First of all thank you for those involved setting papers - it is hard work and all CAT teachers appreciate it. But...
After looking at exemplar and provincial common papers it is clear that it seems language knowledge and comprehension is tested in CAT rather than computer knowledge. For some of my students it is fairly easy to answer the questions - that is if they have proper knowledge of English. But for most it is a nightmare.
Most of my students have another language other than English as a home language. They might have the necessary skills on the computer, they might even know the theoretical content. But because of their poor language skills and the fact that questions are so wordy they then do poorly. Then again when we talk about Afrikaans the terminology is not standardised throughout the different text books. It seems that some CAT text book authors won't even bother find out whether there are adequate Afrikaans terms available and they merely use the English terms as they are - get yourself a dictionary! The Kuberwoordeboek-Cyber dictionary (Protea, 2006) is sufficient.
It is one thing to say a straight question is 'old' and that everything should be scenario driven. Yet we should think of how our learners are functioning - think of the way in which they read and write on the Internet and on phones. Short to the point. Yes, make questions problem driven, but do not confuse the learners.
For example - this is taken from the PowerPoint presentation on Operational Knowledge posted on Thutong:
"I was told I must not send very large attachments to other users. Does it matter if they use a dial-up connection or ADSL in terms of this advice?"
This kind of question requires high order skills - there should at least be about 40% of the questions that ask exactly what is required. Personally for the above question I would take "Yes" correct as an answer. One would also probably get an answer or two that will related to what attachments are...
I'm just asking what are we testing and how? And is this approach appropriate for ALL our learners?
I would like to hear how other teachers feel about this. If not here, where is the forum for CAT teachers to contribute to how paper's are set?