
GDP was comprised of, or even how the GDP of Japan has changed over the past 50
years, which were topics covered in class, but not even slightly required in
the exam. In short, this exam didn't assess our grasp of the overall aims of
this course at all, and for that reason, it was a poorly thought out test.
After hearing the feedback from his students after the test, even our teacher
had second thoughts on putting so many calculation based tests into an
hour-long exam. I get the feeling he didn't try very hard in teaching us, for
most of the semester, using my own experience of teaching children over the
past nine years as reference.
Here
ends my venting. Needless to say, I will be
writing all this in the feedback survey we will be receiving at the end of the
exam period. It negatively affects the learning ability of everyone taking this
course.
Between
our first day of exams (last Friday) and the second, we had a long weekend -
yay! It was called Marine day, and I have very little idea of its significance
up until now. Maybe I'll do a bit of research later on. Anyway, it was a much
needed long weekend, to study Japanese history. I'm not exaggerating when I say
there was an obscene amount of content that had to be remembered. I think I
learned to write the same amount of new kanji over the three-day long-weekend
studying for history as I did for this whole semester of Japanese class
combined. Not to mention, we had to learn the significance of these words as
well (though that was much easier than learning the words themselves since they
were all related). I must have spent 75% of my waking time over the long
weekend (amongst eating, attending church, and not showering) studying for
history, and 75% of that time learning kanji.
The
other two tests, listening and grammar, were not too bad. Again hoping I didn't
make silly mistakes, because I checked very carefully.
Today
is the speaking test, which will involve receiving a topic, being given 30
seconds to think about what to say, and one minute to say it. We will receive
two topics in total. Not much I can do in the way of preparation for that, so
it gives me time to write this ^^
On
Friday, we get all the results back. At no point in my Australian school
education experience have I ever received back an end of semester exam result
so quickly. Only in Japan.
So this post turned out a bit longer than I intended it to be ^^" Apologies again for ranting.
