"Why was it so difficult? I thought that it was supposed to be easier!"
"I had no idea what the comprehension passage was talking about!"
"The MCQ options were all very close!"
"The words that they give for the close passage, I haven't seen them before!"
Such were the reactions of the students after they took the "the killer" exam. Even for those students who normally score A1 for their school exams shared the same pessimism! I was still in doubt so I handed the question paper to my son who was a Higher Chinese student that scored A1 for Chinese. He too agreed the paper was hard with some words from the close passage that were beyond his understanding. He felt that the standard of comprehension resembles that of a typical Higher Chinese paper rather than that of Chinese.
So in all, was the change in syllabus for 2014 going to be easy or difficult? Next year, with the revamp of Sec 4 textbooks in addition to the 6 new textbooks (A and B) from Sec 1 to 3, students will need to grasp more words on their fingertips. Components that were formerly scrapped like 造句，填写汉字，填写词语 are back again, occupying 40% to 50% of paper 2. How are the students who are not inclined to memorizing going to cope? With the other "non-textbook" components weak, how are they going to score? In the past few years, I have seen some of the rather strong students failing to get an A1 despite working very hard. How are students going to do that now with the odds against them?
