monest words and constructions. This is intended to help candidates who only know a little, but who have been thoroughly taught the little that they know. Primary Latin. After An innovation was introduced into this year's paper. drawing up a series of questions on grammar, the examiner refrained from printing them, and embodied his requirements in the easy English sentences, which candidates were asked to render into Latin. His object was to give the advantage to those who had not merely learnt their grammar by rote but were able to apply it with intelligence. The result proved that a large number of those who had entered had no firm foothold, and were hopelessly unfit to begin to work for the Junior Examination. How. ever little knowledge is acquired at this stage, the distinction between singular and plural, nominative and accusative, active and passive, present, imperfect, perfect and future, and between the first person and the third person, ought to be thoroughly mastered in the first year of working at Latin. These distinctions were again and again ignored. The better papers, however, gave signs of careful teaching; but some strange mistakes were made as regards the position of words in a Latin sentence. Primary French. Far fewer absolutely unprepared candidates presented themselves for this examination. The better papers, however, did not reach as high a standard as last year. The question on parsing seemed to take most candidates unawares; a large number translated the italicised words into English and then parsed their rendering. This shows a weakness in the teaching, as no child who had the most rudimentary conception of what language is could fall into such an error. Inaccuracy was as rampant as ever. A large percentage of candidates were quite indifferent to tense in their translations, and had evidently acquired the bad habit of glancing hastily at a French sentence and writing down an approximate rendering; at least that is surely a fair inference when child after child translates "elle leva vivement la tête," by "she quickly washed my head," and "je jouai" by "I will play" and "I play." 66 Much is not expected of candidates for the Primary Examination, but if only they knew a little well, it would make a difference to their whole school career. Primary Arithmetic. On the whole the Arithmetic paper was not well answered. The worst fault was that of confused, insufficient, and incorrect statement. In several cases answers were given without any proof whatever. In most cases such proofs as were given consisted of ill-arranged masses of figures without any explanation in words to bind them together. This want of method was no doubt responsible for the failure of so many candidates to answer a straight-forward question like the first one in the paper. The question was as follows: "A man has £10 5s. 10d. He loses three-quarters of it, gives away two-fifths of the remainder, and then works for 5 days, earning 6/6 a day. If his expenses during that time are £3 5s. 4d., how much has he in the end?" The answer is here set down. A man has £10 5s. 10d., and loses three quarters of it. He therefore has one quarter left, or £2 11s. 5d. Of this he gives away two-fifths. He therefore has of £2 11s. 5d. left. He then works 5 days now has £1 10s. i.e., 3 x 10s. 34d. or £1 10s. 101d. He at 6s. 6d. a day, and so earns £1 15s. 9d. The answer could not be set out satisfactorily with less explanation in words. Candidates must expect to lose marks, and to handicap themselves, which is worse, if they cut short their explanations. Some, of course, put no words down, because they do not know what to put. These are the candidates who do not really understand what they are doing; whose only thought is to find out by what "rule" the sum is meant to be done; and who, if they cannot think of the right rule, consider the sum to be a "conundrum." They have not really learnt any arithmetic. There are other candidates who cut short their workings from laziness; and others again, amongst the clever ones, from excessive anxiety to be concise. Now everyone who has tried to work out a difficult problem, or to follow up a train of reasoning as yet only grasped in part, knows that this undue brevity does not pay. The great thing is to get all one's ideas down on paper, properly stated, and properly arranged. When that is done, the next step reveals itself. It is of the utmost importance that students should acquire the habit of complete statement. It is of course possible to go to the other extreme, and be full of unnecessary words. But the error is not in the latter direction at present. It is hard to believe that so large a percentage would have been unable to find the correct answer to the first question, if they had been content to make sure of one step at a time. The third question was as follows: "Arrange the following quantities in the order of their magnitude: Then find the difference between each quantity and the one following it (in the new order) to three places of decimals." This may be worked as follows: Many candidates attempted to do