What is the correct answer to the question?

[FutureGadgetsLab]

A practise English paper for year 6 question. The question was to work out whether something was certain, possible or impossible. So "I may go to Ella's house" is possible, "I am going out" is definite and so on.

The question was "it may rain cats and dogs, if we have a storm"

What would your answer to this question be? I'm convinced the answer book is wrong.

Potatoes

Because it's an exam or test. It tests understanding without making allowances by changing the questions.

But you're not testing their understanding of grammar. You're testing their understanding of the context of the exam - which isn't the same thing.

And why is it okay to make adjustments for other disabilities then? Why take into account special needs at all?

As ballykiss says, my DD can work out and therefore interpret metaphor/idiom but she needs to know that's what it is. See also, exaggeration for effect, instructions that are meant to be obeyed in the spirit not the letter and other such fun vagaries that NT people like me don't give a second thought to.

kickassangel what an excellent post. I completely agree!

Many people on the spectrum could easily misunderstand a question, but tell them that it's about idiom or metaphor and they can work it out. They just need clear instructions, not a blase assumption that it's 'obvious'.

Exactly.

As ballykiss says, my DD can work out and therefore interpret metaphor/idiom but she needs to know that's what it is.

I'm the same. If I know something is a metaphor, it's fine.

There absolutely is reading between the lines in the question, and not understanding the question does not mean you don't understand grammar or when/how to apply it.

Despite having ASD I was a straight A student at school (including English), went on to get a degree and am doing very challenging professional exams. I write lengthy documents as part of my role and am often complemented on the standard of my written English (waits for some knobber to trawl through old posts looking for errors) but in spite of that I can have difficulty interpreting instructions which are unclear. I've learned to work around that for exams by doing massive amounts of past papers purely so that I get to understand the pattern of questions because you can't ask for clarification in an exam in the way you generally can in the real world.

If the children are being properly prepared, doing lots of practice questions and having the purpose of the test and the types of questions clearly explained before hand then it might not matter but if practice and prep is limited then poorly worded questions can be far more of a challenge for someone with ASD. This specific question happens to be a grammar one but it's an issue which crops up across all subjects and it's something which should be considered.

To take a totally different example - let's consider someone who uses a wheelchair and needs to do a timed practical assessment in chemistry. Now in my school the work areas in the science classrooms were quite high up (too high to work at from a wheelchair) and much of the equipment was stored in such a way that it would have been difficult to access from a chair. Most people would, I think, expect adjustments to be made to allow the wheelchair user to demonstrate their skills in chemistry - this would likely take the form of ensuring that equipment had been moved to somewhere accessible and setting up a lower workbench. Or they could just argue that science isn't their forte since most labs aren't going to be wheelchair friendly so they should probably focus on other skills.

It would be different if we were talking about higher level exams or qualifications but we're talking about a year 6 test here. Reasonable adjustments should be made in whatever form is appropriate.

Sorry kickass - I'm clearly too wrapped up in crappy 90s telly!!

StatisticallyChallenged another good post!

It's so interesting Future. We've only recently started looking into an ASD diagnosis for DD as it's only recently (as she gets older) that I'm seeing a clear difference in her and her peers. As she's a girl and masks it quite effectively at school she's also slipped under their radar. Looking at some of her behaviour through a different lens has been revolutionary. I always thought that if I told her to 'stop singing' at the dinner table her resorting to humming instead was just an attempt to avoid following the instruction and her complaints of 'I did what you said' were bad justifications. Now I know that if I clearly point out that dinner tables are for eating and some occasional talking and no other extraneous mouth based activities, she knows what I mean and responds accordingly. It's quite shocking.

statistically - a clever post. and really made me think.

The difference between giving someone with dyslexia (yes, my simplified version of it) more time to read and answer or someone in a wheelchair a lower work area is that they are still doing exactly the same exam as everyone else whereas people saying this question discriminates against someone with ASD is that they want the entire paper/question to be changed.

A point some people seem to be missing is that the question can be deliberately 'tricky' to trip up those who aren't getting through the exam based on their knowledge of grammar but on their literal interpretation of the world.

IdBuyThatForADollar I was 12 when it was first suggested so similar to your DD. The sooner she gets diagnosed the better.

Name we are suggesting changing the test for everyone. Not just for people with ASD. We are saying it is unfair to people with ASD to include the question.

Misunderstanding metaphors is part of the communication difficulties that people with autism commonly have. I try to explain metaphors to my nine year old with Aspergers. Occasionally they creep out like when I told him he was skating on thin ice last week. Unless he's come across them he simply wouldn't understand them. He sees them as lies and can't get his had around them. For that reason the question should be adjusted. So all children have an opportunity to understand and answer it without having the challenge of understanding it through disabilities that can make it impossible. Have a fucking heart some people. Life is hard enough.

As to the idea that tests should not include metaphors because it is unfair for people with Aspergers, if that question was only testing grammar it could have been set out without a metaphor.

But though some people seem to think it was only a grammar rule (may = possible), and the cats and dogs was to throw people off the scent, others think the question tests being able to recognise metaphors; or tests being able to recognise both metaphors and a grammar rule.

In the case of metaphors, Medusacascade, what do you think should be done to assess childrens' reading comprehension - which is often full of metaphors ?

If no one is to learn about them how can they learn to read with comprehension. What about Shakespeare to give an extreme example?

