Thursday, October 29, 2009

BBC Bitesize - stupid, lazy GCSE questions

English GCSE Revision
To Kill A Mockingbird
How were black people were treated in 1930s America?
a) Treated like everyone else
b) Treated extremely badly
c) Treated for dry rot and rising damp
What halfwit came up with this question and its dumb-assed third option? In what way is this really testing 15 year old GCSE students? It simply reduces the questions to a 50:50 chance of getting them right.
Here's another...
Why are we told about Jem's broken arm at the start of the novel when the attack does not occur until the end?
a) To make us feel sorry for Jem.
b) To create suspense.
c) So that we know what happens if we don't have time to read the book.
There's loads of these. Standards and BBC - an oxymoron?

7 comments:

rosered said...

It's supposed to be hilarious, of course. Obviously something wrong with you or you'd be LOLing.

Donald Clark said...

Ha Ha Ha

rosered said...

That's better. Just think, one day you can be normal and find all this extremely funny. Not sure I'll ever get there myself...

Rob said...

Yes, they are crap, aren't they? I did a blogpost about a previous instance of this nonsense.

Paul Angileri said...

Hmm. Perhaps a simple case of a poorly constructed automated question and answer pool? I do note that both instances of really daft answer selections are option C. Perhaps adding in these stupefying choices is a means of getting students to stop choosing C all the time (since it tends to be the most selected option), and it would show how little a person was paying attention if they answered all Cs (in an attempt to break even on a test) or answered it often enough that it appeared they did not get the concept of critical thinking. Two samples does nto a trend make however, so it's all amusing speculation on my part.

Demonic advocacy aside, the first question you listed is amazingly banal, even without option C. The second question is like many I got in literature classes in high school, but the answer choices are a bit off the reservation so to speak.

Rina said...

I disagree, my daughter and found this site by chance and she loves doing the Maths and Literature problems. These options are dumb no doubt about it. Probably they should do quality check before there release such stuff. Maybe the content developed for primary is of a higher quality but all in all a wonderful site.

Anonymous said...

i have been using bbc bitesize gcse and so far i have got As in all my tests