So do you think things are going to change?
Just to bring y’all up to date on the high school and university entrance exams.
A colleague is doing some research comparing our own test to the MOE tests and has found that the tests have improved in the last couple of years and now are communication oriented, not vocabulary and grammar oriented. Local teachers and textbooks are living in the past. It’s convenient to teach from a list and to endlessly discuss grammar in Chinese, hence the high failure rates when it comes to exam time.
The tests do not test surface structures such as grammar.
The tests recognise that understanding in context is a central component of language use.
The majority of items test actual comprehension.
We suspect that the test makers have studied and been influenced by the CEFR, which was made the mandatory basis for Language proficiency tests by the MOE in 2005.
The teachers and text book writers are still trying to catch up.
Thanks very much for that information, Mr. Phillips. I certainly learned something today.
[quote=“Charlie Phillips”]Just to bring y’all up to date on the high school and university entrance exams.
A colleague is doing some research comparing our own test to the MOE tests and has found that the tests have improved in the last couple of years and now are communication oriented, not vocabulary and grammar oriented. Local teachers and textbooks are living in the past. It’s convenient to teach from a list and to endlessly discuss grammar in Chinese, hence the high failure rates when it comes to exam time.
The tests do not test surface structures such as grammar.
The tests recognise that understanding in context is a central component of language use.
The majority of items test actual comprehension.
We suspect that the test makers have studied and been influenced by the CEFR, which was made the mandatory basis for Language proficiency tests by the MOE in 2005.
The teachers and text book writers are still trying to catch up.[/quote]
I saw the complete text of a major test for high school students published in one of the local dailies recently, and was impressed by how well it was structured. As you say it seemed designed to test comprehension.
Thank you for the update, Charlie Phillips. I agree that the tests set out in the right direction, but with bushiban business -big business-, publishers, parents and teachers going in the opposite direction, I do not think that tendency will last long.
Funny, as it matches what my friends have told me, that the MOE’s policies are actually a lot more open than they are implemented. For instance, the creativity promotion act. Try to tell the teachers they must be more flexible. Tell that to my boss’ daughter, who got berated by my boss for one hour… on the phone… at top volume for trying to answer a question in an original -and correct- way. Policy and implementation are effectively divorced.
Unfortunately, this tendency of the teachers upholding old structures -since they do not know how to teach otherwise-, the booksellers -won’t even dare to call them publishers- who prey on their weaknesses for profit -since schools buy textbooks in bulk-, and the parents who spur the kids in a mad rat race to be number one in their class rank -to get to a good school or for their own egos? , is a death sentence to any real learning. It is also the big pink elephant in the middle of the room, no one talks about it, but it won’t let you advance, either.
Not all is lost, though, I recently read that there are teacher groups advocating for a change. Not the majority, but based on Charlie Phillips info on the test itself, then they are far more rational and realistic than those anacronistic interest groups.
I wonder whether it would be possible to devise some way to communicate with the parents? But maybe that would be for another thread; I don’t mean to hijack this one.
One of the many things I have learned while in Taiwan is that you can’t teach anybody anything if they don’t want to learn. How do you teach parents that their beliefs are wrong if they’re not coming to you asking for advice?
Taiwanese people buy English in the same way that they buy potatoes, by quantity. When they come to you for ‘help’, they’re actually coming to you to buy more of what they bought in the past. There is a belief that by doing what you did in the past, only more so, they will get a different result. It’s only when they come to you and say “this is not working, what am I doing wrong?” that you’re able to address their misconceptions.
For example, I meet a new adult student who needs to pass an international test and the first question is “what vocabulary do I need to study?” So I provide the list of 2567 words that is basically all they need, and suggest we look at the grading criteria for the test. I can show them in black and white, published by the examining authority, that vocabulary counts for just 25% of their total score and that they also need to learn how to structure a report or presentation. The reply will be “but what other words do I need to learn?” They’re fixated on vocabulary, to the exclusion of all else.
Personally I think this has more to do with comfort zones than learning. Studying vocabulary lists is a familiar, non-challenging activity. You have to put the time in, but you don’t have to think. This is how education works here. Students are not expected to engage with the process, to give any commitment. Remembering to use the passive form when describing processes, or the past tense to report on what you did last summer, requires the student to actually use his/her brain. Changing your writing style is an even bigger challenge as it requires the student to do something new. Oh, the horror!
To educate the customer (the person who pays, not necessarily the student) about what they need to do requires that you first engage with them, which is difficult when they have hired you to provide a product according to their specification. They came into the store to buy potatoes, and you’re trying to discuss the advantages of an Atkins diet. It’s not going to work. They’re not listening.
