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Exam Unease



Courtesy of Roberto Arribas

Exam season poses a potentially stressful time of year for university students. This pressure of achieving solid grades in various courses culminates when students sit in their exam room and begin reading the prompt.

However, the tension of this situation is, allegedly, increased through confusing English and grammatical mistakes. Not on the part of exam-takers, but rather grammatical errors in the questions posed by the exam itself.

The BBA Office was quick to explain that no complaints in regard to the grammar of exams had yet to be raised. Additionally, the new ‘Standardization Process’ would assist in avoiding any such problems in the future, with regulated exams now being reviewed by coordinators.

The LLB/BIR Office mentioned a similar absence of complaints or reviews on the part of the students. Only once was there an issue with a professor’s exam, yet this remains an isolated case.

According to a third-year BBA-BIR student, the BIR exams, and by her judgement also those of LLB, vary from BBA in their format. From her personal experience, essay prompts in exams are more likely in the BIR and LLB subjects, and thereby the exam is less impacted by an occasional spelling mistake.

In her BBA exams, “a grammatical error has a larger impact, because it could make a math[-based] question and the follow-up seem strange.”

The BIP Office declined to comment.

Although the general consensus amongst the Offices was that students barely stressed this as an issue, student interviews introduced a slightly different view.

“Sure, it doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does it can be annoying. However, when I’m done with the exam, I don’t [care enough] to talk to the office about it”, claimed a second-year BBA student.

A psychology student noted that, “Bad exams can suck, but after spending a semester with the teacher, you don’t take it personally.”

It appears that although grammar errors find their way into exams now and again, students manage to cope with the problem in the moment and tack it down as “life isn’t perfect.”

The lack of student complaints on part of the office does not accurately reflect the students’ interactions with the issue. It appears that students may face this problem in an exam, but do not consider it of importance.

However, in the process of this investigation, a different problem came to light. Namely, several interviewed students stressed that not grammatical errors, but rather questions of vague design were the problem.

In the following edition of the the Stork, find out more about the troubles students face when their exams are incorrectly designed.

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