From James Palmer
The Cheshire Cat question posed in an A-level General Studies paper
(Feedback, 26 June)
reminds me of an exam I sat a few years ago while doing my
English GCSE. We were given three pieces of writing, each with a set of
questions attached, and were asked to “Choose one of the three exercises
below”.
While we were all sweating out pages and pages of answers, a friend of mine
simply wrote “I choose number two”, and did nothing for the rest of the exam.
Since he had, technically, fulfilled the requirements of the paper, he had to be
given full marks.
Almost all GCSEs I’ve seen since then have the instruction “Choose and
complete one of the following”.
jpalme@essex.ac.uk
