To complain to son's school and request a re-mark? And a re-wording of the exam?

[ErnestTheBavarian]

We are English, live in Germany, kids go to local German school. My ds is in Q11 (for those who know system), similar to 1st year of A Levels.

His English teacher's English is not exactly great. eg recently taught them the word 'anxiety' as ang-shitty. Every lesson she makes big mistakes.

Anyway, recent exam, very important, he got (for him) a poor mark. I looked through it. The teacher has made several mistakes in her corrections, which annoy/cause me concern, both spelling and grammar. For my ds, it's not such a big deal. Poor bloody kids who are actually learning English though.

Anyway, the exam was an excerpt from a book, scene between a jaded married couple on holiday in a hotel.

Question is:-

"Analyse the woman's character as well as her relationship to her husband".

Amongst the corrections/suggestions she has written are

• why does she want a cat so much?
• he is passive and disinterested.
• she wants to be more feminine.
• maybe she can't have children.

IMO, these aren't character traits, so feel unfair to penalise him for not mentioning them?

Also, now I think she doesn't actually mean her character, but that figure in the story for want of a better word. so not her personality but the figure as a whole. Does that make sense? And can you help me think of a better way of wording it?

And finally, aim to complain to the school about her English? I've never done so before, and believe me, we have let a lot go over the years, but now every mark counts to his end result. On the 1st page alone, I see at least 5 mistakes!

Dear lord, sounds awful.

Did your son not answer anything/much about her relationship with her husband then as the suggestions given see as if they would relate to that rather than her character.

When you said that it's with not to she should have accepted that.

In primary my daughter's teacher was convinced that it was a monocycle!

The kids or us would be asked for clarification about stuff!

Is he doing the 12 or 13 yr system?

my middle ds has come to the very astute conclusion that 'Schulenglisch' is actually a separate variant of English

Haha YES!

My four year old did English week at Kindergarten and came back saying "Mummy I learned to speak ENGLISH!" All excited :)

She had learned to count to ten in the weirdest accent I've ever heard and to say " Hallo, mei nam isss DAGmar" (she isn't called Dagmar)

She's a native speaker. Hadn't picked up on the fact that she was "learning" something she already knew because it sounded so different to her ears!

YANBU. I thought when I first read it the character of the woman meant her personality. . It's really ambiguous. But your son will be bilingual and his English is probably far better than his teacher's in a lot of respects. Not sure she is really the right person to be teaching him English.

I agree that you should find a way of pointing out as sensitively as possible that some of the spelling and grammar corrections are wrong, for the sake of the non native-speakers. However I am confused as to why your son, a native speaker, is taking this exam at all? Would it not be a better use of the teaching available to him at school to do a subject that he needs to be taught? Or is it that you see it as on a level, in terms of the literature and reading comprehension that has to be answered in English,with a native-speaker A level English exam he might do in the UK? Since it’s a foreign language class though it presumably includes at least one translation paper English to German that he’s going to ace every time due to being bilingual? Is he also doing German classes for native speakers?

Also, when it comes to the exam, this teacher won’t be setting or marking it will she? In which case, the questions will be written correctly and, since your son is a native speaker, he’ll get the spelling and grammar right despite her bad teaching and the examiner will mark it as correct.

I can see why you’re annoyed at the use of “to” rather than “with”, would drive me mad too!

There's no German/English translation. Yes, he also does the normal (native ) German speaking classes. This teacher might well be with him next year, and yes, the teachers do set and Mark the work including the 'finals'. There are no external tests. It's totally different to English system.

The teacher when told me in our meeting that my son's English is far better than hers.

Not German to English, English to German.

I have a languages degree which obviously required very high standards, and we did have comprehension where we had to write our answers in the foreign language, but translation both ways was also tested (presumably because some students might want to go on to be translators or interpreters).
Not saying I don’t believe you, just find it interesting that no German whatsoever would be used in a class for teaching english to a class who all spoke German (as opposed to TEFL for a mixed class who all have different native languages).

Jessie, he's taking the exam because (presuming it's pretty much the same as in my state) he has to. English is a core subject in German secondary schools, up there with German and maths. It's a hoop he and kids like him have to jump through to get the university entrance qual (which is baccalaureate-style with a lot of compulsory subjects).

IME English classes at German schools don't teach translation. Grammar, essay writing, literature, yes. And the classes are mostly or exclusively conducted in English in order to provide an approximation to an immersive environment.

Interesting, I figured it might be compulsory. Good then that he has one class which must be a bit less pressure on him than it would be for his non native English speaking classmates.

Yes, it's brilliant. He's at a disadvantage in every single subject, except one. And in that one he loses marks and grades because his teacher can't speak English properly.

German has prepositions which change meaning so the concept isn’t alien and thus could be explained. As could the personality traits instead of character. I’m not saying an exact word for word translation. A description/translation of meaning. My German isn’t good enough so I won’t attempt.

Ie
A) what she asked for
German equivalent

B) what she meant
German equivalent
Etc

Why is he at a disadvantage in his other subjects, is he not fully bilingual?

I think the meaning is clear, even if the expression was slightly clumsy. There are all sorts of situations where you have to pick through a question to find out what is really being asked of you. Relationship to/relationship with is not anything to pull apart, imo. It should have been obvious that it was asking about a personal relationship rather than a family tree.

It is possible to ask for an analysis of a character’s relationship to another, rather than with.

The teacher has misused the word ‘disinterested’. (I presume. Unless she really does mean disinterested)

Ang-shitty, finally I understand what my anxiety means

misses the point

Hemingway''s "A cat in the rain". I hated analysing that, and it's 20 odd years ago. By the way, the rain supposedly represents semen, the war memorial is (obvs) a penis, the umbrella offered by the concierge is a condom.

No help with the problem, but random shit like this fills my brain where the useful stuff should be :D

:D should have been

I’d respectfully disagree DivisionBelle. One’s relationship “to” someone is a question of fact- what is your relationship to the boy? I am his mother. What is his relationship to the woman? She is his colleague.

Whereas “relationship with” is about how two people feel about each other.

I can't see anything wrong with what the teacher wrote. YABU.

MO, these aren't character traits, so feel unfair to penalise him for not mentioning them?

She didn't say analyse character traits, she said analyse the woman's character. And that list would be fully expected to come under that. We were doing this as 11 year olds in book reviews at school, I would fully expect a first year A-level student (16/17 years old?) to produce a well-rounded analysis of the character.

It is difficult because you do not want to make waves in an internal marking system but you do need to defend your son. I have told my kid to zip it where possible. Peasant was being pronounced by staff as pea /zunt, gist as a hard g and my favourite was pigsty as pigstee.
I complained once on a glaring grammatical error that made a difference between a 1 and a 2.
In your shoes I would complain about any lost marks due to incorrect marking but I think you are being petty about the question and should be looking at the content of what your son actually wrote. Just because they are native speakers does not mean they will always get a 1, far from it, and sometimes because they are native speakers they do not always put in the amount of detail necessary.
Even in its current form the question clearly wants as much detail as you can give about the husband/wife relationship and even if interpreted as personal characteristics you would usually still need to back them up with evidence from the text.

So many times I have been penalised for interpreting an exam question too literally and leaving out things which would have earned me points. I'm a very literal person and I have learned to take a step back and think "Why are they asking this? What do they want me to show? Do they really mean what they are specifically ask?" It's an important judgment. Now in business and responding to tenders it's the same thing. Read the question they ask, then work out what they really mean and answer that.