Ps those two sentences are not supposed to be related. They were for 2 different posts. Sorry for not quoting.

depends.

For the record, I always had 100% on my English papers back in KL

I think it is alright to complain as the government did not give much notice to the students. Seeing that the announcement comes just right before the SPM examination adds more stress to the students.

Good or bad, it is just that the grading scheme is new and unfamiliar, hence will create some unnecessary stress. They should have done the change for next year and give the students some time to digest.

Anyway, students, don't worry, if you study hard, you should do well. Remember, SPM is not the end of the world. Do as well as you can and then plan after that.

Good luck.

Cheers

No worries.

I mean in uni,not back in high school.

I used to get like 95% for maths.

Now,even a HD is damn hard for me to get.

fine. In uni, I got an A for English no problem.

You do have really good English command.

Mine is always just so so.

English exams in Malaysia are a joke. In high school, it was 50 multiple choice questions to do in 1.5 hours and me going really really REALLY slow, making sure every circled answer was a perfect circle still had me finishing at about 20 minutes in, with checking time.

If they really are implementing this new grading system, I completely support it

I know a few other people who find the Malaysian english exam way too easy.

Changing the grading isnt enough.They have to change the syllabus and improve the standard,as our current standard is still too low.

If not,you'll still get people like me who writes badly written English.

well I try to correct people on here, but they get all angry and defensive and are all like "This is a forum, I can use whatever level of language I want. Why do you care so much?"

My parents have drilled into me since I could read, that using proper English everywhere is a must because it seeps into daily usage. If you speak bad English, you will write bad English.

LOL.

multiple choice? must be quite far back then, i had to write essays.

rather odd i got a B for my spm english, while some chinese speaking nut got an A. never had issues with my english after that tho.

owh well.........back to the point, correct me if im wrong but this is just changing the scale no? from a 10 point scale to now an 11 point scale. whats the point in that if the system maintains the same.

not really no. it was 2004. English had two sections: writing and comprehension. I scored really well on the essay questions too, especially when they say "write at least 100 words". I'd go till about 1000

issit? forgive me then, my memory is not the sharpest tool in the box.

that may be dangerous, not following instructions......at least 100 words by implication means maybe 120, 150 words.......for someone with moderate levels of english, the more you write, the more mistakes you make....and the more marks subtracted...........

remember, msian way of exams is, do NOT stray from the 'norm'..........if you do, no matter how brilliant the language, how succinct the argument, you are WRONG.......remember morals...........

at least 100 words, doesn't have any upper limit. You realize that 120 words is pittance, right?

Pendidikan Moral is bullshit, honestly.

if i am a marker, and the minimum is 100 words, i will start deducting marks once it exceeds 300 words.....one can impress the marker adequately with 300 words, if not, one is just wordy........lots of bulk and little content........

back to ts's question, it is a good thing to sub-stratify the a band, too many people are getting a's such that it means little now, you cannot differentiate between the REAL a's and the mediocre extensively coached a's..........the british a-levels have also done the same with the new a* band.........but unis like oxbridge don't even bother with the a-levels (they assume everyone applying is going to get 3a's), they select based on the interview and personal statement.........

in this respect, banded results system like spm/stpm/a-levels is inferior to either the percentile ranking system (eg aussie ter system) or raw marks system (eg american sats)...........

you fail to consider what the topic would be. Also, you are probably the only person I know who would grade my papers that "harshly"

This post has been edited by spunkberry: Oct 5 2009, 09:27 AM

Now only you mention that.

It's a pointless subject to begin with,as you need to memorise those nilais.Not like memorising those nilai will make you a better person.

I rather see this subject to be more course work based,like writing a report on community service than memorising 30 lines of crap so that you can vomit them out in the final exam.

moral is just a subject made to make the aunties and uncles happy, and to fill up the "islam" time so that islam doesnt end up outside of school times.

academically? its as significant as paris hiltons boobs

This post has been edited by +3kk!: Oct 5 2009, 10:11 AM

I'm really glad you're not the one that marked my SPM paper

Btw, you got your bolded part wrong. You really shouldn't be so critical about our exam system. While education in Malaysia may suck, the basic education system and the exams are modeled after the same system that exist all around the world.

First of all, SPM/O-Levels/STPM/A-Levels(British system) and TER and SAT all grade students relative to the whole batch of students that took the particular exam.

For the British system, marks ranging from 0-100 is awarded for every subject testes. Then the marks for every student will be sequence from the highest to the lowest and if you would to graph a probability density function for all the values, you'd get a curve and the data would like follow a normal distribution hence the term curved grading. So the exam board decides the top 10% gets an A the next 20% gets a B and so on. It's probably not 10%,20%,30%... in reality, each exam board has their own system of setting the percentage cut off for each grade. The marks range for a certain grade will definitely be different for each subject since the top 10% for Biology might be people getting above 60 marks while the top 10% for Physics might be people getting above 90 marks.

The Australian TER is similar but it's main difference causes it to suck IMHO. Similarly all subjects are curved but the TER percentile itself it based on the sum of the adjusted scores of all 4 subjects plus 50% of the adjusted score of the fifth. And then you're awarded the top 97.5 percent top 97.0 percent and so on in 0.5 percent decrements. I see it as a big disadvantage if the grades for each subject can't be assessed independently.

The SAT isn't really a raw marks system. For the SAT 1 the total score you can get in each component is 800 and the 3 combined will yield 2400. In the exam, there you don't get marks for answering questions up to 800. Except for the English essay question, you get 1 point for a right answer, 0 for a wrong and -0.25 for a wrong one. Somehow or rather the total marks you get will be sequence and will be given a corresponding SAT score from 0-800. However, it's not as simple as it seems. Even if you answer all questions wrong, you don't get 0. You answer no questions you gets something around 200 and you normally don't have to get everything right for an 800. Collegeboard, the people behind SAT claims they whatever they method is, which they never explain, provides the best way to compare students academic ability.

This post has been edited by mumeichan: Oct 5 2009, 10:28 AM