Round 1
- When? Any time, to suit you, between the start of Weds Feb 2nd and the end of Friday Feb 4th, or on Monday 7th. (But the earlier the better for our marking schedule, so we hope you’ll only use the 7th if competitors are involved in AS/A Level exams which finish on 3rd.)
- You need to find a slot of two hours for Foundation level and two and a half hours for Advanced. (The length of the Foundation level is actually up to you, and 120 minutes is just a guideline; but we need to standardise the time for the Advanced level test to ensure fairness across schools.)
- Where? You need to find a room where you can invigilate the candidates, under normal exam conditions.
- But at Foundation level pupils can work in teams, as last year.
- How? The test is a very straightforward pen-and-paper exercise, needing no IT.
- We email you the test papers (as .pdf documents), and you print out however many copies you need.
- The pdf files for the papers at both levels will go out, by email, on February 1st, and schools will make as many copies as they need.
- The test papers will be very similar in format to the test papers for 2010.
- Final details (as described in my email to the UKLOS list)
- The test
- There are two items for each pupil: a question paper, containing the data and the questions, and an answer sheet.
- Pupils can write on the question paper but may well need some extra paper for rough working as well.
- Time:
- Advanced level: 150 minutes
- Foundation level: normally 120 minutes, but feel free to vary this to suit your conditions. If you do vary it, please tell us when reporting results.
- Normal exam conditions should apply, including a total ban on all electronics (mobile phones, etc.) to prevent access to Google, etc.
- But team-work is acceptable at Foundation level. (If your pupils do work in teams, please tell us when you report the results.)
- Please collect in all papers, including the question paper and rough working, after the test. As other schools are taking the same tests on different days (and indeed other countries are using roughly the same tests throughout February), we don’t want to encourage friendly data-swapping.
- Please make sure that all pupils write their names on their answer sheets.
- After the test
- Foundation level
- For Foundation entries, I’ll circulate the marking scheme (and the correct answers) on the evening of Monday 7th (the last day for taking the test), and you will do the marking. We should be grateful for a record of your results for individual pupils (with NC year and sex) to add to our national database, but of course we won’t publish results for individual schools – just a national statistical profile. Please send your results to me (A@B, where A = dick and B = ling.ucl.ac.uk).
- Advanced level
- For Advanced entries, we ask you to photocopy or scan the answer sheets (hopefully not a big job at a single sheet per pupil). Scripts can go missing (and last year one bunch did, though we eventually traced them), so this is a valuable insurance policy which allows you and us to use ordinary first-class mail. Then:
- address your answer sheets to: Neil Sheldon, Manchester Grammar School, Old Hall Lane, Manchester M13 0XT ,
- on the back of the envelope write the number of scripts and the name of your school ,
- post it first class.
- On the same day as you post the sheets, use the attached template ro compile a list of the candidates’ names , NC year and sex, and send it to me (email as above).
- Unlike last year, Advanced entries will be marked by a team of volunteers from academic linguistics, under close supervision from us. (You’ll be pleased to hear that we’ve easily recruited 20 volunteers.)
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