Surely someone with Aspergers being tested on English comprehension and or literature would have some compensatory marking scheme in place?

It would not be reasonable to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Funnily enough for me it's not the metaphors I struggle with - although I know many with ASD do - but ambiguous instructions are an issue. There's definitely a difficult balance to be struck with adjustments though - I think it's probably reasonable to include metaphor in, say, an english poetry comprehension paper as that has a specific goal which involves assessing the ability to interpret; someone who struggles with metaphor will struggle with it but you can't really avoid that without fundamentally changing the exam topic rather than adjusting to make it accessible IYSWIM?

To confirm, yes I am saying consideration should be given to whether the wording of a question makes it especially challenging for someone with ASD i.e. whether the wording creates an addition challenge beyond that intended by the actual question. If so they should ideally be reworded. Different disabilities need different adjustments.

But aren't people who don't know the metaphor also at a disadvantage, as shown by this thread?

Statistically I find ambiguous instructions more difficult too, especially in tests. When I was at school, we had a French listening exam, and the CD said (in French obviously) that there were 14 cakes. We had the statement "there were 12 cakes" followed by "is this correct?". I said yes, because for there to be 14, there has to be 12, as 14 is 12 + 2. I got it wrong, and I am still angry about it lol.

I bloody hate questions where you can't justify your answer as well.

Xposted with kinddogstail!

To me the question is what are you examining? There will be some subjects which will always be less accessible to people with certain disabilities and to an extent that is unavoidable. Woodworking class is probably not going to be a good plan for someone who is severely visually impaired no matter how you try to adjust it (I'm sure I'm being unimaginative but YKWIM), and someone with dyscalculia is always going to find advanced maths a struggle. If the subject you are examining is in some way fundamentally incompatible with a specific disability then that's hard to tackle and for many with ASD metaphor, Shakespeare and poetry would come in to that bracket.

The difficulty is that language choice and usage is a factor in exams and tests for every single subject and so where the specific element being tested isn't metaphor (or whatever) then we should try to ensure that the wording of the questions doesn't exclude people.

I have just been looking up Key Stage 2 Sats papers. These are for Year 6 aren't they?

In the grammar tests there do not seem to be any grammar questions about possibility vs. certainty as difficult or confusing as the one in this thread.

In the reading test I saw reading comprehension questions asking about metaphors, for example a road being choked with traffic. Another question asked the reader to identify whether something in the text was alliteration or a metaphor.

Tail I'll try to get the precise wording of it and report back next week.

My aforementioned on this thread DS was asked this question when he got home from school today. I said the question was designed to determine if it was a certainty, possibility or impossibility.

Like a previous posters DD, he hesitated as he knew I might be asking him a trick question. He then said he couldn't decide between possibility/impossibility. But, on balance, he went with impossible due to the cats and dogs.

For info. I still think it's worded badly but I'm finding the discussion really interesting.

potatoes please don't throw your Cambridge degree at me - I have one too.

I remain of the view that the question is ambiguously worded because it mixes up a straightforward matter of grammar with metaphorical language which muddies the waters. So the point stands that expecting 10 year olds to decipher this stuff when a group of intelligent adults have managed to debate it at length without clear resolution seems somewhat unreasonable.

But Korma, I suspect that's because we don't have the exact question. The metaphor doesn't matter if it's asking whether the verb indicates certainty from the speaker. I think that's the question, nothing to do with ascertaining likihood of rain.

I remain of the view that the question is ambiguously worded because it mixes up a straightforward matter of grammar with metaphorical language which muddies the waters. So the point stands that expecting 10 year olds to decipher this stuff when a group of intelligent adults have managed to debate it at length without clear resolution seems somewhat unreasonable.

^This^. In metaphorical spades

*We had the statement "there were 12 cakes" followed by "is this correct?". I said yes, because for there to be 14, there has to be 12, as 14 is 12 + 2. I got it wrong, and I am still angry about it lol.

I bloody hate questions where you can't justify your answer as well*

Future I agree about being given the chance to justifythe question. Sometimes the tester may not have thought of the additional answer. Modern exams are worse in that way.
Poor you about the 12+2 cakes!

Statistically I understand what you mean about instructions, but think that in general, metaphor is practically in the air we breathe. It would be very difficult to simply remove it from all but specialist English tests. It is not just found in poetry.
In the example test, choked with traffic was in quite a dry text taken from everyday life.

I agree if the test in question was only about grammar - modal verbs in this case - it should not have been complicated with a metaphor, especially not at this age.

But the Key Stage 2 tests for reading would need to include metaphors.

Choked with traffic is not a metaphor. Choked can mean blocked up with - not just your throat being closed. It's a minefield (not literally)!

Sorry, that was not clear in my previous post. The example KS2 reading test I had looked up asked the reader to explain the sentence roads choked with traffic.

The sample KS2 grammar test file I attached, Statistically, is more straightforward than the one mentioned in the OP. I would guess you would think it a reasonable test.

I can see what Statistical and others mean that the example in the OP should be more clearly a simple grammar question (like the example one in the attached file I sent before) without something as illogical as cats and dogs raining being mixed with the idea of likely, possible, impossible.

Even if it is true that may should be the key to knowing the answer has to be possible, in this particular case it really is asking too much of ten year olds when the cats and dogs metaphor is thrown into the mix in this context.

On the other hand if the children know they should be on the look out for metaphors in a reading comprehension, they might get choked road^.