I’m in a fairly unique position, in that I’m lazy and self-confident enough that I don’t care about confronting people. My ‘consultations’ boil down to me saying “Fuck off you fat git, you eat too many potatoes.” If they don’t like it I lose the customer, no sweat. If they want to argue I just repeat. I’m not interested in dealing with their objections. We start from the assumption that they are hiring me because I know best, and I’m going to tell them what they need to learn. (I think I heard bob say something similar somewhere on this board once.)
This confidence, and indifference to whether or not I get the job, often shocks them enough that they will try to understand where I’m coming from - but I have to take a lot of care not to make things too difficult for them after that. I do several long and convoluted stories involving tigers, MRI scanners, and how improvised comedy works, just to arrive at the conclusion that there’s more to learning English than they thought. The process incidentally demonstrates that Chinese people are smarter than westerners, and makes them feel better about letting go of what they know. Only then can I make a sale, which means they give me some commitment to doing things my way.
In a normal school environment there is no commitment. You hire a teacher to do the work, you buy potatoes and sit there passively while he shovels them into your head. If someone has bought into the conventional view then you won’t change his opinions during the class, because he’s already bought what he wants. You have to catch him before he makes the buying decision and change his beliefs - which is a huge task.
Ooops, this turned into a much longer post than I had intended. What I wanted to say was this:
Suppose every teacher who has a cool student, a success story, makes a feature of it on some website somewhere that is dedicated to the principle of challenging the prevailing wisdom? You need to acquire a body of ‘evidence’ that people can find and get excited about. Actually analysing things in too much detail is counter-productive from a marketing perspective, because you’re challenging people’s beliefs. You have to show people stuff that complements what they know and builds on it to give them a greater understanding, in their own terms. Once the idea becomes ‘famous’ - and the seeds are already planted - then the customer will accept your authority without too much fuss. Then you can sell them whatever you think will work, with the caveat that these tests are still important as they determine the students opportunities in future.
Great post, Loretta. Thanks for the insights. I’ve had feelings and impressions along the lines of what you wrote about, but your description is much more focused than anything I could have come up with. Again, thanks.
The questions and answers for both of the 2008 Basic Competence Tests have been posted.
PDF copies of the tests are here:
bctest.ntnu.edu.tw/exam/9701/9701english.pdf
bctest.ntnu.edu.tw/exam/9702/9702english.pdf
PDF copies of the answers are here:
bctest.ntnu.edu.tw/exam/9701/9701answer.pdf
bctest.ntnu.edu.tw/exam/9702/9702answer.pdf
There are documents which I guess explain some items on the tests in response to questions from the test-takers. The explanations, or much of them, are in Chinese. These explanatory (again, I guess that’s what they are) documents are here:
Word format:
bctest.ntnu.edu.tw/exam/9701/9701reply_e.doc
bctest.ntnu.edu.tw/exam/9702/9702reply_e.doc
PDF format:
bctest.ntnu.edu.tw/exam/9701/9701reply_e.pdf
bctest.ntnu.edu.tw/exam/9702/9702reply_e.pdf
In case someone doesn’t know, the main page for information about the test is here:
I’ve put a copy of the list up at tou.com.tw/get/e_GET/resources.htm
There are a few small ‘improvements’ but it’s basically THE list.
Charlie, please note/emphasize that that list is the one for the Joint College Entrance Examination, meaning at grade 12, not the BC (Basic Competence) Test, at grade 9. Do not just identify it as “High School list”. New teachers could get confused.
By the way, in the original MOE list, the underlined parts are supposed to belong to the BC level.
[quote=“Icon”]Charlie, please note/emphasize that that list is the one for the Joint College Entrance Examination, meaning at grade 12, not the BC (Basic Competence) Test, at grade 9. Do not just identify it as “High School list”. New teachers could get confused.
By the way, in the original MOE list, the underlined parts are supposed to belong to the BC level.[/quote]
Thanks for the heads up. Updated info.
I’ve just downloaded it. Thanks, Charlie Phillips.
Here’s an old opinion piece from the Taipei Times on the Basic Competence Test:
taipeitimes.com/News/editori … /18/136564
There is a Chinese-language website called Taiwan Test Central (taiwantestcentral.com) that contains, among other things, the MOE’s (approximately) 2,000-word word list. The site also seems to analyze the list in several ways. One of the analyses involves the following:
(1) dividing the list into two groups–the 1,200-word “basic” group and the 800-word “advanced” group;
(2) displaying each of the two lists in a column, beside which is a column containing the Chinese translation of each word, followed by a column containing the number of times, if any, that each word has appeared on BCTs (Basic Competence Tests, i. e., high school entrance exams) over the years;
(3) linking the displayed “number-of-times” number to a list of the initial words of the various items of the exams on which the word has appeared;
(4) linking each line of initial words to the full text of its respective individual test item, itself presented as a clickable test item; and
(5) upon the clicking of a choice, displaying the correct answer and the year and number of the BCT from which the test item was taken.
