考试课程 考察课程

[Kenny同志]

请教同志们

How do you say these in English?

Here's my translation：

考试课程 courses involving examination

考察课程 courses involving no examination

同志们以为然否？不当之处，请大家指正。

Edited March 2, 2010 at 08:51 AM by kenny2006woo

[Elaine Wang]

I think....

考试课程 required course

考察课程 optional course

is it right?

[skylee]

I have never seen / used the Chinese terms. Are they the same as credit-bearing and non-credit-bearing courses (學分課程 / 非學分課程) ?

Required course is 必修課程. Optional course is 選修課程.

[HashiriKata]

考试课程 courses involving examination

考察课程 courses involving no examination

I think:

考试课程 courses which are assessed by (seasonal) examination.

考察课程 courses which are assessed by coursework (= continuous assessment)

(考察课程 could mean that the courses are assessed by both coursework and examination, but since this is Chinese, I can't be sure.)

[skylee]

how about courses that involve continuous assessment of which parts are examinations?

[Kenny同志]

Thanks for all your replies.

考试课程 is a course that is assessed by an exam at the end of the course or term.

考察课程 is a course that is assessed by, say, a composition, a PP'T presentation , and so forth, when the course or term ends. It doesn't involve an exam.

Since the two names appear at the top of a table, I want them to be as succinct as possible. I wonder whether there is any similar course in western colleges.

Edited March 3, 2010 at 05:28 AM by kenny2006woo

[chrix]

In that case, you'd probably need to use footnotes, as you'd need to use circumlocutions in English...

[Kenny同志]

Thanks Chrix, but footnote is the last thing to resort to. I am waiting for more replies. Time for class now. I will be back in the evening.

[Glenn]

How about these:

考试课程 -- Exam Assessment Course

考察课程 -- Project Assessment Course

They may be too terse, though. I'm not sure the meaning is conveyed.

[chrix]

These also strike me as terms that wouldn't be used by US universities, at least. No meaningful hits when restricting searches to .edu...

[Glenn]

I'm guessing US universities don't have terms for them. I asked my little brother, who's in his last semester of college, whether there was a difference in what they were called, and he unequivocally said "no." He's an Creative Writing major, so he's had to take both sorts. I also figured that kenny2006woo is teaching at a university (and assumed you were involved with one in some capacity), and he (or you) probably would have heard of the terms if they existed. So, I just took a shot at translating them.

[chrix]

I think they would work as some kind of direct translation, but I don't think a native speaker would have a clear idea what these meant, so you'd probably still want the footnotes...

[Glenn]

I agree. I was thinking if the class was described right below it the meaning would become clear, but like I said, in and of themselves they probably don't convey the meaning that well.

[trien27]

考试课程 courses involving examination

考察课程 courses involving no examination

同志们以为然否？不当之处，请大家指正。

1. Not everyone is a 同志, which is mostly used in China for anyone. Nowadays, outside of China, 同志 = gay / lesbian.

2. 当 is used incorrectly. It's not 不当之处 but should be 不妥之处.

3. Not 请大家指正, it's 请大家更正.

考试课程 = courses which require an exam at the end.

考察课程 = courses which does not require any exams at the end but might be by performance reviews or observations, or quizzes, compositions, etc...

[Kenny同志]

OK. Summing the posts up, I decide it would be safer to include footnotes. Thanks again for all the valuable inputs.

@Glenn: Actually I am a student. The post is here because someone asks me what the two terms are in English, a question I can't answer before I consult experts.

@Trien27: Thank you for your efforts to correct me. I guess you are an American Chinese or an American specialising in Chinese, so it is OK that you thought the Chinese sentence in the original post was not right. In fact, I would appreciate it if you can point out why I was wrong.

不当之处=不妥之处

指正 is a better word than 更正here since it is more polite.

同志们 is 俏皮话, a humourous address. It doesn't mean that anyone is gay or lesbian here. I agree with you that outside the mainland 同志 is used to call a gay or a lesbian. And even in mainland the usage is spreading. The reality is that the word carries two meanings today. A new meaning doesn't necessarily abandon its original meaning.

Edited March 3, 2010 at 12:06 PM by kenny2006woo

[Glenn]

Oh, haha. Sorry about that. It's just that there are so many erudite people here I kind of start to think everyone's a professor or something.

[Kenny同志]

It is OK. Actually, when you had that guess, I was 偷着乐呢.

[HashiriKata]

I often have to write course description (UK's universities) and as a rule we don't use methods of assessment to classify courses, so this information never has to appear in the titles or headings. Only further down in the course description that we mention methods of assessment, with phrasing such as:

Assessment will be by both examination (50%) and coursework (50%)...

Assessment will be by coursework (100%)...

etc.

[Kenny同志]

谢谢你 Hashirikata. It is very helpful.