Junior high standardized English exam features 'diverse' content

Taipei, May 19 (CNA) This year's English reading test in the Comprehensive Assessment Program (CAP) for Taiwanese junior high school students featured topics ranging from group chat etiquette and British labor history to environmental collapse.

The CAP entered its second day on Sunday with the natural science, English reading, and English listening sections completed by 12:30 p.m., the Ministry of Education (MOE) said in a news release the same day.

Tsai Yu-ling (蔡鈺伶), a teacher at New Taipei Municipal Yonghe Junior High School, told CNA that the exam topics were "very diverse" and assessed students' ability to analyze, reason and make inferences.

Referring to the 43-question multiple-choice English reading exam, Tsai said Questions 35 to 37 featured a "political satire cartoon" about British strike action in the 1970s and were among the more difficult.

The cartoon and accompanying text suggested that "electricity workers in the U.K. asked to be paid more" in 1972 and "decided to stop working until their wish was answered."

"This picture shows what many people thought of the electricity workers during this 'dark' time," the text said, above the image of a man wearing a coal miner's hat.

Students had to interpret both visuals and text to understand the narrator's perspective and answer correctly, Tsai said.

Tsai said Questions 22 and 23 depicted a group chat scenario where one person interrupted another's wedding announcement to talk about their own good news, and was criticized for "stealing someone's thunder."

She said the accompanying graphic -- which showed fictional characters Jenny, Linda and Mark exchanging messages in a WhatsApp-style chat window titled "Friends Forever Group" -- reflected students' real-life social media experiences and encouraged empathy in communication.

Questions 29 to 31 involved a comic strip about Easter Island, Tsai said, showing islanders cutting down forests to help move around statues that the cartoon said "they loved making."

"When the last trees fell to the ground, people on the island fell, too," said one caption in the eight-segment strip, which Tsai said emphasized the importance of sustainable development.

According to the MOE, the CAP standardized examination is administered to nearly all ninth-grade students (typically aged around 15 years old) and comprises assessments in Chinese, English, mathematics, social studies and natural sciences, as well as a writing test.

The scores for this year's exam will be mailed out on June 6, and also can be viewed online from the same day, the MOE said.