This is the first time for several years that I don’t have any December marking to do.
In celebration, here are some snippets of brilliance from previous years’ efforts.
Give two examples of words which have regular plural forms in English.
- floor and happy
- cat’s and dog’s
- walk > walk’s and sing > sing’s
Give two examples of words which have irregular plural forms in English.
- what and when
- beautifully and happily
- sheep, sheep; ox, oxens
- you and child
And from a short-essay answer:
- The weakening of function words is affluent in this dataset.
These students are our future!
Oy. With students like that, Britain is in trouble! Reminds me of the survey taken a few years ago here in the States that showed that a significant percentage of COLLEGE SENIORS could not tell the surveyer which half of the 19th century the Civil War was fought in (answer: second half [1861-1865]). Another survey – of high schoolers, I think – shows that they didn’t know the first name of our first president (answer: George).
What is the world coming to?
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Doomed, we’re all doomed.
These were from students on degree courses, although if I remember rightly the first two questions were from a first year paper (where they still have a couple of years to improve before graduating!), but there is clearly little hope for the confused honours students puzzling over the vocal track and the affluence of weakening processes.
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=975
Although I must confess exams were never my own strong point!
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