onedaysnotice
Member
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2011
- Messages
- 261
- Gender
- Male
- HSC
- 2012
Good evening everyone. Today, I received my paper back for my SOR 1u half yearly, and my marks were appalling. However, I don't think it's my fault. I'm just gonna say that I got one of the highest if not the highest mark for the first section since I beat the usual top ranker (in all subjects) in this section. But at section 2, everything came crumbling down. Section 2 consisted of one extended response worth 20 marks out of 45. So that's almost 50% of the paper. But heres the thing, the question is the most ambiguously worded question ever (in respect to what the teachers wanted). Here it is:
Seems easy enough right?
And here it is in the 2009 SOR 1u HSC
Exact same question right?
Here are the marking guidelines according to the HSC:
Guess what I got?
4 out of 20.
To make it clear, in my response I talked about the five pillars, the six articles (both of which are derived from the quran or muhammad, i think), how the juras examine the sunna and the qu'ran to formulate Islamic law and decide whats haraam or whatever its called, linked my significant person a little, quoted the quote in my intro, and loosely related it back to the revelations of Allah through Muhammad. I also used quite a few relevant terminology, if I remember correctly. Now I know that my response isn't nearly A grade material. However, an E is unacceptable. I would've been fine with a mid-high C or at most a low B. But apparently I don't deserve it. Why? Because according to their marking guidelines, we were supposed to solely talk about our significant person and link it back to Muhammad/Allah. In my case, Al-Ghazali.
Reread the question again. Would you have derived that what the question was asking was solely for the significant person? I think not. It clearly says in the life of muslims. Can you see that it is plural? To make matters worse, when I asked the other teacher during the exam (the one who was marking the extended responses) about why is there no question on Al-Ghazali, she sarcastically responded with "What did your teacher tell you?" Already under pressure, my mind scrambled about, trying to understand what she meant by that. I thought it was a trick question. And off I went writing away thinking I was so clever. Before the exam, I prepared an essay for answering a question on Al-Ghazali. High B to Low A quality stuff if I might say so myself. So much for that prep.
If you read the HSC marking guidelines, it doesn't mention anything, not even once, about mentioning your significant person. If I assume correctly, an E grade marking guideline would've went something like this "Student mentions their significant person and makes vague statements on their impact to Muslims without relating it to Muhammad's revelations". But it doesn't. Instead, the guideline is clearly asking for a more broader explanation of the impact of the Qu'ran on the lives of Muslims. And that's what ticks me off. I wrote 4 and a half pages for this question in the exam, and I get repaid with 4 marks. My friend wrote a little less than two pages and he got 12 just because he memory dumped.
If the question was extremely hard, but straight to the point, I think I would've come to terms with my result. However, this question doesn't seem that hard at all. The only thing that got me (and 60% of the cohort) is that it was so ambiguously worded (or more accurately, incorrectly worded) that it made it extremely difficult to answer it. If "significant person" had been added to the question, this wouldn't be an issue. Only like 10% of the remaining people actually took the time to understand the question. The other remaining 30% just memory dumped whatever they knew about the significant person without actually reading it properly and they got the marks. Another one of my friends even said that he spent 10 minutes (out of 90 mins) just staring at the question, trying to figure out what it meant, since the question was Yr 11 stuff. Despite this, he still apparently got half my marks overall. Solely, this extended response resulted in an extremely low average of the cohort just because of its ambiguity.
Is this an extremely terrible question, or just terrible effort on our part? If it's the former, can you please give me argument points for contesting marks from the teacher? The top ranker said he tried, but apparently she wouldn't budge. However, she said to me that if I can prove to her by the end of Friday that I deserve the marks, then she would consider it. If possible, can graduates or even better, teachers and the like, pitch in to clarify this issue? :S
Sorry for the wall of text. :S
tl;dr - is it fine for teachers to use the exact same question as another, but expect a completely different answer?
Seems easy enough right?
And here it is in the 2009 SOR 1u HSC
Exact same question right?
Here are the marking guidelines according to the HSC:
Guess what I got?
4 out of 20.
To make it clear, in my response I talked about the five pillars, the six articles (both of which are derived from the quran or muhammad, i think), how the juras examine the sunna and the qu'ran to formulate Islamic law and decide whats haraam or whatever its called, linked my significant person a little, quoted the quote in my intro, and loosely related it back to the revelations of Allah through Muhammad. I also used quite a few relevant terminology, if I remember correctly. Now I know that my response isn't nearly A grade material. However, an E is unacceptable. I would've been fine with a mid-high C or at most a low B. But apparently I don't deserve it. Why? Because according to their marking guidelines, we were supposed to solely talk about our significant person and link it back to Muhammad/Allah. In my case, Al-Ghazali.
Reread the question again. Would you have derived that what the question was asking was solely for the significant person? I think not. It clearly says in the life of muslims. Can you see that it is plural? To make matters worse, when I asked the other teacher during the exam (the one who was marking the extended responses) about why is there no question on Al-Ghazali, she sarcastically responded with "What did your teacher tell you?" Already under pressure, my mind scrambled about, trying to understand what she meant by that. I thought it was a trick question. And off I went writing away thinking I was so clever. Before the exam, I prepared an essay for answering a question on Al-Ghazali. High B to Low A quality stuff if I might say so myself. So much for that prep.
If you read the HSC marking guidelines, it doesn't mention anything, not even once, about mentioning your significant person. If I assume correctly, an E grade marking guideline would've went something like this "Student mentions their significant person and makes vague statements on their impact to Muslims without relating it to Muhammad's revelations". But it doesn't. Instead, the guideline is clearly asking for a more broader explanation of the impact of the Qu'ran on the lives of Muslims. And that's what ticks me off. I wrote 4 and a half pages for this question in the exam, and I get repaid with 4 marks. My friend wrote a little less than two pages and he got 12 just because he memory dumped.
If the question was extremely hard, but straight to the point, I think I would've come to terms with my result. However, this question doesn't seem that hard at all. The only thing that got me (and 60% of the cohort) is that it was so ambiguously worded (or more accurately, incorrectly worded) that it made it extremely difficult to answer it. If "significant person" had been added to the question, this wouldn't be an issue. Only like 10% of the remaining people actually took the time to understand the question. The other remaining 30% just memory dumped whatever they knew about the significant person without actually reading it properly and they got the marks. Another one of my friends even said that he spent 10 minutes (out of 90 mins) just staring at the question, trying to figure out what it meant, since the question was Yr 11 stuff. Despite this, he still apparently got half my marks overall. Solely, this extended response resulted in an extremely low average of the cohort just because of its ambiguity.
Is this an extremely terrible question, or just terrible effort on our part? If it's the former, can you please give me argument points for contesting marks from the teacher? The top ranker said he tried, but apparently she wouldn't budge. However, she said to me that if I can prove to her by the end of Friday that I deserve the marks, then she would consider it. If possible, can graduates or even better, teachers and the like, pitch in to clarify this issue? :S
Sorry for the wall of text. :S
tl;dr - is it fine for teachers to use the exact same question as another, but expect a completely different answer?
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