Abstract
Cognisant that assessment influences teaching and learning, the Shanghai authorities have revised exam questions to emphasise higher-order thinking and real-world application.
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Notes
- 1.
The answers are provided by the publisher in Sun (2010), p. 18 of the 2009 exam paper. For this publication, the page numbers do not run sequentially throughout the book but are numbered sequentially within each year of the exam paper. This means that all the exam papers will start with page 1. The answers are as follows:
-
(1)
100% – (25% +25%  +  30%)  =  20%.
-
(2)
30%  ×  20  =  6.
-
(3)
7/20  ×  100%  =  35%.
-
(4)
The modal number is 5.
-
(1)
- 2.
Here is another example of an exam question set by a district. Changning district’s essay: Based on the information below, adopt a perspective, formulate your own essay title and write an essay in not less than 800 words.
‘Two old men are playing a game of chess in a park. They play it very slowly, making the observers feel impatient. An old man commented humorously: ‘You are not aware of this, but chess should be played slowly. Playing it slowly allows you to experience deeply the infinite changes and joy of chess; playing it fast gives us a murderous atmosphere, not like chess played among friends. Furthermore, once you place a piece on the chess board, the game begins to head towards death. If we rush through it, the chess board will be filled up fast, the chess will be dead. Good chess should be played slowly!’. Such a profound speech made the observers reflect deeply (Anon, 2011c, p. 10).
- 3.
OECD claims in a report on Shanghai that ‘multiple-choice questions have disappeared from the city’s public examinations’ (OECD, 2011, p. 92). But this is not the case based on our content analysis of recent junior and secondary exam papers. In fact, multiple-choice questions are still featured in the exam papers for subjects such as English, mathematics, physics and chemistry. What is evident, however, is an increased emphasis on complex and higher-order thinking as well as application to real-world situations.
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Tan, C. (2013). Examining the Exam Papers. In: Learning from Shanghai. Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, vol 21. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4021-87-6_11
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