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ARNE DUNCAN WOULD FLUNK WINSTON CHURCHILL
Harriet Alexander, Telegraph, UK - Churchill's speeches, Hemingway's style and Golding's prose would not have been appreciated by a new computerized 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.
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".
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.
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".
1 Comments:
And we now use MA, NH, DE, etc as state-name abbreviations for the convenience of the computer, not for any human-oriented reason.
Teaching us that we must conform to the convenience of government rather than demanding that goverhment conform to our convenience is an important lesson.
Step by step....
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