DSE report: worsened Chinese reading & English speaking performance

The Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority published the latest marking reports on the performance of this year's public exam candidates.

Performances in the Chinese Language Reading paper have worsened compared with last year, while candidates in the English Speaking paper committed a slew of grammatical errors.

In this year's Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education or DSE Exam, the proportions of candidates achieving Level 3 or above in both Chinese Language and English Language dropped -- compared with last year.

Chinese Language Paper 1 (Reading) saw a weaker overall performance with their basic language and classical Chinese comprehension said to be "mediocre."

One question cited a passage from Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian in the Biographies of Lian Po and Lin Xiangru, many students failed to grasp the context of the sentence, lacking awareness that some classical Chinese characters often have multiple meanings.

Another question looked into a passage from the Analects' "On Benevolence, Filial Piety and the Superior Man"-- asking which passage pertained to "a person of benevolence" who "values virtue over life." Many candidates skipped this question -- and the answer of those attempted reflected a superficial understanding of the texts.

In Chinese Paper 2 -- Practical Writing -- candidates misused vocabulary and tone.

For English speaking paper, the examinations authority said weaker candidates committed numerous grammatical errors.

They include misusing countable nouns such as "many money" and "spend times with parents". Some candidates made subject-verb agreement mistakes,

such as "some restaurant is."

The examinations authority suggests candidates practise conversing in English in their daily lives to improve conversational skills.