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Invigilation

文：Cogitatio

Yesterday a friend commented that invigilation was a boring job. You feel bored when you are not allowed to do anything except watching the students working hard on their exam papers. Worse still, some exams (especially those of the upper forms) last for two to three hours. How can anyone stand the feeling of having nothing to do for several hours?

In response to my friend's comment, I would like to tell some stories about my experience in invigilation. This is to prove that invigilation can be exciting and interesting.

Form 2 Listening and Literature

This morning the Form 2 students had their listening and literature exams. Throughout the examination time (0830---0945), I could sense the panic among the students. The listening tape was so fast that the students found it difficult to get the answers. The questions were not arranged in order, so the students had to be very careful in getting the answers. As I walked around the classroom, I found that there was one particular question that almost the whole class didn't know how to answer.

I noticed that some of the students didn't know how to take notes efficiently. One student circled the answers among a list of words for two fill-in-the-blank questions. Unfortunately some of the answers to these two questions were the same, and the student confused the answers. She had to erase the circle and then circle the words again. After the exam, I told the students that she should change her habit of taking notes. Instead of circling the answers, write "1" or "2" next to the answers. Then she wouldn't confuse the answers.

The listening tape went so fast that the students couldn't follow. From the perspective of Educational Psychology, the reason for this was that the students were still thinking of Part One when the tape went straight to Part Two. The students were bombarded with a large amount of information within a very short period of time. They didn't have enough time to "erase" everything about Part One from their memory before they proceeded to Part Two. So they confused the information and delayed their speed in receiving new information.

The Listening paper (both in Chinese and in English) is not designed to test the students' ability of memorizing information through listening. The purpose is to test the students' speed in reacting to the listening tape! In order to avoid confusing information from different parts of the listening paper, students should learn how to "listen and forget" --- don't let the information stay in the short-term memory! Then they can proceed to the next session with a clear mind.

Form 2 Home Economics

It was twenty minutes after the start of the exam (which lasted for an hour). I noticed a student who remained motionless in her seat for five minutes. She held her pen on her right hand. Her head and her left arm were on the desk. She fell asleep in the middle of the exam. She would have failed the exam if I hadn't discovered that.

I woke her up and told her to go to the washroom, wash her face and refresh herself. I asked the runner (the teacher who walks along the corridor and sees to the need of the invigilators in the classrooms) , a male teacher, to help.

When the runner came to me, he made a gesture that he was about to enter the classroom. He supposed that I would bring the student to the ladies' washroom. However, I turned my body towards the classroom. The male teacher got what I was thinking in my mind, so he led the student to the washroom. I regretted for this. I shouldn't let a male teacher bring the student to the washroom. In case the student had any accident in the washroom, the male teacher couldn't go inside and see. Although all these happened within a second, I knew that I made a mistake very quickly.

Automatic Transfer

After the exam, the teachers collect the question papers and the answer sheets to the general office. The secretaries there count the number of the answer sheets from each class to see if there is any loss of papers. There will be great trouble if the number of answer sheets is wrong. The teachers would have to look for the students' papers. A disaster will come upon the teacher who loses his students' papers. Bear in mind that the secretaries count only the number of answer sheets, but not the question papers or the rough work sheets.

The term "automatic transfer" is related to such a process. For example, a Maths teacher teaching 4A Mathematics invigilates in 4A in the Mathematics examination. He wants to count the answer sheets himself and then goes straight to marking. He will go to the general office with the answer sheets in his hand and say to the secretaries, "Automatic transfer!" The secretaries will ask him to sign the record of collecting exam papers for marking, and they won't have to do the counting.

But if you say "automatic transfer" only after the secretaries grab your answer sheets for counting, they will shout with a loud voice so that everybody outside the general office can hear, "Hey! Why do you waste our time?!"