Sessional_Paper_1899 — Page 131

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We now append our remarks on each subject :---

Reading and Conversation.-Good as far as could be judged in a ten minutes' examination of each boy, the reading was careful and accurate and the questions in conversation seemed to be under- stood, and were, in the majority of cases, answered fairly intelligently.

Dictation. In all the forms except IB. was very well done, the lowest percentage of passes being 83. The failure in IB, was unaccountable. The passage from DICKENS read to them was not under- stood-perhaps because the sentences were rather long to be grasped with ease; but this would not explain the most egregious misspellings of simple words.

Arithmetic.-The work was neatly done, that from the head class being good, the standard of the non-Chinese boys being rather bigher than that of the corresponding Chinese classes. More atten- tion should be paid to accuracy in working, and to confining the work to the actual question set; in many cases, totally irrelevant answers were given. Decimals are not sufficiently understood or used. A constant source of error was a blind reliance on remembered rules, and the attempt to fit the ques- tion set into some rule of formula. Rules and formulæ, if not thoroughly understood, are worse than useless: each question should be looked at from its own point of view, and, generally speaking, every step in its working fully explained; if a rule is used, it should be as indicating a method of reasoning, rather than as a reason in itself.

Algebra.The head non-Chinese classes did very well: the Chinese classes do not seem to grasp the idea of Algebra, or to have had sufficient practice in the solution of examples. Simple equations. were poorly done, while factors (a most important branch of elementary Algebra) were hardly attempted. In the lower classes, the laws of signs and the clements of the subject were not under- stood, whilst Multiplication, Division and Subtraction were used indiscriminately.

Euclid was very well done, though the writing out of the propositions seemed to be more a matter of memory than of reason. There was little facility shewn in dealing with riders, and few boys succeeded in solving them. In the lower classes, abbreviations should not be used till at least half of first book has been learnt.

Translation--English to Chinese.-The work in Class I was good. A descriptive piece from Dickens was translated with marked intelligence by the A section of the class, and some translations were written in good literary style. In section B only one boy failed to pass, and there were no

failures in section 4.

The other classes were asked to translate selections from their several reading-books. Results in IIB shewed careful teaching: results in IIA were, however, disappointing. Some answers were spoilt by carelessness, aud in others it was apparent that the meaning of the English was not understood.

In Class III there was a fair percentage of passes, and a few boys obtained high marks. If the English sentences had been broken up into parts, and the boys had reflected a little on the usages of particular words, many defects in translation might have been avoided.

Translation-Chinese to English.The work in 1a and IA was commendable. Nearly all the papers from both sections of Class II were marked by independence of effort on the part of the boys. In the A section of the class, every boy translated with fair correctness.

In Is there was too little original work, and in Class III many boys, in their unsuccessful attempts to reproduce translations learned in the class-room, wrote nonsense. Having regard to the educational value and practical uses of Chinese to English Translation, the subject should be carefully taught in all classes.

Grammar. This subject was very fairly well done in all classes. The analysis, however, was not up to a very high standard, the chief difficulty lay in the proper breaking up of the sentences. In the lower classes the parsing left something to be desired. When definitions were asked for, many boys attempted to keep to the words of the book by pure effort of memory, with results that shewed that the book had never been really understood.

Geography was very fair. The map-drawing in those classes that had England for their subject was good--in some cases excellent; the maps of the other European countries were not so good. The spelling of names was inaccurate, boys could not write sounds that were obviously femiliar to their ears. At times the inaccuracy was due to Chinese pronunciation (e.g. Alaps for Alps), but more often it was a mere matter of spelling. It is in the Geography and History that the faults of inaccuracy and want of concentration are most clearly marked; boys constantly failed to answer the question set, either because they did not understand it, or because they had read it carelessly, and much irrelevant knowledge was unnecessarily introduced.

The work of the large Classes IIIAB was uneven but not good: a fact perhaps due to the unwieldy size of the form. The Physical Geography paper for the upper classes was not difficult, but few seemed to understand the subject well. Here and in the History, boys were constantly quoting sentences at haphazard from the book, without any idea of their meaning. The work of the non- Chinese classes was good. Two or three papers at the top of each class deserve special mention; they were excellent.