Nadezhda Shapiro. Control shot

Control shot
Nadezhda Shapiro

Publication date: January 11, 2002

About fifteen years ago, schoolchildren became increasingly fond of playing candy wrappers. The school principal strictly forbade this game - it is gambling or can become gambling. One seventh grader muttered angrily: “What does candy wrappers have to do with it? You can run a hundred meters for money.” I remembered this incident when I read the next batch of Russian language tests offered at entrance exams to higher educational institutions.

Many universities are switching to this form of conducting the Russian language exam. It is believed that it eliminates subjectivity when assessing knowledge. This is true if the tests meet at least two requirements: they really test what the applicant is supposed to know, and at the same time do not allow for discrepancies and variable answers. Such tests, consisting of a set of individual tasks, were offered by the Testing Center of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation . You can treat them differently, for example, consider them too easy, but they correspond to the school curriculum and existing textbooks and are mostly done correctly.

However, in most universities that conduct such an exam in the Russian language, they call tests texts in which you need to insert missing letters and place punctuation marks... This is exactly the exam that applicants for many specialties take at the Russian State University for the Humanities . The tasks that past applicants completed are not hidden from current applicants, and therefore we have the opportunity to study them. The results of the study are disappointing.

Trying to complete an examination task in the Russian language, proposed at the Russian State University for the Humanities, any literate person will feel more than once that he does not know for sure whether it is necessary to put a punctuation mark and, if necessary, which one. This is embarrassing to admit, because, as in Andersen’s fairy tale about the naked king , everyone may think that you are stupid or not suitable for your position. The voice of an innocent child here would not sound convincing enough. I will say loudly and firmly: if we assume that there is a single correct option for completing this task, and all deviations from it are errors, a good grade can only be obtained by a miracle. Literacy will not help you. To avoid accusations of incompetence and to be on the safe side, I handed over this task to the staff of Moscow State University , the Institute of Russian Language and the Institute of Linguistics. It was carried out by five candidates and one doctor of philological sciences.

The discrepancies in the placement of punctuation marks were very significant. If the task is assessed precisely as a test, that is, a single correct option is assumed, then six or seven punctuation errors are easily accumulated by completely competent “applicants” to the Russian State University for the Humanities.

If we summarize and group the complaints about the quality of examination materials, the list of “defects” will look like this:

Firstly, in the proposed texts there are constructions that, according to our experts, are archaic; Already in the twentieth century they did not speak or write like that.

Secondly, the individual characteristics of the style of the selected authors often go beyond the grammatical norm; It is not clear which punctuation is considered correct in an incorrectly constructed sentence.

Thirdly, the tests contain quite a lot of constructions based on private rules, which are not discussed in any school textbook of the Russian language.

Fourthly, in each test there are a sufficient number of situations that allow for different interpretations.

This means that an applicant who knows how to apply in practice all the punctuation rules studied at school is not insured against an unsatisfactory grade in the Russian language, even if he does not make a single spelling mistake.

It is almost impossible to avoid spelling errors: the texts are replete with difficult words, which applicants may never have had to write before - this is fifth. If it seems to the authors of the assignments that the classics did not write enough difficult words in their texts, then they boldly correct these classics. A famous Gogolian something from the first chapter of “Dead Souls” happily emerges in a fragment from the second; it doesn’t matter that it cannot be used in the proposed context, but it is present - don’t make a mistake in it. The description of Petrusha Verkhovensky from F.M. Dostoevsky’s “Demons” has been shredded almost beyond recognition, but words such as ( from) birth, (n ... ) high and (n ... ) low forehead are inserted - instead of his forehead is high and narrow we get a rather meaningless forehead of his completely .. but (n .. ) tall and (n .. ) narrow - it seems impossible to write this correctly. In another passage from the same novel, “from her very childhood” is replaced by the insidious © of malice (a particular insidiousness, if not to say jesuitism, is that the word is printed with the wrong letter: it needs childhood) , “immediately” - much less obvious ( n ... ) hesitating ; again added unnecessary in meaning, but apparently necessary for other purposes (of) kind .

