Exams, Part 2

Extracted from the Examination Guidelines for Invigilators

Part V: Instruction to Examiners
24. (a) The respective examiners of every paper must be present within the first 30 minutes of the examination to answer any queries related to the question paper or to correct any errors in the question paper. However, the examiner of any paper shall not in any manner to assist candidates in answering their papers, such as explaining a word or translating a question.

Examiners are usually also invigilators. So, while invigilating we aren’t supposed to help explain to a student even what a single word means. Fine, I suppose, if a student asks to define a critical term. What about, however, if a student asks to explain a word of trivial importance to the question? After all, the objective of the exam was not to test a student’s English vocabulary.

My second and last paper for the semester was this morning – with about 180 scripts to mark, AARGH! Here are the actual top two questions I received this semester. The first, from last week:

Other things being constant, what will be the effect of each of the following upon the equilibrium level of GDP?
(iii) A rapid upsurge in the rate of technological advance.

“Sir, what is upsurge?”

The second from today:

How did they financial crisis which originated in the US become a full-blown global financial crisis?

“Sir, what is the meaning of this word (full-blown)?”

So, two questions went through my mind each time:

1. Should I answer them (when the rules say no but the words don’t really matter)?
2. Should I answer them (when the words are common expressions everybody should know)?