Unit 3 Taking Exams Active Vocabulary

to create / solve problems

to keep one’s cool

to feel trapped / overwhelmed

to make time to do smth.

public examination trial

to avoid smth. / to avoid doing smth.

to take a chance to do smth.

school-leaving exams

entrance exams

end-of-term exams

to take / do / sit an exam

to pass exams at the time / first time

to retake / resit an exam

to pass an exam / to do well at an exam

to fail at the exams but to fail (in) Latin / to do badly in an exam to flunk exams

to scrape through / to get through exams

to feel great relief

to affect smth.

successfully to be a success

to be successful in doing smth.

to do smth. successfully

to succeed in smth., in doing smth.

to concentrate on smth.

to do everything at the last minute

to stand smth. / to bear smth. – I can’t stand reading

in the first place

in the second place

to relieve stress

to beat stress

to deal with

to work out a plan

treats and rewards

to feel tense and nervy

to be tempted

to do smth. in no time

Read the passage and find out how British pupils may be assessed.

Some schools give pupils tests every week or month to see if they are making progress. The school-leaving exams are held in May / June, in some schools, colleges and universities, instead of tests and exams there is continuous assessment, with marks, e.g. 65%, or grades, e.g. A, B+, for essays and projects during the term. If you pass your university exams, you graduate (get a degree), then you’re a graduate.

Read about the first experience of the author’s first examination session and copy out the key-words.

Taking Exams

As for the first examination session, I can’t really remember it. I think that we seem to be doing exams almost from the time we leave home. I mean when we go to school we seem to be doing a lot of tests and things. But my first examination session was my O-levels, which is the first big public examination trial in the life of a British schoolchild. You take these when you are 16. I took about nine subjects. I passed them all. But of course you don’t know whether you are going to pass them all at the time. And so there’s this great nervousness about revising, spending, I suppose, a couple of months shut up in your room desperately trying to remember all these facts which really are very boring. Everyone has his favourite subject. Mine have always been art subjects. I always found science and things like that a bind.

Trying to interest myself in subjects, which were not my thing, was very difficult. I suppose it is for everyone. But, eventually, I managed to pass them. As regards my nervousness, I was nervous naturally, but not as nervous as you might expect really. I think that when I was actually doing them, I managed to put that sort of thing out of my mind, because, in a way, it wasn’t dead serious, because we always had that opportinity to take the exams again, although we had to pay to retake the exams. But I suppose you have to be nervous anyway because it’s obviously preferable to pass first time. And the results, as I said, were pretty good actually. I can’t remember all the grades too well. But I certainly didn’t get very bad grades at all. I got a couple of Grade As, a cluster of Bs, and a couple of Cs as well. I didn’t get anything below С which is quite good.

So after the exams were over, obviously, you feel great relief ’cause we have our exams in summer. It’s really bad time to have to sit in a hall and have to think and concentrate and do an exam which is going to affect the rest of your life probably. After the exams are over, you’ve got the summer holidays ahead of you, which is a great bonus really ... So it’s almost a compensation for the suffering. That summer I just lazed about. But everyone has to do exams. There’s no way of avoiding them. It seems to be the thing that is used in the modern world as a means of sorting our society into groups. Just everybody is finding their kind of level really. So whether you like them or not you can’t avoid them.

Exercise 1. Answer the questions.

1. Why can’t the author remember his first examination session?

2. What are ‘O’ levels?

3. What is the nervousness before exams connected with?

4. Why wasn’t he dead serious about his exams?

5. How did he feel after the exams?

6. What was the compensation for the suffering?

7. Did you feel nervous when you were taking your first exam? How did you try to cope with it?

8. What are the reasons for feeling nervous before the exams?

9. Why is it preferable to pass exams first time?

10. Are exams always dead serious?

11. How can an exam affect a person’s life?

12. How do you plan your time revising for an exam?

13. Why is it difficult to revise for exams in subjects that are not your thing?

14. Do you have an opportunity to retake exams?

15. What do you feel after exams?

Exercise 2. Say whether you agree with the following statements.

1. Sitting for an exam means to be shut up in your room for some days desperately trying to remember things that are useless.

2. Trying to interest yourself in subjects, which are not your thing, is really difficult.

3. Exams can affect the rest of your life.

4. Everyone has to do exams; there is no way of avoiding them.

5. Exams serve as a means of sorting our society into groups.

Exercise 3. Say which of the following types of assessment you would prefer and why:

subjective or objective exam

oral or written exam

traditional or take-home exam

end-of-term (year) exam or continuous assessment.

Read the guidelines below on how to beat exam stress. With your partner, decide on the appropriate heading for each section. Make up a summary of the text using the list of the headings as a plan.