French students unable to cope with tricky question - Polidicks

[img]http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/B234/production/_83802654_83802653.jpg[/img] [url]http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33238996[/url] [quote]The characters in Ian McEwan's novel Atonement are called upon to cope with all sorts of tricky situations. But when French teenagers sitting an exam about the book were asked to cope with a tough question, they fell short on one key element - the word "coping". Now almost 12,000 students have signed a petition saying the question was "impossible" to answer because they didn't know the word. The 17-year-old behind it claims "only someone bilingual" would understand it. The students of the baccalaureate English exam were asked how Robbie Turner - who is falsely accused of rape - is "coping with the situation". But thousands of them took to social media after the test, using the hashtag #BacAnglais, to claim that the question was too difficult.[/quote]

i guess they gotta cope with it

This is a special level of stupid shit. Personally the government should laugh in their faces and refuse to do anything.

(I would make an animated image macro but I got permad for image macros multiple times in the past so I will leave that to someone else) [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Then why reply at all WOW!" - Big Dumb American))[/highlight]

[quote=article]The 17-year-old behind it claims "only someone bilingual" would understand it.[/quote] Step your game up frenchies.

[QUOTE=Zonesylvania;48033579]This is a special level of stupid shit. Personally the government should laugh in their faces and refuse to do anything.[/QUOTE] The President of France himself should have the honor. For 5 minutes. On Live National Television.

[quote]The 17-year-old behind it claims "only someone bilingual" would understand it. [/quote] God forbid you fuckers actually learn a language other then French. France is the only country I've ever been to where it is rare to find someone who speaks English and even rarer to find a Frenchman both able and [B]willing[/B] to speak English.

I don't think you guys have any idea how shit english education is in this country. Not a hard question by any means, but I am not surprised that these guys have never as much as heard the verb "to cope"

Just proof that all foreigners should speak English. In all seriousness, was the question phrased like that in English? 'How is he coping?' Or was it a French sentence with 'coping' in it?

[QUOTE]baccalaureate English exam[/QUOTE] If this was an exam for a bachelor level English course and they didn't understand the meaning of this word, then they should by all rights be failing the exam. You wouldn't get passed in Calculus 101 if you didn't have a basic understanding of the concept of Pi, or an Elementary EE without knowing Ohm's Law, to the point where you couldn't even infer the meaning, for instance.

I feel as though it wouldn't be too difficult to infer what the meaning of the word is based on the other words given in the question. I don't speak French so I wouldn't know whether or not verb translated into their language would use a preposition that translates to "with", but regardless I bet it'd still be manageable to get the feel of the question. From my experience, standardized language exams always try to measure both a student's familiarity with a language and their ability to infer meaning. A lot of the time it can seem they do it unfairly, but I don't think asking the students to infer the meaning of a word/question, given all that background knowledge as well, should really warrant this kind of backlash.

Honestly, learning English in France is a fucking mess because most of the pedagogy is outdated. You're basically taught the most simplistic grammar possible and nothing else, with no regard for the actual vocabulary. Like most people who learn English essentially only know words used in formalities (hello/goodbye/fuck off/etc), body parts and spatial directions. Last year I was quite surprised when I learned that nearly everyone in my class (meaning everyone but me and two other dudes) didn't know what [I]scaffolding[/I] fucking meant.

[QUOTE=Im Crimson;48033806]If this was an exam for a bachelor level English course and they didn't understand the meaning of this word, then they should by all rights be failing the exam. You wouldn't get passed in Calculus 101 if you didn't have a basic understanding of the concept of Pi, or an Elementary EE without knowing Ohm's Law, to the point where you couldn't even infer the meaning, for instance.[/QUOTE] [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baccalaur%C3%A9at]It's not bachelor-level, the french school system is weird like that.[/url] Unless the Swedish school system is similarly weird. They should probably know the word, though. [editline]23rd June 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=Ganerumo;48033835]Honestly, learning English in France is a fucking mess because most of the pedagogy is outdated. You're basically taught the most simplistic grammar possible and nothing else, with no regard for the actual vocabulary. Like most people who learn English essentially only know words used in formalities (hello/goodbye/fuck off/etc), body parts and spatial directions. Last year I was quite surprised when I learned that nearly everyone in my class (meaning everyone but me and two other dudes) didn't know what [I]scaffolding[/I] fucking meant.[/QUOTE] French Immersion in Canada is the same way. You really only get out of the program what you put in. I imagine most foreign-language classes are like that, really.

[QUOTE=Im Crimson;48033806]If this was an exam for a bachelor level English course and they didn't understand the meaning of this word, then they should by all rights be failing the exam. You wouldn't get passed in Calculus 101 if you didn't have a basic understanding of the concept of Pi, or an Elementary EE without knowing Ohm's Law, to the point where you couldn't even infer the meaning, for instance.[/QUOTE] baccalaureat is basically the end of high school exams.