Here are the two above-described word lists on that website:
The 1,200-word group:
taiwantestcentral.com/WordLi … egoryID=12
The 800-word group:
taiwantestcentral.com/WordLi … egoryID=11
I was pretty sure that there were words on the BCTs (Basic Competence Tests) that were not on the MOE’s (Ministry of Education’s) word list, so I was mulling over the idea of making a word list from the BCTs themselves. That would have been a big job, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it.
So just in the way of goofing around, I Googled around and found a few BCTs (I’m referring to the English portion of these tests, of course) that were more or less in MS Word format, and then I used MS Word to put the words of the English portion of the first BCT of 2008 in a single column and sort them. Then I did the same to the MOE 2000-or-so list, colored its words green, and then merged the two lists and sorted the resulting list. Words that were on the BCT but were not found on the MOE list fell into three categories:
(1) proper nouns or components of proper nouns (personal names and fictional place names);
(2) words that are “boxed” and translated into Chinese (cigarette, contain, profile, and tone); and
(3) three words that are not on the list, or arguably not on it, and not in either of the two categories above (they are French, in the sense of the language (the list has “French fries,” but I don’t think that would help in understanding “French class”); anymore (the list has any and more, but those two don’t go very far in helping with the meaning of anymore); and wow (Mandarin, or at least Taiwanese Mandarin, has wa, but I’m not sure the students would know that wow is the same thing)).
So my initial assumption, i. e., that there are lots of BCT words that are not on the MOE list (and that therefore the MOE list cannot be relied on for BCT vocabulary), may well be pretty much wrong. The English portion of the first 2008 BCT sticks very closely to the list, except for proper nouns, words that are boxed and translated, and three words that either aren’t or aren’t quite on the list, aren’t translated, and aren’t proper nouns.
If the English portions of the other past BCTs are like the first 2008 one, it means the list can probably be relied on for the vocabulary for the BCT. But to be reasonably sure of that, I’d have to check the others the way I checked the first 2008 one. And of course I still couldn’t be a hundred percent sure about future tests.
[color=#000080]Edit:[/color] I just finished looking at the words of the English portion of the second 2011 BCT similarly to the way I looked at the first 2008 one, described above.
Except for tokens (that is, words derived from words on the list), the words that were not on the MOE list fell into four categories:
(1) proper nouns (personal given names, Internet bulletin board user names, and other proper nouns, for example Aqua (in “Aqua City,” a fictional place name), Awe’s (a fictional restaurant name), Goodies (a fictional restaurant name), Hush (a fictional surname preceded by Mr.), and Twins (part of a fictional movie title in a list of movie titles);
(2) words which have been boxed and translated
*
(ad, implied, photographer, and table (table is on the list, but this table refers to a table of data));
(3) one word, clone, which was not translated, but which was defined in English as “copying living things,” (copy, live, and things are on the list); and
(4) a couple of loose ends: re (used in the title of the topic of a fictional Internet bulletin board thread), and U.S. (it’s not on the list, but USA is).
So the English portion of the second 2011 BCT was pretty well faithful to the MOE list.
*
Likely and magazine were also boxed and translated, but they’re on the list–they’re “challenge” (non-underlined) words.
Does anyone have the list of words required for students to pass the test to get into university? I think the test is called 學測 in Chinese. There are 7000 words I believe. I want to help my senior high school students by getting that list onto a flashcard program for Android cell-phones. Ideally, there would be English with Chinese translation. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance!
[quote=“alecinwonderland”]Does anyone have the list of words required for students to pass the test to get into university? I think the test is called 學測 in Chinese. There are 7000 words I believe. I want to help my senior high school students by getting that list onto a flashcard program for Android cell-phones. Ideally, there would be English with Chinese translation. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance![/quote]
I don’t recall a word list of 7,000 words, but some years back I saw a list called [quote]大學入學考試中心
高中英文參考詞彙表[/quote]
which Google Translate translates as [quote]College Entrance Examination Center
High School English Reference Glossary[/quote]
The list I saw seems to be part of a scholarly paper. It’s in a PDF document located here: ceec.edu.tw/Research/paper_doc/ce37/4.pdf
There’s a list that appears to be the same list as the one above, and that may be part of the same research paper. This list appears to be divided into six levels of 1,080 words each, for a total of 6,480 words. It’s also in a PDF file, and it’s located here: ceec.edu.tw/Research/paper_doc/ce37/5.pdf
I think I’d better caution you by saying that I don’t know if what I linked to is what you’re looking for.
Yes, there’s a list of words public school students “should” know by the time they finish high school (found at the ceec site as Charlie Jack already pointed out). It is divided into different sections. I used that list for reference in my own thesis/pile of stinking shit.
I hope the high school entrance examination, and university equivalent, has not deteriorated to the point where memorizing a list of words is the pass requirement.
Parsing a simple sentence would be a good start to passing a test.