Exams

Predictably the exam period was a time of great stress as students tried to catch up on the reading they had not thus far managed and to predict what exams in New Zealand would be like.

5.6.4.2.1.

Preparation

Generally course materials, practice exercises and in-class reviews had given guidance, but for some courses these had not been provided, or not in a form that was fully available to these students. For example, they could experience course content as overwhelming and amorphous:

The tutor give some main point, but I remember is the J201, the main point including whole book. Nearly whole book, ooh! (Sky 3)

In-class revision could be at a speed which left the L2 speakers floundering, especially in the absence of previous exam papers:

She give maybe five example in the course, but that’s just too quick. I just read the topic and the people’s answer and she go to the other one, so I didn’t know what happen. (May 3)

This teacher was the same one who had turned down Saul’s request for preview samples of the first test. When he appealed for further guidance on the exam she advised that he should “just keep to copy, copy again, again, again, you know, just to let all the knowledge to stuck to your brain,” which he was unconvinced by: “if you didn’t understand the concept, maybe you can match the wrong example” in the multiple choice exam. He remained deeply puzzled by an apparent unwillingness to elucidate the mystery around this exam and support students towards success:

I don’t understand. I think not only the student want to pass the test and the final. The lecturers also want to pass, and they didn’t feel that is quite good if they fail two thirds. (3)

Inevitably, students developed their own strategies for making the task manageable including being selective in what they revised thoroughly, as all students might (see Appendix 11). The strategies that were most significant to their L2 speaker status were questions around which language to use, which will be discussed in the next chapter, and choices about memorising.

As Saul’s doubt above exemplifies, the students rejected rote memorisation as a general strategy, and made a strong association between memorising and understanding, though only in the first sense that Marton et al (1996) describe, understanding as an aid to retention. May had said in her first interview, “if I understand what they talking about I will remember that. If I just try to remember that and don’t try to understand, I will forgot it” (1). The prospect of writing L2 essays under exam conditions caused Connor, among others, to revise this stance a little, demonstrating the effect of task on choice of learning approach (Biggs, 1996):

I think the try to understand way is the best way, but sometimes I just memorise just for the exam … For the overseas student maybe we should spend more time for write down some essay, essay for the exam, I mean write down some essay just like the real exam and read it again, write it again, and do a lot of times for remember it, and in the exam just write. (3)

Most of the students, though, restricted their use of memorising to theories and definitions, and otherwise sought to remember ideas rather than “sentences”:

I’m not remember all the sentence what they talking about. I just try to understand the sentence and at the exam I just use my mind to make the sentence. (May 3)

Then some of the concept is just like terminologies that people use in business field I guess I have to remember it like, some of the things that you can say it in your own words, because it’s just pretty much like commonsense, common knowledge, but some of the knowledge is not, you got to remember the concept, what exact, which person said this. (Gemma 3)

Mike erred in the other direction, relying, at the cost of a failed course, on reading with understanding as adequate trigger for his memory (see 6.2.2.5).

5.6.4.2.2.

Sitting the exams

Exams are inherently stressful for all students, of course, but there were certainly added challenges posed by working in L2, especially for those like Connor whose English proficiency was well below the norm. It was hard to muster the ideas in L2 and write in a coherent fashion, which led one of the students to recommend what seemed like a wise strategy: “Just kept it simple. Don’t use the long sentence. Sometimes confuse the marker and confuse yourself” (JN). However, others felt that not being able to add value to your answers in some way would also be disadvantageous. Being able to write in a way that met “the university standard” was one of the reasons that Gemma gave for memorising definitions. Connor was frustrated at being unable to call upon shared knowledge with his teachers to elaborate his answers, and once again clearly perceived reproduction as a less than optimum, if unavoidable, strategy:

Some Kiwi student can make the example in the New Zealand economic but we don’t know too much about that so it’s very hard for us so we just make the example in some case on the textbooks. But I think if I do that way the teacher, the mark is not very good. Your teacher likes you have your own idea, and you can make example in real life. That’s the different. (3)

Throughout the study, written exams seemed to disadvantage these students seriously.