594
It is
considerable ignorance of the meaning of a plain passage when heard and not seen, probable that unseen dictation should be more practised. Many of the worst compositions were full of colloquial characters. The best papers shewed considerable literary ability. Perhaps the most obvious fault in the better work was the use of Pekingese colloquial charac- ters, e. g., and for the true literary ones. It should be borne in mind that the feuil- letons in the Chinese newspapers are not the best models for composition.
85. In the Upper School the boys were tested by translation from and into English.
86. In Class III a few very simple sentences were given for translation into English. and were well done; they shewed that the boys had learned that a literal translation is not necessarily the same as a word for word translation. The piece set for translation into Chinese was the simplest form of petition. Not a single boy cast his translation into the recognized form, and in consequence the results read very grotesquely, and regarded as petitions must be considered failures. The writers moreover refer to themselves sometimes in the first and sometimes in the third person, which is confusing. In over 60% of the papers the title of the Registrar General is either omitted or given incorrectly. "The Sage is one form; "The General" another.
77
87. The translation into English in Class II A was very fair, and moderate in II B. The same piece was set to Class I, where the work of A was not good, though it is.probable that the boys selected hardly represented the Division. Several did not understand the Chinese, though it contained no difficulties. IB did much better, about 60 per cent. getting the meaning approximately right. The date floored nearly every one, and the expression also proved a stumbling block.
Some of it was very
88. The translation into Chinese of Class II was very uneven. good, though even here the stereotyped form of a petition was not known. The second piece set is a literal translation of a well known passage in Mencius. It was set in order to find out if possible how far the boys are familiar with their own Classics. The experiment was a failure, as no boy used the words of the text for his translation, although some of them have certainly such a knowledge of Chinese as would make their ignorance of the context inconceivable. About 40% of the papers in Classes I and II were very good. Where they failed, the difficulty usually lay in understanding the English; the quotation from Tennyson proved beyond many boys. One in IB, the best, sent in some very neat verses: but he took "swimming vapour to mean a rivulet. Another took loiters as a noun, and translated it by the equivalent of sawyers.
77
57
89. It may be said with some confidence that the work done in the Vernacular School is having its effect in the Upper School.
APPENDICES.
90. The Examination Papers and the Classes and Divisions with the names of the Masters are appended.
EDWARD A. IRVING,
Inspector of Schools,
WILFRID WM. PEARSE.
A. H. GOTT.