Friday, August 20, 2010
Oral Communications

Sorry to whoever is reading my blog, I was unable to keep up with my 1 post a week rule last week, because there was 4 test and I really could not sacrifice my study time to make a post. Even if I did it would have been a substandard post.

In this post, I will be talking about the new "subject" introduced in Hwa Chong, Oral Communications.

Oral Communications is the new assessment method introduced this year, together with Independent Studies. The aim of Oral Communications is to promote vocal skills and to encourage public speaking. It consist of Oral Participation in classes, English Current Affairs Discussion, Chinese Current Affairs Discussion, and a Chinese and English Interview. The highest Oral Participation marks in 5 subjects will be taken into account for your Oral Participation marks.

Now, I will point out some of the major flaws of the new system. First of all, like Independent Studies, it is unfair to a specific group of people. In this case, Oral Communications is unfair to people who are shy in nature, they are not vocal and they are not good at speaking. Even if they are encouraged to speak up, they will still not be as proficient as those who are vocal in nature and they will lose out in the assessment. Furthermore, most of the assessment such as the interviews and the current affairs discussion are all one-try, if you screw it up, you're screwed. If a student under performs on that day, his entire subject grade will be affected.

Personally, I do not really like this system alot as I am not much of a public speaker. However, I feel that I can still live with it.