‘Keep SMS lingo away from answer sheets’

Exam fever is running high with the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) examinations beginning on Tuesday. While students are busy preparing for their papers, lecturers and exam moderators are busy sharing last minute advice with their students. While "Don't Panic" seems to be the most common advice, another common feature students are being advised against is the use of SMS lingo during examinations.

"We still get some answer sheets with these errors. Whenever we come across such mistakes in papers during moderation, we keep briefing our own college students on the same," said Kamakshi Mohan, professor at SIES College and an Economics paper moderator. While professors agreed that use of SMS lingo in answer sheets has come down in the past few years, some students still opt for the easy way out.

"Once the answer sheet is checked by an examiner, it goes to the moderator for a second round of correction and these are the exact silly mistakes that moderators are looking for. Answer sheets are scrutinised very carefully so it is important that students avoid spelling mistakes and SMS lingo," said Jyoti Thakur, head of the science department at Jai Hind College.

Examiners also collectively agreed that these errors are mostly found in papers like History, Economics and especially English. "English is an exceptionally lengthy paper and invariably, students end up using short cuts in answers. I have found a lot of mistakes especially towards the end of the answer sheet," said a moderator for the subject.

The moderator added that often students from the commerce stream make these mistakes. "Students from the Arts stream are very careful about the language they use and Science students cannot afford to take short-cuts," she added.

Allan Danis, science student from St Andrews' College, Bandra, said, "Most of the words that I tend to write in abbreviated forms are the smaller ones, which are used very often in the paper. While writing bigger words, I am careful and have never used SMS language. Our teachers have warned us before the exams. For English, we have to be extra cautious."