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Changes in the obligatory state matriculation exam in Bulgarian language and literature were announced today by the Ministry of Education. At the prom, which this year is on May 18, there will be fewer closed questions and more free answers. For the first time, high school students will be able to choose between two separate topics - an interpretive essay and an essay, according to the new exam options. According to them, students must show functional literacy, as well as good skills for creating text, extracting and interpreting information.
The sample tasks for the curricula for the Matura exams in 2021/22 were published in September last year. (Can be seen here.(link is external)) The total number of questions remains unchanged - 41. As "Sega" wrote, with an optional answer will now be only 22 of them - 8 less than last year. 16 will be short free answer tasks that will not require the reproduction of memorized information. The other two will be for creating text within 4-5 sentences.
The questions will be distributed in the first two parts of the graduation exam and the high school graduates will have a total of 120 minutes to solve them. In one they will have to show knowledge of spelling, grammar and punctuation, as well as extract information from one or more texts. The other part will deal with lexical and literary tasks.
For another 120 minutes in the third part, young people will have to write an interpretive essay or essay. So far, they could choose between the two genres, but the theme was the same. With the changes, they will choose between two separate topics. The topic of the essay will be on a problem from one or several works. The wording of an essay will include a life problem embedded in one or more literary works or one that is not linked to an artistic text.
The testing teachers will pay attention to the precise formulation of the thesis and to its consistent and purposeful argumentation. In addition, the interpretation and recognition of the elements of the literary text in writing an essay, the development of all aspects of the problem and the assertion of one's own opinion in the essay will be assessed. Traditionally, students must show that they know the spelling, punctuation, grammar and lexical rules. "The criteria for evaluating the text were previously discussed with BEL teachers and long-term evaluators," the MES said.
This year, too, the maximum number of points at the matriculation exam will be 100. The essay or essay will carry a maximum of 30 points, and closed questions - 22 points . , even if the graduate correctly answers all the tasks with an optional answer, this will not guarantee him a successful performance and a diploma. So far, 23 points were needed for this, which could be collected from the questions with an optional answer.