Overall result for ZCT 104, semester II, Sessi 2004/05**

Effective number of students taking the course: 361

Grades	No. of students	percentage (%)
TH	1	0.3
F	7	1.9
D-	20	5.5
D	30	8.3
D+	45	12.5
C-	46	12.7
C	70	19.4
C+	57	15.8
B-	28	7.8
B	16	4.4
B+	22	6.1
A-	10	2.8
A	10	2.8
total	362	100.3
C- and below	149	41.3

average	44
STD Deviation	13.4
% of STD Deviation	30.35

General comment on the result: 

In comparison to last year’s ZCT 104 which was excellently fair and reasonable (less than a few percents students scoring C- and below), this year performance is considered as terribly poor. The main reason for this marked discrepancy is due to the fact that I have placed strong emphasis in the understanding of the concepts rather than calculations. Objective questions are designed in such a way to test students understanding rather than their memorization skill. I suspect that this is the main reason (at least one of the major reasons) why lots of students have done poorly as some still cling on to the bad habit of memorization of formulae rather than exercising their intellectual faculty to comprehend the core concepts.

In addition, the overall performance of students in this year’s ZCT 104 is not satisfactory considering the fact that the marking scheme has been relaxed tremendously for the benefit of the poorly-performing students. Else we would expect roughly an 10% rise in the students scoring C- and below. (Sigh!)

Maybe it is no coincident that the distribution curve of this paper is very similar to that of ZCA 101 offered in semester I the same academic year. Most of the students taking this course also took the ZCA 101. Hence the overall result of the ZCA 104 reflects the possible fact that the same pool of students who scored poorly in the ZCA 101 (C- and below) still have not improved in their skill of study in ZCT 104.

Remedial suggestion: Practice more exercises. You must read text books in order to understand the physics concepts that are heavily emphasized in this paper. The understanding of the art of how to solve physics problems can be acquired though persistent and continual practice. Nurture the habit to learn up the art of thinking and logical deduction.