What are the essays in the college entrance examination that got zero points and made people cry?

With the end of the 2019 college entrance examination, the paper marking work, which lasts about two weeks, is proceeding in full swing. Taking Beijing as an example, nearly 60,000 candidates in the city took the exam in 1,829 examination rooms in 1,996 test sites. This year, a total of 205,000 college entrance examination papers needed to be marked. 1,123 teachers selected from across the city are busy marking the papers.

What are the essays in the college entrance examination that got zero points and made people cry?

According to relevant officials from Beijing Municipal Education Examinations Authority, this year's college entrance examination marking further increased the selection ratio of teaching and research staff and middle school teachers from each district. The proportion of district-level teachers has increased year by year, and the total number has exceeded half, exceeding the number of university teachers for two consecutive years. Priority will be given to the selection of key marking teachers in each district and teachers who have been rated as excellent marking staff in previous years.

It is reported that before the formal marking, the subject working group will organize the group leaders and above of each question to study and research the "Answers and Scoring Standards" together and reach a consensus through trial marking. Afterwards, the subject working group will conduct centralized pre-job training for all marking teachers. Only after passing the practical examination can they officially take up their posts to prevent the phenomenon of being too lenient, too strict, or inconsistent in strictness or leniency in the marking process.

The marking of college entrance examination papers is kept absolutely confidential, just like the setting of questions before the exam. Many people want to know how and in what environment the marking is carried out. Then, we will follow reporter Shen Jingwen to the college entrance examination marking sites of Peking University and Tsinghua University to find out.
Marking

How to read it?

This is the Tsinghua University Computer Open Laboratory, the site for the 2019 Beijing College Entrance Examination Mathematics Paper Marking. The marking center is under closed management and is guarded by security guards, security inspectors and armed police, with public security patrols and security duty around the clock. Except for water cups and ID cards, no other items including mobile phones, watches, paper and pens are allowed to be brought into the venue. Apart from the alarm sounds of security gates, handheld scanners and other equipment, the only sounds that could be heard were the quiet conversations of staff outside the cordon and the sound of the examiners clicking their mice inside the cordon.

Zang Tiejun, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Education Examination Authority, said that all staff involved in marking have signed a security and confidentiality agreement. "It is forbidden to bring mobile phones, cameras, video cameras, scanners and other equipment into the marking site; it is forbidden to record the candidates' answers and spread the candidates' answers; it is forbidden to check the marking data and candidates' scores privately; during working hours, no visitors, no phone calls, and no other activities unrelated to marking work."

How do you mark papers? Liu Zhen, director of the Admissions Office of Tsinghua University, introduced that at the Beijing College Entrance Examination Mathematics Marking Center, more than 280 marking teachers arrived on the 9th, of which about 170 were from Tsinghua University. The expert group studied the scoring reference on the same day, formulated the scoring rules on the 10th, and organized sample papers for trial scoring on the 11th. The formal review did not begin until all examiners passed the scoring assessment and there were no new controversies on each question.

Liu Zhen said that the marking process is graded and the quality is closely monitored. "Each question must be randomly reviewed by at least two teachers back to back, and the marking is completed only when the scores meet the requirements. If the scores of the two teachers are outside the error range, they must enter the third review. All papers that enter the third review, whether they get zero or full marks for each question, must be 100% reviewed by the expert group members. Every day, the expert quality inspection group and each marking group will randomly conduct a certain proportion of spot checks to dynamically monitor the marking quality."

At Peking University's college entrance examination Chinese language marking center, the most watched part is probably the composition.

Qi Yongxiang, deputy director of the Chinese Department of Peking University and person in charge of the Chinese language subject in the college entrance examination marking, introduced that among the 296 marking staff at Peking University, about two-thirds were assigned to participate in the marking of essays, and temporary in-group adjustments to the essays were not allowed.

Qi Yongxiang said, "For knowledge questions, we cannot estimate which group is faster and which is slower at first, so we will make temporary adjustments and add personnel to individual groups later. But for micro-writing and long composition, no matter whether you are faster or slower, we will not add people. If we add people temporarily for composition, we will explain the questions to them over and over again for a whole day, but we still cannot make it clear. We are worried that the quality will fluctuate, so we never add people for composition, and we just have so many people to do it."

Zero-score essay

Is it true?

Taking Beijing as an example, the Chinese composition question in the 2019 Beijing College Entrance Examination adopts a "choose one of two" format, requiring candidates to write an argumentative essay on "Why is "Laoqiang" so shocking" on Shaanxi's intangible cultural heritage "Laoqiang", or imagine the story between themselves and a magical bookmark and write a narrative essay.

Qi Yongxiang, deputy director of the Chinese Department of Peking University and person in charge of the Chinese subject in the college entrance examination marking, revealed that currently, both full-score essays and zero-score essays appear. "From the current grading situation, there are full-mark essays. Zero-mark essays include those that leave nothing blank or those that only write a title and write one or two irrelevant sentences below the title. In that case, we give them zero marks. If he writes a title and writes two random sentences below, as long as they are somewhat relevant, we still give him two or three points. If he writes four or five lines, we still give him four or five points. The zero-mark essays on the Internet are all written by experts. They have nothing to do with our answer sheets or the examination room. If he really answered like that, we would have admitted him. The zero-mark essay was not leaked from the examination room. The zero-mark essays in the examination room are those that did not answer the question or wrote a sentence that was irrelevant."

Zang Tiejun, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Education Examination Authority, said that according to confidentiality regulations, during the marking period, the answers of candidates, including essays, are prohibited from being disclosed.

The "full score essays" and "zero score essays" currently circulating on the Internet are all fabricated by others. "According to our confidentiality regulations, it is impossible to pass it on. This information is either false. If it is true, someone must have violated the confidentiality law. It is also illegal to publish this confidential information."