The list of spelling corrections of the classics could be much longer, but the essence is already clear. Let me give myself one last example, when I remember it, for some reason the phrase “control shot in the head” always appears in my mind: “Roaring like a blacksmith’s bellows, Korotkov was striving towards (the giant) (s, h) giving something (or) (twenty) two or (twenty) (two) (with) (half) storey facing sideways onto the street"..(In M.A. Bulgakov in “The Diaboliad” - “an eleven-story building”).

After the applicant rewrites the text, he must also answer questions, demonstrating knowledge of different sections of the science of language. The questions are formulated very simply and clearly: indicate the root or other morpheme in a given word, determine what part of speech the word is, select a synonym or antonym for the word from the given list. There seems to be nothing wrong with this; a high school graduate who has studied the Russian language for many years should be able to parse words by composition and sentences by members.

The terrible thing begins when the applicant understands, for example, that the proposed list does not contain a synonym or antonym for a given word (many experts noted this with surprise), and the opportunity to “vote against everyone” is not provided for by the exam conditions. The mental efforts of the applicant, if he has a good command of the material, are directed towards searching for the answer intended by the compilers of the test, in order to guess the level, “not high and not low,” to use their favorite expression.

A person who is far from the problems of education will not see anything wrong with the fact that a prestigious university with high competition arranges a difficult exam. They don’t blame the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University for the fact that not every graduate can solve its problems. But the whole point is that the “problems” offered by the Russian State University for the Humanities do not in any way clarify the question that should be the most important thing when applying to a university: whether an applicant is capable of becoming a good student, and then a good specialist.

Anyone who is engaged or intends to engage in mental work must be able to understand what they read, coherently and competently express their thoughts - orally and in writing, and in case of difficulties, consult dictionaries and reference books. The examination texts of the Russian State University for the Humanities are almost impossible to understand: they are meaningless with alterations, often composed of separate pieces and, moreover, as if on purpose, they are also printed without breaking them into paragraphs. The applicant is placed in a situation where neither basic knowledge nor logic will help him, and his linguistic flair will only harm him: from among the various possible punctuation marks, he must choose not those that would clarify the meaning and intonation of the text, but those whose correctness can be proven on appeal. And the requirement to write any tricky words without errors in the absence of a dictionary is comparable only to the requirement to know the four-digit Bradis tables by heart. It turns out that the university places almost insurmountable obstacles on the path of intelligent and literate people.

Very often, when faced with actions that are wrong, senseless or harmful, we ask ourselves: “Why did they do that?” And in most cases, one should ask differently: “Why did this happen?” And the answer is most often simple: “We didn’t think about it, we wanted the best, we got carried away...”

Why was this article written? Firstly, to inform all interested parties: applicants and their parents - about what awaits them in the near unpleasant future; teachers - about what tricks await their graduates; the subject commission of the Russian State University for the Humanities - about how we, teachers, evaluate the work it has done; all those who read RJ and who are not indifferent to the fate of education - about who the judges are.

I would very much like the compilers of the analyzed tests to respond - to object, correct, explain. If this does not happen, there will still be hope that the considerations we have expressed will be taken into account when preparing new examination materials. True, another, completely undesirable development of events is also possible: the quality of the tests will not change, and even after the exams they themselves will remain inaccessible, closed for discussion (or rather, discussing them will be difficult, although while our students enter universities, we will always be aware about what and how they are asked). Well, that will also be the answer.

But in general, the matter is not at all about the Russian State University for the Humanities. And not even in tests. Complaints about the low level of school teaching and the ever-increasing gap between secondary and higher schools have long become common place. We, school teachers, are ready to accept some of the reproaches. But the other side of the issue is also obvious to us. The failure of our students is not always caused by their lack of preparation. It is often explained by the lack of qualifications or lack of integrity of the examiners - those who come up with the material for exams, or check what is written, or listen to oral answers. Those who are ready to consider a mistake, a slip of the tongue, a different system of notation than the one to which they are accustomed. Maybe it’s wrong when exams are taken by someone other than the one who will later teach and therefore has a better idea of ​​what he wants from potential students?

The gap between school and university will not close until competent, clear, fair criteria for selecting the most knowledgeable and capable are developed and until they are examined meaningfully.