CE 1: Guidelines for the final exam

Only when students pass all the midterm tests (integrated skills, writing skills+dictation,
speaking skills + listening skills, translation S-E and translation E-S) can they take the final
exam. The final exam is taken orally, and it sums up all skills being developed within the course
CE 1 during the first term. It consists of the following segments:

1. Grammatical and lexical analysis of a text

2. Speaking (general topic + reader)

1. Students read a text in English (related to the topics, grammar and vocabulary already
covered during the term), then translate a part of it. The main part of this section refers to
the grammatical and lexical analysis of segments present in the text itself, and students
can be also asked to transform some structures, to explain the meaning and use of certain
words, phrases and idioms not necessarily present in the text they analyse. The following
grammatical sections will be tested (the questions in bracket illustrate types of questions
students can be asked during the exam):
a. Present and past verb forms (Which tense is used in the sentence? What use does it
illustrate? Transform this sentence using, for example Past Perfect Continuous, etc.
What are stative verbs? What kind of verb is it?)
b. Countable/ uncountable nouns, collective nouns, quantifiers, plural of nouns (What
type of noun is it? What verb form follows it? Does it have singular/ plural form?
When do we use this quantifier?)
c. Adjectives vs adverbs (e.g. Is there any difference in meaning and use of the
following pairs of adverbs hard/ hardly, short/ shortly?)
d. Articles (Why is the definite/ indefinite article used here? Why is it omitted? Other
uses)

VOCABULARY. Students will be asked to explain the meaning of words, phrases

and idioms found in the text, but they can be also asked to explain, define or illustrate
the use of any lexical item covered during the term (Units 1-3 + PP presentations+
additional material posted on the course page)

2. The second section examines students’ oral competence, and it consists of two questions:
one relating to the general topic and the other to the understanding of the reader Jekyll
and Hyde.
a. General topics include the following: one from the first six topics of the Pioneer B2
Student’s Book (Window on the World, A Thirst to knowledge, Human Nature, Pack
 your bags, In Shape and Blue). Students are expected to be fluent, comprehensible,
but also to use vocabulary and ideas discussed during classes, and the complexity and
variety of the structures they use will be an important criterion in assessment.
b. Students are expected to understand the overall meaning of the reader ‘Jekyll and
Hyde’, but also to provide a deeper analysis of the events, characters and their mutual
relations.

Good luck! ☺