The Mona-based Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (Carimac) recently conducted two weekend seminars to focus on the key areas of the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) Communication Studies exams, in an effort to improve the grades of high school students in Kingston who will sit the test this year.

“We felt that there were some of the students who were doing less and less well in aspects of the CAPE syllabus. In any case, fewer and fewer students were getting higher grades in communication studies and when we look at the actual performance there was a downward trend,” director of the institute Dr Hopeton Dunn stated.

Dunn, who was speaking at the official launch of the seminars, expressed his hope that Carimac, through the seminars, would be able to increase the number of students who succeed nationally in the communication exam.

The seminars which were free of cost, targeted high school students from the inner-city of Kingston as well as other urban schools that the director said required this additional support.

“The communication studies CAPE syllabus is something that you have already had to unpack in your respective schools and we very much acknowledge the subject teachers who are here and have been taking you along that route of better understanding,” Dunn told students and teachers present at the Carimac Annex two building on the UWI campus.

“For students, because we want you to excel in this area…we are trying in these two weeks to simply build on and enhance what you have already learned in your schools, what we are expecting is that there’ll be a kind of correspondence between what you’re going to be hearing and what you’re already learning, except that we are aiming to enhance and strengthen, that’s what it’s about,” he continued.

The director also expressed his appreciation to the students for choosing to attend the seminar and missing the highly anticipated ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys’ and Girls’ Championships that were being held the same day as the launch and first session of the seminar.

“I believe that they will take away a higher level of confidence in their ability to do well in the exam. We feel that they will also have a higher level of technical competence in this particular area and they will also leave with a better sense of what the university is doing and can offer them in the future,” Dunn responded when asked about his expectations of the seminar.

The students saw presentations throughout the day from three communication studies teachers who went through the different sections of the papers and explained how the students should go about constructing their answers for the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) administered examination.

“The biggest problem facing communication studies students is for students to immerse using the standard form of English. They find it very difficult to transfer information from creole to standard English and that takes up a lot of time for them and then they fall into what is known as writers block, so that is one of the main problems,” said Wolmer’s Boys School communication studies teacher and CAPE communication studies marker, Kemorine Buchanan.

Buchanan, who was the first presenter, added that while students might know the information, they tended not to accurately and adequately apply it when writing the examination.

“While at school I’ve learned a lot of things as it relates to all three modules, but hearing information about the subject from different teachers solidifies all that we have learnt at school and basically some of the things were new to me and it was easier to grasp this way,” deputy head boy at Holy Trinity High School Tajae Brown, told the Jamaica Observer following the first session of the seminar.

“I was speaking with my teacher as it relates to being confident for the exam and I told her that I feel strong as it relates to going in the exam and doing well due to this seminar. I decided that Champs was not as important, this workshop was more important than champs,” the lower sixth form student added.

Carimac which was staging the seminars for the first time hopes to expand the reach of the initiative to its western Jamaica campus in Montego Bay and continue partnering with high schools to make the hosting of the seminars an annual event.