We scowled as our EST teacher strode into our classroom, her nose ever so high up in the air. Knowing her temper, we returned to our seats immediately and sat there without a sound. Then she began handling out our EST papers. We skeptically scanned for mistakes and true enough two surfaced. Questions 7 and 20. The latter was corrected by teacher but the former was left to rot. Almost everyone in class had done the same mistake on question 7, which had an article and questions based on the article:
7 From the text, the human ear:
A range of hearing is the same for everyone
B is sensitive to the frequency between SQO and 8000 vibrations per sec
C is sensitive to frequency changes for sounds of low frequency or low intensity
and parts of the article:
A change of vibration frequency (pitch) corresponding to about 0.03 percent of the original frequency can be detected by the most sensitive human ears in the range between 500 and 8000 vibrations per sec. The ear is less sensitive to frequency changes for sounds of low frequency or low intensity.
Having failed to reach an agreement, we decided to ponder option B instead. First of all, wtf is SQO?? Google told me it doesn’t exist. But when A and C is ruled out as the answer, we thought the remaining B could be the answer. So, we assumed SQO somehow means 500. We asked her what SQO meant. I don’t know, she barked back, without hesitating. What?? You don’t know?! You as an EST teacher who even set these questions and you don’t know what you set?? Amazing. The class wasn’t satisfied. Everyone turned into lawyers, questioning the guilty.
In the end, our teacher got back to her grounds by saying You can’t choose an answer that isn’t correct.
* Edit: (Added January 08, 2006) Sorry, incompleted post here, wasn’t even supposed to appear here (as I did mark it as a ‘Private’ post..) anyway it was written out of frustration for getting a B for my EST (and not an A even though I deserved it if it wasn’t for those silly marking mistakes) but that was last year and that teacher is long gone ‘cos she ain’t teaching us anymore! Heck, she isn’t even in the morning session now. So let’s just leave it here.