This is the beginning of a very important week. It’s maturita time.
...There should have been more of a clamor after that dramatic statement. You don’t know what the maturita is? That’s likely because it’s very much a European rite of passage, especially here in Central and Eastern Europe.
The maturitas (maturity, if you want the proper plural) are end-of-school leaving exams. All Slovak students must take the Slovak exam, and of course at bilingual schools the students must take a foreign language exam as well, so our students all take the English maturita. After that students may choose a few subjects and they take intensive seminars on these throughout their final year to prepare them for the maturita. These subjects include geography, biology, and their second foreign language, among others. At EGT the kids take the Slovak maturita in their fourth year, and all others their fifth year. For some of the tests, including Slovak, English, and history, there is a separate written component completed earlier in the spring. The main event is the oral exam.
I can only speak about the subjects that I’ve been involved in, which are English and history, but this is the basic form. There are 30 possible tasks, and each task has three parts. The first student comes in and chooses a number from cards face-down on the table. Then he or she gets about 30 minutes to prepare. Students may write notes for themselves during this time, and some questions have specific aids, like articles, maps, or pictures. At the end of the 30 minutes the student must talk about the three questions in front of a panel of three proctors. As one student begins talking, another is preparing. The proctors ask questions to help the students. The students talk for 20 to 30 minutes or until they’ve entirely exhausted their abilities.
There are very particular rules about the proctors. Each panel must have an outside proctor who is not an EGT teacher, and for the bilingual subjects one proctor must be a native English speaker or equivalent. Obviously, the proctors are supposed to be qualified and know the answers for all the 90 possible tasks.
Scoring, like all grades, is on a scale of 1 to 5. Opposite to the Advanced Placement exams in the US, a 1 is the best score and a 5 is the worst. Each question is scored, then the proctors decide what the student’s overall score should be. Then there’s a complicated formula that’s like (a certain number of points X the score from task 1) + (another number of points X score from task 2) + (some more points X score from task 3) / 10 or 3 or something, I don’t even know, obviously I’m not in charge of anything involving math because this is serious business. About five students do their tests, then the proctors discuss, then the students come back in and the head of the panel asks if it’s alright to read all their scores aloud (no one ever says no). Then she reads their scores and all the proctors shake the kids’ hands. As you can imagine, this can be rather awkward if a kid doesn’t pass. I’m never really sure what to say, anyway.
Two years ago I was on the history panel. I learned a lot from it, because each task has at least one question about Slovak/Czechoslovak history, and though the students answer this question in Slovak, the headmistress made them summarize what they’d said in English for me. When I first got the packet of questions I felt a little like the students must feel: overwhelmed at everything they need to know. I originally had an example of a task posted, but I've decided to take it down, because the tasks sometimes don't change that much year to year and I don't want to risk doing the wrong thing.
History is a good panel to be on because usually only 20 to 30 kids take it, so it’s usually only one day. English, on the other hand, is four days this year and was five days in the past two years. Usually they try to divide the proctoring between two American teachers, but this year I am the duty native speaker, so I’ll be here all week, folks. This is because I was the only one who taught the fifth years their British and American history review course, and the English maturita for some strange reason includes a question about history/geography/social studies of English-speaking countries. So I’m the only one who knows the answers to all the history questions. The English tasks also include one conversation topic and one (British/American) literature question. The conversation topics cover everything from stereotypes of different nationalities to sport to whether it’s better to live in a village or a city.
While some people say that the maturita really has no bearing on students’ futures, it’s nonetheless an important part of their schooling and culture. And for about 11 hours a day for the next four days, it’s going to be an important part of my life, too.
...There should have been more of a clamor after that dramatic statement. You don’t know what the maturita is? That’s likely because it’s very much a European rite of passage, especially here in Central and Eastern Europe.
The maturitas (maturity, if you want the proper plural) are end-of-school leaving exams. All Slovak students must take the Slovak exam, and of course at bilingual schools the students must take a foreign language exam as well, so our students all take the English maturita. After that students may choose a few subjects and they take intensive seminars on these throughout their final year to prepare them for the maturita. These subjects include geography, biology, and their second foreign language, among others. At EGT the kids take the Slovak maturita in their fourth year, and all others their fifth year. For some of the tests, including Slovak, English, and history, there is a separate written component completed earlier in the spring. The main event is the oral exam.
I can only speak about the subjects that I’ve been involved in, which are English and history, but this is the basic form. There are 30 possible tasks, and each task has three parts. The first student comes in and chooses a number from cards face-down on the table. Then he or she gets about 30 minutes to prepare. Students may write notes for themselves during this time, and some questions have specific aids, like articles, maps, or pictures. At the end of the 30 minutes the student must talk about the three questions in front of a panel of three proctors. As one student begins talking, another is preparing. The proctors ask questions to help the students. The students talk for 20 to 30 minutes or until they’ve entirely exhausted their abilities.
There are very particular rules about the proctors. Each panel must have an outside proctor who is not an EGT teacher, and for the bilingual subjects one proctor must be a native English speaker or equivalent. Obviously, the proctors are supposed to be qualified and know the answers for all the 90 possible tasks.
Scoring, like all grades, is on a scale of 1 to 5. Opposite to the Advanced Placement exams in the US, a 1 is the best score and a 5 is the worst. Each question is scored, then the proctors decide what the student’s overall score should be. Then there’s a complicated formula that’s like (a certain number of points X the score from task 1) + (another number of points X score from task 2) + (some more points X score from task 3) / 10 or 3 or something, I don’t even know, obviously I’m not in charge of anything involving math because this is serious business. About five students do their tests, then the proctors discuss, then the students come back in and the head of the panel asks if it’s alright to read all their scores aloud (no one ever says no). Then she reads their scores and all the proctors shake the kids’ hands. As you can imagine, this can be rather awkward if a kid doesn’t pass. I’m never really sure what to say, anyway.
Two years ago I was on the history panel. I learned a lot from it, because each task has at least one question about Slovak/Czechoslovak history, and though the students answer this question in Slovak, the headmistress made them summarize what they’d said in English for me. When I first got the packet of questions I felt a little like the students must feel: overwhelmed at everything they need to know. I originally had an example of a task posted, but I've decided to take it down, because the tasks sometimes don't change that much year to year and I don't want to risk doing the wrong thing.
History is a good panel to be on because usually only 20 to 30 kids take it, so it’s usually only one day. English, on the other hand, is four days this year and was five days in the past two years. Usually they try to divide the proctoring between two American teachers, but this year I am the duty native speaker, so I’ll be here all week, folks. This is because I was the only one who taught the fifth years their British and American history review course, and the English maturita for some strange reason includes a question about history/geography/social studies of English-speaking countries. So I’m the only one who knows the answers to all the history questions. The English tasks also include one conversation topic and one (British/American) literature question. The conversation topics cover everything from stereotypes of different nationalities to sport to whether it’s better to live in a village or a city.
While some people say that the maturita really has no bearing on students’ futures, it’s nonetheless an important part of their schooling and culture. And for about 11 hours a day for the next four days, it’s going to be an important part of my life, too.
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