More universities are using students’ scores on English listening comprehension tests as a threshold for recruiting students, which has sparked controversy about the chances of students being admitted to their preferred institutes, but Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa (吳思華) yesterday said that he had no intentions of interfering with the schools’ recruitment plans.
Wu made the remarks in response to questions raised yesterday by the National Federation of Teachers Unions, which said that the mechanism would result in unfair admissions for students who have limited access to English studies.
The latest statistics made available by the College Entrance Examination Center (CEEC) showed that 19.7 percent of high-school students in northern Taiwan received an “A” in English listening comprehension tests administered this year, while 9.9 percent students living in eastern municipalities revived an “A” and 5.4 percent of students on outlying islands obtained an “A.”
The federation said that using listening scores as a benchmark would deny many students access to certain higher-education institutes.
It would also increase the already hefty burden on students preparing for college entrance examinations and cause students give more focus than necessary to hone their skills for their listening tests, the federation said.
Furthermore, the CEEC has not made the answers to previous test questions available, and some students and their parents say that the agency should publish the answers and guides for the tests online.
Wu said that the ministry would “respect” the methods employed by each school to vet applicants, as each school has its own academic standards.
Wu said that the ministry would ask the center to publish information on how to answer questions, in particular on grammar use and tenses in which students tend to make mistakes, to assist students in their studies.
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