English Chess Forum

Shall I stop people buying CoM product and taking the tests or would you like to?

I wish I had been paid £10K !!

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In these enlightened times in which nobody is a failure I seek your advice as to what wording I can use to inform persons of the result of their test.

Currently I have four categories of result for a test of 20 questions :

18 - 20 correct : Passed with Distinction

16 - 18 correct : Passed with Merit

14- 16 correct : Ordinary Pass or simply Pass

< 14 correct : Fail

My question is : will children be used to seeing the word 'fail' or have schools stopped using the f word?

I could use "Yet to succeed" or "unlucky this time"?

I do not wish to be responsible for crying children or angry parents so your advice is appreciated!

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Chess Images: http://johnupham.smugmug.com/Chess
IT Manager for the British Chess Magazine: http://www.britishchessmagazine.co.uk
Twitter: @jeupham
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John,
Without wishing to be 'politically correct', I am not sure that 'Fail' is really appropriate, after all we are saying that the CoM is part of the learning process and not passing only highlights areas that we need to improve further. There are horrible phrases like 'deferred success', but I think you can say something more sensible like

Unfortunately you didn't get the 14 correct answers required for a Pass, better luck next time.

Matthew,

Thanks for that. Your wording is essentially what I had decided to use with a smiley face at the end!

_________________
Chess Images: http://johnupham.smugmug.com/Chess
IT Manager for the British Chess Magazine: http://www.britishchessmagazine.co.uk
Twitter: @jeupham
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/john.upham