Rant about exam

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I've taken the exam and failed but I've got to say this exam was one of the poorly written and the content was shocking. I was asked exams about earthquakes. Now am I missing something or is Newcastle and the UK not really know for it's earthquakes. What cheeses me off is that you pay good money to do an exam and they don't have the thought of modifying the exams for different countries. Before anyone says that it's a worldwide cert well 99.99% of people don't move from country to country so knowing about earthquakes is not relavant. Also the langauge used is American English and I had a hard time make out what they were asking. I know this is part sour grapes but I really feel annoyed paying £170 for an exam that looks like it was proof read by a 5 year old.

I'm going to retake the exam when the 2004 objective exam is released and hopefully this 5 year old proof reader has got his/her act together...

 

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I feel for you mate, i do, but allow me to perhaps bring it from a different perspective


alot of larger companies and enterprises, will have sites and datacenters in many large cities, alot of these DO fall into the paths of tornados and earthquake regions, its all well and good saying we dont need to know about that, but in a disaster people are pulled in from all corners of the company to get things working as soon as possible, and that includes experts from other countries and regions

as for the poor writing, i cant really comment, but i understand your frustration, the thing is most exams are written in US english and it doesnt often cause a problem for many, i guess this exam in perticular is poor, but saying that its ancient, and is supposed to be getting its first overhaul in years sometime soon isnt it? anyone clarify that?

shame about the fail mate, but best of luck with the rest, and i emplore you to try again at some point, worth it in the long shot!

 

The new Server+ exam should be out early next year.

 

I've heard similar complains about the Network+ exam in terms of bad wording. All I can suggest is that you complain to CompTIA about how the exam is written. If enough people complain, it may actually get them to re-write the exam. Both the Network+ and Server+ exams are due to be updating in 2005 and I can only hope that CompTIA has done something about how they are worded.

As far as them being written in American English, there probably isn't anything to be done about that. I'm sorry to say that it never even dawned on me that this would be a problem but after having been on this board for over a year, I guess it should have. I know that on occasion a few things said here have been hard for me to understand. I'm sorry that the American English was an issue.

I have to agree though about the issue of earthquakes, tornadoes and such. I agree that the exam needs to be improved but I don't know if it is practical for expect CompTIA to make different versions of the test based on different geographic environmental conditions. If that were the case, they'd have to issue several different versions just in the US.

Hopefully, you will retake the exam and "nail that sucker flat".

Good luck. You can do it.

 

I'm not going to say some of it isn't sour grapes because it is. I also found the Network+ exam poorly worded but passed so I didn't complain. I failed by a small margin and was pretty peeved. For the money you pay for CompTIA exams which tend to be overpriced you would of thought at least they could of gotten a person to proof read it and change some of the wording for the UK market and other English speaking countries. This surely wouldn't cost much to do.

Phoenix I do see what your saying but in reality most IT staff work for small/medium companies and simply don't need to know about earthquake damage. How many comapnies honestly have a hot site at their disposal for instance... The exam goes on like everyone works for IBM and Microsoft which isn't the case.

 

All I can say is wait for the new version to come out. Looking at the new objectives vs. the old ones the mark breakdown has been significantly changed.

 

It's a double-edged sword because that will also require the purchase of a text with the updated material in it.

 

Well of course but that was to be expected anyway because the content has also been updated.