Lost In Translation
Workday - 8:30am-4:00pm
No, I'm actually not going to talk about the great movie I saw last night. The title just happened to also fit with a separate topic I thought I'd explore.
I'm devoting today's entry to the "what the hell were they thinking?" answers I've gotten on exam questions. As I finished up the last of my marking today, I was laughing right out loud at many of the answers I read. I understand that a lot of my students don't know English very well, and that can be a great excuse. Except I've also gotten some interesting responses from people who have lived here since birth (including a student who spelled Japanese "japneees", on last year's exam. If nothing else, can people not learn young that there will never be triple-same-letter combinations in the English language?). Today I'll share my amusement.
On the music history exam, one of the questions was:
How did Holst rectify the problem that there was not a lot of music for his girls' school band to play?
One response:
"He had a letter written to the leader of music (president) and had more music written"
... man, I wish I could be the president of music.
Another response:
"He worked in an all girls school"
... y'know, she's probably right. Why the hell is he whining about there not being enough music? All problems just seem to disappear when you're surrounded by a bunch of schoolgirls!
A couple of questions asked for what musical style period came ... (during some specified time). I learned about some new eras, including:
The Piano Period
The Unclassical Period
The Normal Period
The Folk Period
The Baratosky Period -- ???
The Jess Period
I later figured out he might have meant "Jazz". Which of course would be followed by:
The Rak Period
List two more facts that you know about Mozart (incl. other compositions)
"he loved music"
"he is a good rhythms and composer"
"his father took him all over Europe to play for loyalty"
- Damn! You're just not a committed member of that Mozart family until you've been dragged all over Europe.
Name three of the four parts of the sonata allegro form*
Besides the usual cop-out guesses including "sonata" and "allegro", I quite enjoyed these:
- "expection"
- "elevality"
- "decapitulation"
- "decomposition"
I figure the decomposition section comes in when the students try to perform these pieces.
* the four parts, by the way, are: exposition, development, recapitulation, and coda.
There were also the funny-to-musicians-but-maybe-not-so-funny-to-anyone-else answers including Bach's "weiward" compositional period and that Wagner wrote his tetrology of operas in a month (another put "20 hours").
No, I'm actually not going to talk about the great movie I saw last night. The title just happened to also fit with a separate topic I thought I'd explore.
I'm devoting today's entry to the "what the hell were they thinking?" answers I've gotten on exam questions. As I finished up the last of my marking today, I was laughing right out loud at many of the answers I read. I understand that a lot of my students don't know English very well, and that can be a great excuse. Except I've also gotten some interesting responses from people who have lived here since birth (including a student who spelled Japanese "japneees", on last year's exam. If nothing else, can people not learn young that there will never be triple-same-letter combinations in the English language?). Today I'll share my amusement.
On the music history exam, one of the questions was:
How did Holst rectify the problem that there was not a lot of music for his girls' school band to play?
One response:
"He had a letter written to the leader of music (president) and had more music written"
... man, I wish I could be the president of music.
Another response:
"He worked in an all girls school"
... y'know, she's probably right. Why the hell is he whining about there not being enough music? All problems just seem to disappear when you're surrounded by a bunch of schoolgirls!
A couple of questions asked for what musical style period came ... (during some specified time). I learned about some new eras, including:
The Piano Period
The Unclassical Period
The Normal Period
The Folk Period
The Baratosky Period -- ???
The Jess Period
I later figured out he might have meant "Jazz". Which of course would be followed by:
The Rak Period
List two more facts that you know about Mozart (incl. other compositions)
"he loved music"
"he is a good rhythms and composer"
"his father took him all over Europe to play for loyalty"
- Damn! You're just not a committed member of that Mozart family until you've been dragged all over Europe.
Name three of the four parts of the sonata allegro form*
Besides the usual cop-out guesses including "sonata" and "allegro", I quite enjoyed these:
- "expection"
- "elevality"
- "decapitulation"
- "decomposition"
I figure the decomposition section comes in when the students try to perform these pieces.
* the four parts, by the way, are: exposition, development, recapitulation, and coda.
There were also the funny-to-musicians-but-maybe-not-so-funny-to-anyone-else answers including Bach's "weiward" compositional period and that Wagner wrote his tetrology of operas in a month (another put "20 hours").
