On 14 Sep 2015, at 16:44, Lea, John ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
> Yes, some of them are very funny, but perhaps the biggest joke is on
> the people who think that the person who wins the exam game is the
> most intelligent one in the class...
I confess to very mixed feelings about the whole thing, both the
practice and the objections. I think a competition is too much but I
can't quite forget the way it made my first ever marking (Classical
Civilisations A level) a bit more bearable when something was
accidentally funny.
But I always saw a lot of them as a kind of feedback on our teaching.
Those who understand that the Homeric poems (aka just 'Homer') were
actually oral poems sung by professionals ('sons of Homer') and that
'Homer' (a poet) never existed would have laughed - and understood -
this old favourite of mine:
'Homer was not written by Homer, but by another poet of the same name'
As long as the laugh was followed by 'crikey we really didn't get that
across very well, did we? How else might we teach this topic?' I thought
it was tolerable to circulate them. Similarly, the sheer number of
spelling mistakes 'Ajax had a fatal floor') convinced me that English is
truly a disaster of a language that I thought ought to be sorted out
(read out that last bit to get a glimpse of the ludicrously antiphonetic
spelling habits we have). This is what our international students are
struggling with, amongst other things...#GoodReminder
The laugh is on us too. If we remember that, we can chuckle while we
fill in the potholes, no?
J
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