JUNIOR COMMERCIAL EXAMINATION, 1906. A. Honour Lists. [Names of candidates over age (19) are printed in italics.] i. General Honour List. The following is the order of merit of candidates who have distinguished themselves in the whole examination. The Junior Commercial Scholarship is awarded to the first candidate on the list. Neuenkirchen, Hermann A. H.-(equal) Muirden College The following candidates have passed in the five Compulsory Subjects: 1 English Literature; 2 Commercial Arithmetic; 3 Commercial Geography; 4 Bookkeeping; 5 Business Correspondence; and in the Additional Subjects as indicated: 6 Shorthand (a at 120, b at 100, e at 80 words per minute); 7 Typewriting. An asterisk denotes credit. Abbott, Reginald Robert Barreau, Dudley Melbourne 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6c, 7 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6c, 7 Donaldson, Grace Ina Amanda 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6c, 7 Jolley, Frederick James Albert Lewis, Leslie Thomas 1*, McGilvray, Albert Mackay, John Victor Mann, Gertrude Irene Paltridge, Thomas Castle December 21, 1906. 1, 2, 3, 4*, 5, 6c, 7 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6c, 7 2*, 3, 4, 5, 6a, 7* 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6c, 7* Muirden College Adelaide Shorthand and Business Howard's Commercial College Muirden College Adelaide Shorthand and Business Howard's Commercial College 1*, 2, 3*, 4, 5*, 6c, 7 Muirden College Adolph Heinrich 1*, 2*, 3*, 4, 5* 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6c, 7 1*, 2*, 3, 4*, 5, 6b, 7 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Muirden College Howard's Commercial College NOTES BY EXAMINERS. Primary Examination. Primary English. Analysis. The chief weakness lay in apportioning the connectives to their proper clauses. It was quite common to have "and that if" attached to a single clause. Parsing. The worst errors were the parsing of "ended" as a finite verb and of "on" as a preposition, while a great number of candidates made "destruction the objective case after the verb "would be". The antecedent of a relative pronoun should always be mentioned, and it would be well if candidates were required to give the principal parts when parsing an irregular verb. Question 3.-Marks were lost by not complying with the conditions of the question and embodying the required word in a sentence. Quite 50 per cent. of the candidates gave "flown" as the complete participle of "flow"; and "littler" was found as often as "less". 66 Question 4.-Not many noticed that the words "affect" and "confer" can be used in more than one sense. 'Credulous" was almost invariably taken for "credible", and "implicit" for "explicit". Some candidates thought to hedge by giving two meanings to "stationary", the right and the wrong one; they were marked for the wrong one. Question 5.-In most cases the faulty sentences were re-written correctly, but the reasons for the corrections were frequently wrong. Many answers were not explicit enough. It was not enough to say that "whom" should be "who" because it is the subject of a verb; there are two verbs in the sentence, and many candidates picked the wrong one. Spelling. This is the weakest part of the English examination. The special words were not uncommon, but there were far too many blunders in them. The worst mistakes, however, were in common words used in the essay and in answers to the grammatical questions. Even words which occurred in the printed paper were very often misspelt, notably "to weak" and "prophesy". There should be no ambiguity in the writing of words. The Essay. It was clear that few candidates gave proper attention to the beginning and to the ending of their essay. They started off without having formed any definite scheme, and handed in their work without having carefully read it over to correct errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Original thoughts were not expected; but when the same description of war, evidently learnt by rote and produced more or less inaccurately, was presented, the examiner could award little credit to the candidates concerned. In pleasing contrast were those essays in which there was a systematic arrangement of headings and paragraphs. The abbreviation for "and" (&) occurred far too frequently in many essays. This should be avoided in literary English, but it was employed not only between words but also between sentences. In one essay of more than two pages the word "and" did not occur once, this miserable makeshift always taking its place. Primary History. One of the leading defects in the papers this year is a want of proportion. The answers to the question on the work done by the English seamen of the sixteenth century were good; but the discoveries of the Elizabethan era are not adequately explained by giving an account of the voyages of Drake. Very few of the candidates appeared to know why a north-west or north-east passage was so much sought for. Many, indeed, did not know what those passages were. Blunders were frequently made because the maps had not been studied. The voyages of Magellan and Chancellor were said to be on the same route; and again, “Sir Francis Drake discovered a north-west passage between America and Siberia, he sailed through this passage and around the world". Very few candidates understood the meaning of villeinage, and the following answer is typical of the confusion in the minds of a number of candidates: "Villeinage first started in the reign of William I in the Feudalism. They were treated as slaves up to the year 1832 when the Reform Bill was passed and abolition of slavery was stopped." Nearly all the candidates knew that the character of Chatham was worthy of admiration, but they gave the most conflicting accounts of his virtues. Some said he accepted and gave bribes! Some justified this course of action by explaining that he did so for the good of England. One candidate said he was a great Methodist preacher; and a very large number thought his chief title to fame lay in the fact "that he was kind to his wife and little children". Vague answers such as the following were plentiful: "Wm. Pitt was a kind-hearted gentleman. If there was anything on at any time he was nearly always picked first to be in it." The boy who wrote: "It was William Pitt that bucked up the middle classes", had good history but expressed it in bad English, and he lost marks. Slang must be avoided. Many candidates found it impossible to write a short note on the Declaration of Right. Very few gave an accurate account, and some very absurd guesses were made. For instance: "William the Conqueror signed the Magna Carter and the Declaration of Right willingly. He also signed the Declaration of Indulgence." The answers to the other questions do not call for special comment. The general remark may be made, however, that a large number of candidates lacked historical perspective. The Witenagemote was not well attended because the poorer people were unable to pay their railway fares." Nelson, Howe, Rodney, and Blake were all mentioned as having lived in the sixteenth century. History is not a record of dates; but a knowledge of the more important is indispensable. Candidates frequently failed to express themselves clearly, and it would appear that their written work requires more careful supervision. They should be taught to avoid the Alfred Jingle style of writing notes, as, for example, under villeinage: "men became brutish – not read-write- no paper-if they could very hard-cruel masters-these men treated worse than animals". Primary Algebra. A large proportion of the candidates in this subject were very weak in simplification; for example, in the first question the expression a3 - b (c — 2a) (3a +5c) was by many treated as (a3 —b) (c — 2a) (3a + 5c), another frequent variation being (a3 - bc +2ab) (3a + 5c); and in the second question 2a 5 b - c appeared in many cases as (2a — 5) (b − c), and even as 2a 5bc; while the minus sign in front of the bracket caused a considerable amount of trouble. In addition to such mistakes as these there was in these two questions a general lack of clearness and fulness of statement. Again, in the first part of Question 5 a great many candidates went astray in clearing the equation of fractions, especially in the case of the second term of the left-hand side of the equation, preceded as it is by the negative sign. |