Why two semesters a year? [Archives:2008/1139/Community]

By: Maged Thabet Al-kholidy
[email protected]
The first half of the academic year is over, from which nearly all students have received their results, and a new semester has begun. This sequence of semesters plays a significant role in students' academic progress because it helps them attain more knowledge with better results.

It also reveals which students are doing well and which aren't. Thus, it reminds those careless or indifferent students to wake up and change their routine, which is leading them to failure.

Having two semesters in every academic year is and must be of great use and value to students; however, some don't realize this and therefore, never learn from their mistakes in one semester so as not to repeat them in others.

In reality, only good students learn from their faults in the first or previous semester(s) and consider the good aspects as encouragement to become better.

For example, if a good student receives unacceptable results, he doesn't blame others; rather, he seeks the reason. Once he determines it, he then does his best to avoid doing so again so he'll obtain better results. Moreover, if he achieves good results, he doesn't stop searching for better results; instead, he uses this as encouragement to work harder not for better, but for the best marks.

However, other students (I won't call them bad) think and behave differently, never learning from their mistakes. If by chance they should make good marks, they take it lightheartedly.

When such students obtain bad results in their first or previous semester(s), they'll move heaven and earth, claiming that it's not their fault, but the fault of others such as their teachers, family members or sometimes the subject itself.

They never compare themselves to the good students nor realize how they behave and work hard because it means nothing to such careless or indifferent students.

If they should happen to achieve good results by chance, they simply attribute it to their natural ability, claiming that there's no need to study hard because they obtain good results without any effort.

Dividing the academic year helps students determine their performance level each semester, as well as providing other useful aspects offering students the chance to obtain knowledge via the learning process.

Students are taught many subjects in a semester, thus, teaching a subject for one semester makes its material easy to understand and memorize. Students can easily follow the topic, which enables them to attain knowledge more easily. Exams each semester also give students the chance to revise and, subsequently, not easily forget what they've learned that semester.

On the other hand, year-long study obliges students to take in all of the materials for each subject as a whole. Because each subject has much material taught during the full academic year, this slows students' understanding and memorization and, as a result, forgetting comes more quickly.

Dividing the academic year also creates competition between students, as students work hard each semester to attain better and higher marks than others. For example, at the beginning of the semester, students start working to achieve higher marks than their first semester, becoming jealous should their classmates make higher marks.

In year-long study, students are more careless and bored in competing with each other. Because results are given at the end of the academic year during the summer holiday, this doesn't encourage students to work harder for the sake of competing with their other classmates.

These are just some aspects of dividing the academic year into two semesters and although there may be other positive aspects, all of them serve students, who must be given the chance to learn from their faults each semester, to enrich themselves with knowledge and compete with others for the sake of achieving better performance.

Majed Thabet Al-kholidy is a writer from Taiz, currently doing his M.A. at English Dep, Taiz Uni. He is an ex-editor of English Journal of the University.
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