Why HSC English exam offers ‘translation’ of tricky words

Experts say the dumbing down of the curriculum means basic words had to be “translated” in the HSC English exam.

Year 12 students’ vocabulary is so bad thanks to the dumbing down of the English curriculum over their past 13 years of schooling they have to be given translations of rudimentary words in their exams.

Students sitting the English exam on Tuesday were given translations of the words “latent” and “foisted” which experts say students should either know the meaning of or be able to work out what the words mean when read in the context of any piece of writing.

Kevin Donnelly, a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University, said Chinese students in Shanghai were sitting more difficult end of year English exams than the current crop of HSC students.

“Advanced English? Regardless of whether it is Advanced or Standard, it is Year 12 English and you would like to believe after kids have been at school all those years that they would understand what foisted meant,” Dr Donnelly said.

Excited student during an exam at classroom

He said because students had spent so much time studying things like internet websites in earlier years of high school, they had been deprived of proper literature which enhanced their vocabulary.

“Last year I looked at the English exams that were coming out of China in Shanghai and Beijing – what they had to do was really our university level. Our Year 12 students would be incapable of doing it,” he said.

A NSW Education Standards Authority spokeswoman said it was common for some words in HSC texts to be have definitions in the Advanced English paper.

“The texts are unseen and need to be accessible to approximately 30,000 students who are working to demonstrate their skills under exam conditions,” she said.

Chair of the NSW Parliament’s upper house education committee, Mark Latham, said students should be able to work out what the word meant by the end of their schooling.

“It’s dumbing down the English exam,” he said.

HSC student Kurtis Castorina, from St Joseph's College in Hunter's Hill. Picture: David Swift

A cryptic picture of a pencil poking through a chain-link fence in yesterday’s second HSC English Advanced exam was a potential curveball for many students, according to Brian McMahon from tutoring company Matrix Education. Students were asked to write either a creative, discursive or persuasive response.

“Someone who was less creative in their response and was simply going to write a description … and had missed the memo about this being an exercise in the use of figurative language, they would do less well,” he said.

St Joseph’s College Hunters Hill student Kurtis Castorina got the memo. “When I saw the (pencil picture) I immediately went to an imaginative option and based my story on my grandfather’s immigration story,” he said.

“I talked about him being stuck behind racism and ­behind bars with the fascist Italian movement during World War II and when he immigrated he moved forward into the unknown.”