this question by bringing the five fractions to one common denominator, and so made the question a very heavy one. They had the less excuse for choosing such a bad method, because the question asked for results expressed in decimals. The fourth question was easy and short in the workings, and demanded no knowledge of tables, except the number of square feet in a square yard, and of square yards in an acre. Nevertheless some candidates made it long by dragging in the awkward divisions intermediate between the acre and the square yard. Junior Examination. Junior English Literature. Taken as a whole the papers cannot be said to be satisfactory, or such as might be expected from students who are beyond the preliminary stage. In too many instances the spelling was sadly incorrect, the handwriting bad, neatness and carefulness lacking. As regards the subject matter of the answers, apart from those questions which depended on the accurate rendering of the poetry to be committed to memory, there was a remarkable lack of intelligence. In Question 6, the meaning of the word "perspicacity" was almost invariably given as inability to understand what is perfectly plain to most people," this being the note on "want of perspicacity" in the text-book. Moreover, the sentences to illustrate the meanings of words were often extremely grotesque, and showed clearly that the candidates had no real idea of the meanings. In Question 7 the answers were characterised by great inaccuracy. For example, "Thomas Grey was a poet who wrote a eulogy on a country churchyard." "James Thompson was a poet. He wrote many works, and works on the weather included such as summer and winter weather." The answers to Question 8, to illustrate that "The characteristic of his (Johnson's) intellect was the union of great powers with low prejudices," indicated that all the candidates were under the impression that they were required to condemn Dr. Johnson to the utmost. The general conclusion is that the text-books and notes had been accurately studied as far as the letterpress was concerned, but with a minimum of intelligence in understanding their true significance, and consequently with little advantage to the student. Junior English History. The first and last questions in the Junior paper were generally well done, except that many of the candidates gave Clive the credit of suppressing the Indian Mutiny. The answers would often have been of more value if the candidates had been able to give approximate dates; or, in the case of Question 4, to say in whose reigns the statesmen lived; but often there was no indication whatever of the period. With very few exceptions the second question was badly done. Candidates were asked to draw a map of France, showing the dominions of the King of England and of the King of France after the Treaty of Bretigny, and were required to mark in Paris, Agincourt, Calais, and Orleans. Every variety of outline was given, except that usually found in atlases. Agincourt was as often to the south of Paris as it was to the north, and Orleans appeared in every possible position, north, south, east, and west, on the coast, and inland. Many candidates did not attempt this question, and one wrote "Impossible," but then softened the curt refusal with the explanation "I cannot draw maps, but the present King of England has no possessions in France." In two papers outlinesof Spain were given with Portugal and the Pyrenees marked and the required four places inserted. Question 3 was often carelessly answered, with no attempt to give events in the right order, and candidates too often tried to hide a want of knowledge by much vague writing. Exception must be made, however, of a few papers in which this answer was extremely well done. The examiner is inclined to think that many of the candidates have not had enough practice in writing answers. Had they done more composition they would probably not have written: a siege broke out;""the crown was indecisive; many occasions of cruelty were committed;" "to agricult the land;" resurrection of the United States." 66 66 But a more serious offence was the use of slang. Candidates should be informed that marks were deducted for such sentences as the following: "Charles fooled away his time with Buckingham;" "Edward got wild and wanted to go for Scotland;" "George III was a pig-headed old fool." Greek. The translation from English into Greek was poor; weakness in Vocabulary and false concords were the most serious faults. Slightly under 50 per cent. did not know the Greek for "art," and a larger number were unable to translate the word "priest." Translation from Greek into English was somewhat better, but there was much carelessness. For “ πότερον ἀπέκτεινε τὸν ἄνδρα ἢ σworev" "Did I kill the man Poteron or save him?" was given as an equivalent by several candidates. 'Evraû0a was also, sporadically, treated as a noun. The easier questions in grammar were well answered, except that dealing with the numerals. Few were able to count beyond five in Greek, and several gave the cardinal instead of the ordinal numerals. |