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;48033835]Honestly, learning English in France is a fucking mess because most of the pedagogy is outdated. You're basically taught the most simplistic grammar possible and nothing else, with no regard for the actual vocabulary. Like most people who learn English essentially only know words used in formalities (hello/goodbye/fuck off/etc), body parts and spatial directions. Last year I was quite surprised when I learned that nearly everyone in my class (meaning everyone but me and two other dudes) didn't know what [I]scaffolding[/I] fucking meant.[/QUOTE] I blame the fact that you dub your movies/games. In germany they do the same. Friend of mine moved from Germany to the USA for a year and said that suddenly all the movies made sense and sounded way higher quality. Now he goes out of his way to find english showings of movies in Germany.

Yeah most people refuse to watch movies/shows that aren't dubbed, they'll even refuse to try out subs. Although the people who succeeded the most at learning English are the people who actually did what I told them to do and started watching everything in English.

[QUOTE=taipan;48033872]I blame the fact that you dub your movies/games. In germany they do the same. Friend of mine moved from Germany to the USA for a year and said that suddenly all the movies made sense and sounded way higher quality. Now he goes out of his way to find english showings of movies in Germany.[/QUOTE] thats really dumb honestly. subtitles are so great for learning, i speak fluent english largely thanks to them

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;48033904]Yeah most people refuse to watch movies/shows that aren't dubbed, they'll even refuse to try out subs. Although the people who succeeded the most at learning English are the people who actually did what I told them to do and started watching everything in English.[/QUOTE] I watch everything in english without subs. Also because the subs tend to divert my eyes into reading them and manually translating what the characters are saying to portuguese, instead of thinking and understanding in english without translating.

tbf french is the official international/diplomatic language but most english speakers remain monoglot their entire life and completely take for granted that it's the global lingua franca (no pun intended) so there's a bit of hypocrisy and grounds for general forgiveness afaic

Eh it's pretty standard that whenever state mandated exams show up, students invariably complain about some element of the exam. Nothing to see here.

like I know what the word means but I can't even explain it in my native language The downsides of learning english from runescape and flash game sites as a 8 year old

They might need to develop some coping strategies to manage with life.

And I thought Quebecers had a problem with English.

I am surprised they didnt request to remove the word from the dictionary or something

It's not just France, here in Wallonia (the French-speaking part of Belgium) it's just as bad. Hell, I went to a university to get a degree in English translation, and I often had to correct my own teachers because they weren't speaking English properly. I could say more about that, but it would sound a lot like boasting. [QUOTE=taipan;48033872]I blame the fact that you dub your movies/games. In germany they do the same. Friend of mine moved from Germany to the USA for a year and said that suddenly all the movies made sense and sounded way higher quality. Now he goes out of his way to find english showings of movies in Germany.[/QUOTE] I agree completely. Watching films and series with subtitles instead of dubs is how I learnt, and video games perfected my English. Still doesn't beat the dumbest thing about French translations: when you translate the English title of a film with something else in English, easier to understand for people who don't know it well. There are countless examples and I hate that.

[QUOTE=alpha00zero;48034254]And I thought Quebecers had a problem with English.[/QUOTE] Then you realize that most* people of Quebec are bilingual, unlike the rest of Canada. :v:

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;48033835]Honestly, learning English in France is a fucking mess because most of the pedagogy is outdated. You're basically taught the most simplistic grammar possible and nothing else, with no regard for the actual vocabulary. Like most people who learn English essentially only know words used in formalities (hello/goodbye/fuck off/etc), body parts and spatial directions. Last year I was quite surprised when I learned that nearly everyone in my class (meaning everyone but me and two other dudes) didn't know what [I]scaffolding[/I] fucking meant.[/QUOTE] What the fuck, scaffolding seems like a pretty specialized word that doesn't come up very often at all in common conversation. It's entirely understandable that they wouldn't know that.

Feeling pretty lucky that I learnt most of the English I know "my way" by just visiting English websites/watching movies with English dub or subs/playing games in English every day. I used to be pretty damn terrible at English in school until I started doing that, and afterwards even occasionally knew more than my teachers. One even genuinely asked me if I if I had taken an exchange year in the States. Makes me I wonder how well I could have done some other subjects if I had found some way to better integrate them into daily routines. Even abstract stuff like van der Waals forces could have fit into research for writing a little sci fi story or something.

[QUOTE=WolvesSoulZ;48034412]Then you realize that most* people of Quebec are bilingual, unlike the rest of Canada. :v:[/QUOTE] Kinda upsetting when you know that Canada has two official languages.

[QUOTE=Memobot;48033723]Just proof that all foreigners should speak English. In all seriousness, was the question phrased like that in English? 'How is he coping?' Or was it a French sentence with 'coping' in it?[/QUOTE] it was a quote from a book, but it was very simply written like "james was having trouble coping with the suicide"