Examiners flag ‘worryingly infantile’ use of English in ‘O’ level

Examiners in the English secondary 'O' level exam have reported inadequate levels of grammatical accuracy, spelling, punctuation and expression.

"After many years of exposure to the English language, many candidates still have a poor command of the language. This should certainly be of great concern to all," a report on the secondary education certificate (SEC) English examination, concludes.

Overall, it appears that candidates were performing relatively well in the oral components of the exam paper, but are experiencing difficulties in the written component.

The report describes some of content in student's narratives as "worryingly infantile".

Examiners said that many 15-year-olds were still writing such sentences like "we went to Buskett and we played with the ball and then we played Hide and Seek" or "the policeman put the man in prison" or "We caught a lot of fish that we went to the market to sell the fish and go back out to sea to catch some more".

One of the tasks given to students was to narrate a story with the title 'My quick thinking saved us all'. But it was evident that many did not understand the implication of quick thinking and instead produced plodding narratives of domestic accidents, with the narrator doing nothing more exciting or proactive than calling for an ambulance.

Examiners expected students to write about a group of individuals who were in a life-threatening situation and needed saving.

"Considering that most fifteen-year-olds can be seen with smartphones, interesting and original use of this technology could have featured in the  stories, for instance using a GPS system coupled up with SMS to get them out of a pickle," the examiners' report noted.

Instead some students wrote about taking shelter from the rain, or coming up with another venue where to hold a party when the first one became unavailable.

Candidates were also required to write an eyewitness account of a rainstorm, describe the ensuing damage, and give the piece an emotional slant, as opposed to writing an objective report.

"Generally, the standard of the essays was average to mediocre because many candidates were at a loss how to describe the damage," the examiners said.

While many wrote about car crashes or cars being washed away by floods, broken windows or caving-in of roofs, few described how they felt while witnessing the incident, and some even blamed the local council for these mishaps.

"The council was also threatened by some... if action was not to be taken," the examiners' report noted.

When given the task of writing a letter some students experienced problems with the correct format of a formal letter as well as with the appropriate style and vocabulary required in such a task.

"Many did not write the addressee's name above the letter's address and also used an inappropriate salutation (e.g. Dear Mary Saliba) and closure (e.g. Yours faithfully,)."

According to the report, spelling remains a problem for many candidates. Basic spelling mistakes included confusion between where/were, their/there, then/than, lose/loose; its/it's. The word 'etc' was mostly spelled in Maltese (eccetera, or ecc. - initself a bastardisation of the Latin et cetera). Spelling mistakes were also made with respect to words ending in -ant, -ent, -able, -ible, -ation, -ition, -ission.

Expression was also problematic for many candidates. A syntactical mistake that kept appearing time and time again was 'Me and my family/my friend/etc'. Another mistake that appeared quite often was "by time", typically appearing at the beginning of the sentence, instead of the correct term "after a while" or  "eventually", as in "by time the rain got in the bus as well".

Very few candidates were capable of using the non-sexist pronoun "they/them" to refer to an individual of any sex.

Although "one" was also widely used to refer to the subject of a sentence, it is the pronoun "he/him" that was then commonly used to refer to it, as in the following sentence: "One can change them to his preferred language."

Another example showing a lack of cohesion within the sentence was, "If one doesn't have at least an 'O' Level in the language you will not be accepted in any sixth form".

Only 3.7% got the highest grade in the exam, 11% got a Grade 2, 14% got a Grade 3. As happened last year, the majority of students got a Grade 4 or 5 (33%). 20% got a Grade 6 or 7 which is insufficient to enter Junior College while 18% failed.

Examiners also expected a short email in which the greeting and signing off were appropriately informal, the content consisted of at least a couple of reasons why the friend should join the candidate, and the word limit was respected.