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Hello to all my old friends, I have been very busy recently that’s why I have not been here for so long. I really do miss you all indeed.

I had one real Maths exam and several mock exams during the past few weeks, but at this moment I am still doing my Maths course work exam which I need to hand in two weeks, then the rest of exams will start in the middle of May, so my college seems to want to have a final push. All the students, who have failed their mock exams, the college will not enter them in the end of year exam that means they need to drop out of the course because they already have no chance to carry on their study for the final year after the summer holiday. But they can retake the first year course. That’s all because our British education system has a league table to show all colleges’ performance, so every college wants their pass rate to be higher than the others. They all use this league table to compare each other. Parents and students are all using this league table to compare all the colleges. If the college has a better performance, they would have more funding form the government and for each student that passes one exam the college will have an extra bonus funding. That’s why the college would not send any students who failed their mock exam into the final exams. If the college doesn’t send any students into the exam that means they will not have one single student who fails their exam and therefore they will have a 100% pass rate. Do you think this equation will work? Luckily, I have passed all my mock exams that why I will be extremely busy for the next couple months. Therefore you will not see me on here as often as before. But once all my exams are finished I will back on here everyday!!

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Jo - you are right about telling the truth. For all you know, I could be all green and have one eye in the middle of my forehead!

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Duane, you're right. The board was set up for learners of English and I don't mind what people discuss (I don't even mind that there are more teachers than learners here usually!) and I can handle the possibility of us disagreeing and upsetting each other occasionally! I never delete any messages that are part of a discussion or from someone who introduces themselves as wanting to discuss something or practise their English etc. The ones I try to delete are those from people who obviously have no intention of returning and following up what they said with any discussion. They don't introduce themselves, they just state an opinion; they just want to advertise a product or a site or a point of view.

Haruka, it is more or less just a matter of hitting 'delete' but only if I catch it when it's on the 'current page' page. If a couple more messages arrive before I've had a chance to log in to the administrator's site and the message goes over onto one of the numbered pages it has to wait til I manually archive the messages.

And finally I don't think there's any way I can verify whether people are giving 'bona fide' details. How do you know that anything I've told you about myself is true? The real me could be someone quite different ;-) Inappropriate messages are pretty rare so let's just try to ignore them and enjoy discussing stuff.

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Jo, Thank you for removing an anonymous message. Sorry, I didn't know it's something beyond just clicking the delete button on your side. I don't think you need any posting code except that you have to add your bona fide identity and civility in your message. Well, I hope I'm not overriding Jo's jurisdiction.

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Jo: I don't know what your original intent was for this board. I kind of got the idea that it was a place where people could meet to help each other learn and practice using English. It is fun to meet new friends and sometimes go off the board and discuss personal things. I think it is so difficult to discuss things of a political or nationalistic nature mainly because most of us only know what we learn from the media and I for one do not think the things we learn from the media are always correct. But, we form opinions, get passionate, and hurt people because of something we heard and most people don't take the time to research news items and determine if they are true or just selling newspapers and air-time on the radio or television. I hope I never say or even think anything negative about someone because of what I hear or see in the media. We all have good functioning brains. I hope we use them to find friendships instead of fueds.
I have been truly blessed by the people I have met on the internet. I hope others feel the same way.

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Duane wants you to look at this: The Flash Mind Reader. It's clever!

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Haruka, I kind of agree but can't really do anything about it without password protecting the board and making it 'by invitation only' - If I had done that before, none of you would be here now! I can only keep trying to remove anonymous, irrelevant or commercial messages when they appear but I simply don't have time to watch the board all the time and catch them quickly enough sometimes. (To those of you who didn't see it, Haruka's suggestion was prompted by a political message from someone who clearly had no intention to discuss the issue with us on this board, which I have now removed)

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Jo, I don't think any message without sender's identity should be accepted here.