Witchcraft and Drama: the 2004 examination

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The course as delivered was well-received (on the evidence of student questionnaires, which were distributed at the end of term in class, with a responsible seminar member asked to collect up the responses and deliver them to the Dept. Administrator).

The most controversial aspect was the course convenor’s refusal to produce a course brochure. The rational here remains the same, and stands firm: the course has an elaborate website, ever-growing, and in certain of its pages tailored to the particular seminar group(s). A course brochure is fixed; while a webpage can be dialogic in nature, updating week by week. It was thought that if a print-out from the web pages was provided (as some students pointed out, always an option anyway to the individual), there would be less reason to access the web pages for the course. As the web pages include texts, images, links, etc, any disincentive would nullify the effort made to communicate the aims (etc) of the course in this way.

Conversations with senior Department figures have reassured Dr Booth that, despite student criticism of the absence of a physical course brochure, the requirement of a regular interface with web pages constituted a ‘learning skill’, and that in the future, other courses might anyway follow the lead, and cease production of course booklets on grounds of cost.

31 candidates took the exam, with a mean score just under 59%. 2 first class marks, 11 upper seconds (two of them 69’s), 15 lower second grades and 2 thirds made up the marks, with marks ranging between 76 and 44.

EN3012 remains a traditional 2 hour examination, and those who opt to do it, have quite often decided that, besides the inherent interest of the subject, preparation for a late examination fits the timetable of work they can undertake better then having to submit another assessed essay. Examinations do rely to some extent on technique. The course convenor distributed a dummy examination paper in the course of the term, and urged all candidates to test themselves with it. It would have been interesting to know just how many actually did so, for not a single student ever so much as mentioned the paper, much less asked to have it marked (during the summer term).

From the point of view of both examiners, there was one salient problem which dragged down some of the scripts. Candidates had been warned against over-thrifty revision, and most had taken the message. But corners were cut when it came to revising the two Shakespeare texts featured on the course, Macbeth and The Tempest. Reasonable grasp of the witchcraft or other magical scenes was shown, but this was often coupled (in general contextualising remarks) with highly avoidable errors about the rest of the action (such as Alonso being described as Prospero’s brother – that type of outright error). It was very clear that there had been a tendency to rely on recalling the Shakespearean texts from First Year work, and clear that memory could not always be relied on.