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Outrages

  

9486 in the collection  

    Churchill's speeches fail exam

    Sometimes Standardistos are so stupid we can thank them for giving us a laugh. Too bad they didn't feed the computer Finnegan's Wake. It might have caused the program to self-destruct.

    Texts written by masters of the English language including Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway and William Golding would have been deemed below average under a new computerised exam system.

    By Harriet Alexander


    Churchill's speeches, Hemingway's style and Golding's prose would not have been appreciated by a new computerised marking system used to assess A level English.

    The system, which is a proposed way of marking exam papers online, found that Churchill's rousing call to "fight them on the beaches" was too repetitive, with the text using the word "upon" and "our" too frequently.

    His reference to the "might of the German army" lost him marks because the computer assumed that Churchill had intended to say "might have", instead of using "might" as a noun.

    Graham Herbert, deputy head of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors, said: "The computer was limited in its scope. It couldn't cope with metaphor and didn't understand the purpose of the speech.

    "We also tried a passage from Hemingway. It couldn’t understand the fact that he had a very spartan style and [it] said he should write with more care and detail. He was also rated less than average."

    Passages from Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange were deemed incomprehensible by the computer.

    The problems within the system were highlighted at a meeting of the Westminster Education Forum on Wednesday.

    Online marking of papers is being tested by exam boards and could be introduced within the next few years. It is already in use in America, where some children have learnt to write in a style which the computer appreciates, known as "schmoozing the computer".

    — Harriet Alexander
    The Telegraph
    2009-11-12
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/6549991/Churchills-speeches-fail-exam.html

    INDEX OF OUTRAGES

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