[update] Semester 1... start!

So the first semester has just begun! I feel I'll probably be quite busy over the next 16 or so weeks, with a lot of fast paced learning to do, exams to prepare for, and the GAMSAT. Second year was already quite a leap from first year as far as core subjects were concerned... how about third year? I shall see soon enough! But there may not be anything interesting to update on for a few weeks (not that I've been writing very regularly anyway haha).


Oh and as an aside, I really hope they make the MD and other graduate entry courses in unimelb eligible for concession card travel on Melbourne's public transport system. After all, the function of these degrees is the same as the bachelor degrees like MBBS that they replaced, which were eligible. So it'd make sense by to put them in the same concession travel fee category even though they are not labeled as "bachelor degrees" but "masters level degrees".

I also think it'd be nice if real master and doctor degree research students and international students could have concession travel too, but that's another issue.

Standardized testing results in education: good or overemphasized?

I recently saw an article in The Age which has criticized the alleged overemphasis of the NAPLAN, the national standardized test for math and English over Australia for years 3, 5, 7 and 9 [Official quits at school's test results spike]. This prompted me to write this essay.



There is no doubt that Australia could do with an increase in literacy and numeracy standards of school pupils. One only has to look at the results of TIMSS to find that Australians do not perform close to the top nations in these areas. Standardized tests are used widely around the world to measure performance in areas. They are a benchmark, with results of people able to be easily compared with one another. As such, they can provide meaningful comparisons between different people who do the same test.

Since standardized tests enable meaningful comparisons, they should be used in education. In the case of Dallas Primary School, they saw an increase in scores for the NAPLAN. The most obvious conclusion, therefore, is that the quality of the students' math and literacy skills has increased. The use of the standardized test has given us a relatively objective measure of this.

However, detractors may argue that the test has been overemphasized. Particularly, that students are trained "just to do well in the test". But this should not be an issue, if the test is written well. If the test covers good math and literacy skills in great detail and depth, then an increase in scores indicates an increase in student ability. Therefore, virtually all the training for students "just to do well in the test" would have the effect of increasing math and literacy skills; the wanted outcome, with the remaining small amount devoted to exam strategy which will become important later on as students move into higher education.

How would you explain a spike in data though? Well, to me, there is no good reason why a real increase in math and literacy skills of the students isn't a good explanation. Two years is a long time, and the students can learn a lot in this time. Especially considering how low Australian math standards are, there is no good reason why students cannot catch up in two years. Of course, there could be other effects too though; more than 30% of people did not sit the test and they could have been low performers. However, a lot of these were excluded due to arriving in Australia for only a short time, and the departmental investigation found no artificial inflation from exclusion from the school. Then again, it's also possible that this is a freak result. We'll find out after the results come out this year. But that doesn't invalidate the test.

As for the "world's best practice" alluded to in the article? Well, just look at the TIMSS results. It seems like the "world's best practice" of numeracy and literacy standards is found in East Asian nations and countries like Singapore. And our Australian performance is not even close! It's not rocket science here, it's not as if we're at the top of the game. If you want "world's best practice", then learn from them. That's what we should be doing.

Standardized testing and aiming to improve upon benchmarks is a great way to increase our literacy and math standards. It is perhaps the only objective way to note improvement. If the test is written well, then most increases in scores would mean increases in real math and literacy skills. However, if the test is not sound, then it should be improved. But they should not be dispensed with completely.

[update] Semester 1 starts in just under 2 weeks! Looking at the year ahead...

 So, this year is my last year of my course, assuming that I do not fail any subjects. Semester one is starting very soon! And the GAMSAT is quite close too (26 March). Yes, I've decided to do the GAMSAT again, since UQ is not going to be my first preference. Buffer against other aspects of the application.

I've hardly done GAMSAT study yet though this year; nothing apart from helping others do a few questions (although I wrote 2 essays and tried to get better planning technique strategy since GAMSAT last year). That said, before last GAMSAT, I didn't do anything apart from the 3 ACER books out at the time (not even relearning good essay technique o.o... almost failed that section) and got a reasonably good overall score.

Anyway, I do plan to start preparing for GAMSAT soon. Probably the free practice tests from internet, and the new practice test ACER just released. Just hoping for a reasonable improvement for minimal effort this time around. Hopefully it doesn't bite me.

Then of course there's the interview this year too... Gotta prepare for it... I hope they ask me to detechnicalize a kilojoule haha.


In other news, seems like they've let us choose 6 preferences this year to apply to uni! I don't really mind that; I guess it's good. Definitely good that we probably don't have to submit transcripts this time though. However, the one thing that I hope they'd do is to resolve the "UQ issue". That is, right now UQ releases offers in August (as they have no interview), about the same time that other unis release interview offers, and 2 months before place offers. However, they don't leave many (or any) "second round" places, so people with high GAMSAT scores which aren't ranked highly for whatever reason in other schools after the interview, if they didn't put UQ first, may miss out on spots. Or maybe, just maybe, unimelb remove the interview? haha ;).

So that's the update for now.

Learning the mother tongue

As a Chinese person in Australia, like many other descendants of immigrants here, there is not that much use for our mother tongue in everyday life. And although it is always good to learn the mother tongue, even now I have not attained a good ability in it.

It had started from when I was young, when my parents sent me to Chinese school. Due to not understanding the importance of learning this at the time, I did not try very hard to learn the language outside of class and memorize the characters and words. As a result, my ability was not very good in these years.

When I finally realized the importance of learning this, it was around the start of high school. But thinking ahead, I knew that my strengths lay in math and the sciences, and had already planned out my VCE subjects: English, Math Methods, Specialist Math, Chemistry, Physics, Biology (I had subsequently made a bad decision to not do year 12 biology in year 11 due to bad advice from some school teachers, so I didn't end up doing year 12 bio, but that's another matter). That brought out the maximum of 6 subjects contributing to my ENTER already (but cut down to 5 due to not doing year 12 bio :( ). And so I focused on the subjects which were going to be in my VCE thereon, because I wanted to get into medicine and it was hard to get into. So Chinese was a lower priority, even though I still attended Chinese school until the end of year 11, when to focus on the other subjects I quit learning Chinese in language school. As such, when I left high school, my Chinese still wasn't good.

Then came university, and I hadn't gotten into medicine yet. During the biomed course, I again had the opportunity to choose Chinese as a subject outside of core to do. However, after a while pondering, I decided that it was not the time. Since the University of Melbourne uses GPA as part of the ranking process to get into medicine, I did not want to jeopardize this. So apart from a social work subject in first year (because first year was weighted least in GPA calculations) which was supposed to help if I got an interview (I sort of regret that now though since it pulled my GPA down quite a bit), I chose things which were more to my strength, like economics and math subjects. As such, even then the best strategy was to yet again delay learning my mother tongue.

So as of now, my Chinese is still not very good. I do plan to improve it significantly in the future, but when I realized the importance of learning it, other more important goals in the short term, for getting into medicine in Melbourne, required different subject selections for me to maximize my chances. As such, for now I'll just have to stick with learning informally and hopefully pick it up more in the future. It would be nice to one day be able to visit the mainland (which I haven't yet) and not have to resort to using English to communicate due to lack of Chinese ability.