My views on using Internet during the exam

Unlike Maths, an English exam is not something you can really cheat on. Often, there is no right and wrong answer, because you usually include your own opinions and discussions in the exam. However, one should also make sure to add some facts to the paper, to make it more interesting and reliable. These facts can be found on the World Wide Web.

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On previous English exams, all you could do was guess what the topic for the exam would be. Then you would spend time the days before the exam doing research on the Internet, and making notes to yourself about the “imagined" topic.

I think that letting us use Internet during the exam would be of great help. When you know the exact topic, you will be able to find a lot of great and useful information, to make the paper more reflected.  All you have to know is where to look for it. We should embrace the technology we have, and make the most of it! In almost every subject I have at school, I use the internet. Psychology, marketing, Norwegian, history..the list goes on. Internet is also of great help when I write texts and blog posts in English-class. It helps me get inspired to write, and I really do believe that our exams will be a lot more enjoyable to read if we used the Internet.

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When this is said, it is imporant to make sure what we read off the Internet is correct. This we can do by using more than three different sources.  When researching a specific topic, I'll often use Wikipedia, but it's important to remember to use other websites as well , such as articles written on bbc.com or cnn.com. CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) World Factbook is also a trustworthy website, as the information on this website is written by "well-qualified people in nearly all fields of study". However, this does not mean one can copy the exact same sentences from these websites, and paste it into their own paper. What I like to do, is first read about the topic on several different websites, and find facts and details that I find fascinating. Then I try to rephrase what I've read, by using my own words.

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When writing, I also try to avoid using the same words repeatedly. I'll often use  Google to find synonyms. For example, I could write "Lucky + synonym". It gives me 184,000 results, in 0.29 seconds. Now I know that other alternatives to the word "lucky", could be: advantegous, beneficial, blessed, serendipotous, or fortunate. Sometimes I like to finish with a good question or quote, like the this one that I found at www.quotegarden.com:

Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.  ~Author Unknown