i was already in college when i learned the utility of “old exams”. valuable sheets of questionnaires in higher chemistry, virology and statistics, passed clandestinely amongst students frantically trying to absorb information during the last week of the semester, aka hell week. the old exams, which may have been from the last semester or the last decade, were difficult to get hold of (either that, or i just wasn’t “resourceful” enough), and for some subjects, possession of a copy made the difference between a pass or a “5.0″. or at least, that’s how it felt.

of course, now that i’m older, have already earned my degrees and no longer need to sit out exams, i can put on my righteous cap and say, what an utter load of crap!

an exam is an assessment tool, with the aim of measuring how much a student has understood of the lessons and how effective the teacher (and his approach, methodology and materials) has been in tackling the subject matter. if you scored high(er) on an exam because you benefited from having seen and reviewed old exams, then you are defeating its purpose, cheating the system, the teacher, and most importantly, yourself.

so imagine my consternation as jan brought home copies of old english semestral exams from 2007 and 2008, distributed by his teacher as reviewers for the upcoming tests next week! what the…?!? oh and yes, may i reiterate: jan is in first grade.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at and is filed under jan-i-mania, singapura. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.