Last week the proverbial som tam hit the fan in the Thai academic world with news that a possible five questions on the national O-Net examination were wrong.
O-Net is the test all Thai students must take in Grades 6, 9 and 12 (or Prathom 6, Mathayom 3 and Mathayom 6 in that order). It's one of the "big three" tests I wrote about earlier this year in which average scores were very low. There may be a reason for that; at least five of the questions were unanswerable.
O-Net covers five subjects -- Thai Language, Social Studies, Mathematics, Science and English. The National Institute of Educational Testing Service, or Niets, writes and administers it. This year Niets did a bold thing; for the first time it released the answer key. I doubt if they will do it again.
Last Monday a well-known Thai tutor pointed out five errors in the Thai part of the test. Niets, the education minister and even the prime minister shot back saying actually there was only one mistake, not five, which isn't a lot, and therefore we shouldn't be making such a big deal about it.
"We must have confidence in this test because it was written by professors who have a lot of knowledge," the education minister announced last Monday night, later backed up by the prime minister, which was a nice way of telling the well-known Thai tutor, and half of Thailand's social media, to shut up.
I observed the calamity in a semi-detached state, until the thought occurred to me: Has anybody examined the English part of the test?
And so, late on Wednesday night, I went onto the Niets website and downloaded the three O-Net exams. And boy, did I get a shock.
In the Year 9 O-Net English test there are four bad questions out of a total of 50, as I am about to show you. In other words, 8% of the test is bad.
I must admit at first I wasn't sure if I was the only one confused, so I sent it to a few teachers I know back home. They all came back in agreement; the four questions, if not wrong, have more than one correct answer.
I have been accused of being picky, if not pedantic, when it comes to examination questions. But I steadfastly though respectfully disagree with anybody who claims that "one wrong question" is no grounds for stamping feet. A national test should have absolutely no mistakes at all, and if there is even one, then we need to make changes, even at the expense of those esteemed professors we are supposed to glorify.
And besides, who said there was just "one wrong question"? I found four:
Question 3
Here is a dialogue that takes place at a seaside resort.
Sara: What shall we do this afternoon?
Sonia: Let's go sunbathing on the beach.
Sara: Umm, it's such a boring activity. Why don't we go diving?
Sonia: … (3) …
Here are your choices:
1. I'm afraid we can't.
2. Because it's dangerous.
3. That sounds like a great idea.
4. We still have enough of time to go.
The correct answer is 3, about which I have no quarrel. But look at choice number 1 -- it's also correct. Since this is a chunk of a conversation, I would assume Sonia would follow on with the reason why they can't go. Maybe she can't afford the diving, or she left her snorkel at home. Nevertheless there is a logical progression to the conversation when using either choices 1 or 3.
I would go one step further and claim choice 2 is acceptable, if you interpret the "why" in Sara's question as asking for a reason, rather than it being a colloquial form of inviting somebody to do. But that might make me sound pedantic and heaven knows we wouldn't want that slung at me yet again, would we?
Space is precious, even for pedants. Let's move on.
Question 39
This one is a little confusing, clunky and downright weird. In this passage, a woman called Wu Kai looked out her window and couldn't see anything for the smog. Her husband left for work wearing a mask. Now this sentence:
His regular bus wasn't out of service ..(39).. the low visibility.
Please tell me which of the following choices is correct:
1. despite
2. even though
3. because of
4. because
I went straight for choice number 1. But I was wrong. Officially, it's choice 3. You can define this sentence in two different ways, depending on whether you assume "because of the low visibility" qualifies "out of service". One academic friend in Australia claims 3 is wrong and 1 is correct, but I can see both 1 and 3 as acceptable. Either way, it's a dud.
Now to the fruit seller a few questions down.
Question 42
Which of these answers has the same meaning as the given sentence?
42. Jimmy was a fruit seller for 10 years.
1. Jimmy is now a fruit seller.
2. Jimmy has been selling fruits for 10 years.
3. Jimmy started selling fruits 10 years ago.
4. Jimmy is not a fruit seller any more.
OK, so choice 1 is wrong. Choice 2 is wrong, since the given sentence is in simple past tense, which suggests an action that occurred in the past that isn't happening now. Choice 2 would be correct if the sentence was in present perfect: "Jimmy has been a fruit seller for 10 years." But it's not. For the same reason, choice 3 is wrong because Jimmy isn't selling now; his fruit selling began and ended in the past. Thus, choice 4 can be the only correct answer.
Wrong. Officially it's choice 3.
Which is wrong.
Question 47
Bear with me, dear reader. One more to go. Choose the answer that is grammatically incorrect:
47. (1) Heavy rainfall caused the river (2) to overflow and (3) raise to a record-breaking (4) 43-feet crest.
OK, if you're a grammar nerd this one is easy. It's choice 3. English has two verbs: raise and rise. Raise is transitive, which means an object must follow. You can raise a flag, or raise a child, or raise me up like the title of that cheesy old Westlife song covered by Josh Groban. Rise is intransitive, which means it doesn't take an object. Your temper rises. The sun rises. And rivers rise, such as the one in question 47.
Alas, choice 4 is also wrong. When "feet" assumes the role of an adjective describing another noun, we must make it singular. The correct answer is "43-foot crest", which is how the official answer key feels as well. Unfortunately the official answer key deems choice 3 correct, which it isn't.
So there you have it. I have no space to explain the mistake in question 32 of the Grade 6 test as well, which means one out of 40 questions there is inaccurate.
Is there any good news? Well yes. I found nothing wrong with the 90 questions on the Year 12 O-Net English test, the most important. We should give credit where credit is due.
In fact this column is not out to criticise. It is written to spur authorities on in their quest for a better education system. But we do need to respectfully remind the prime minister, the education minister and Niets that there is no longer a single mistake on the O-Net test, and that perhaps we need to stop the counting and start reforming. Fast.
