procrastination saved my life

[baratron]

I have been wittering inanely in other people's lj comments as a way of procrastinating marking an exam paper that is making me rapidly lose the will to live.

e.g. Question: "Every particle of water is like every other particle of water." Use Dalton's ideas and your knowledge of water to explain why.
Student's answer: Because all water atoms are the same but they have to be only water and nothing else. So carbon and water atoms are not the same.

I could give more examples, but they're all equally depressing. I'm sitting here with my head in my hands wondering if anything I've said in the past year stuck.

And chemistry is supposed to be her best subject of the sciences.

Comments

[okoshun.livejournal.com]

Was the entire exam equally disappointing? I know there were times when I'd give totally inane answers hoping for partial points when I couldn't remember the answer to something.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Question:
The word equation for the reaction of hydrogen with chlorine is:
hydrogen + chlorine --> hydrogen chloride
Write a balanced symbol equation for this reaction.

Student's answer:
h₂o + cl_H --> h₂cl

It should be:
H₂ + Cl₂ --> 2 HCl

Question:
Some concentrated sulphuric acid was poured onto some sugar, C₆H₁₂O₆. The equation which represents the reaction is:
C₆H₁₂O₆ (s) --> 6 C(s) + 6 H₂O (g)
Describe as fully as you can what you would see happening.

Student's answer:
I think you would see the sugar slowly disapearing because it is being dissolved by the sulphuric acid.

As I wrote on the script, where is (aq) in the equation? If sugar was dissolving, there'd be a solution symbol.

I've explained before how you use the state symbols and the colours of the chemicals to answer these questions. You have to think about sugar being a white solid, and carbon soot being a black solid, and a colourless gas being given off. That's 3 points for the 3 marks.

Question:
The labels show the names of the ions present in the mineral water. Describe how these ions got into the water.

Student's answer:
Wen the water came Down from The sky and went through the hills and out the spring.

OK, the idea is sort of there - but she needs to talk about the water passing through rocks or soil, and some of the rock dissolving in the water. The bit about it falling from the sky is completely irrelevant.

Now, the girl is dyslexic - but she is supposedly bright. Yet this whole exam paper reads to me like someone who couldn't be bothered. She has 25% extra time for reading and is allowed to use a computer to type her answers, but she chose not to use the computer and just write on the exam paper. As a result I have answers like "hydrogen is less reactive than hydrogen" to deal with. As well as not reading the questions properly (despite having extra time to do so), she doesn't read back any of her answers to make sure that they make sense.

This was an exam paper that she did at home. Including the extra time she had almost 2 hours to do it in, and I'm not terribly bothered at this stage about her doing it in exactly the right amount of time. I estimate that she probably spent less than an hour and a half on it, and that in a couple of goes from the changes in writing and pen.

22.5% on a Higher Tier paper isn't even a pass. She claims she wants to be a doctor. That means getting an A or an A* grade (75% for the A, 85% for the A*).

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Ouch.
I mean, guessing that conc H2SO4 would dissolve sugar isn't itself stupid (I would say that cos it's what I'd guess), but the answer is there in the question!

I agree it sounds like she did it on the bus in about 30 minutes!

[okoshun.livejournal.com]

If she wants to be a doctor, she's obviously not that serious about it.

[eponymousarchon.livejournal.com]

Feel free to write inanely in my LJ comments whenever. ;)

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Student's answer:
h2o + clH --> h2cl

Oh dear. She really hasn't got the idea at all, has she?

[barakta]

Ouch....

I understood that stuff in yr 9, I remember getting an A on something for writing the state equations for acid rain. I think I might even have attempted to balance them as well...

Not sure what you can do, cos she evidently doesn't understand how to use the components of the equations never mind write them properly. Yes dyslexia makes reading hard, but if you make an effort which she doesn't look like she's doing then she should't be making mistakes. A dyslexic making an effort would probably get some answers right, and maybe have rushed the rest for lack of time. ..

You have my deepest sympathies.