An unsigned text from an insurance company, the center of a Catalan exam of the PAU without authors
In the test that the students have considered "easy" there appears 'Chronicles of the hidden truth', by Pere Calders
BarcelonaJoy, rest and, for some, a certain euphoria. The last day of the selectivity exam has begun with the Catalan language and literature test. "It was the easiest of all," assured Bruna from the Moisès Broggi institute in Barcelona as she left the test. An exam that, after the obligatory readings were eliminated last year, has featured an unsigned text from the website of a health insurance company. In fact, the reading comprehension exercise in the Catalan test that all PAU students must take is an adaptation of the text Microplastics: how they affect health from Atlàntida Assegurances.
On the other hand, in the literary study section, students had to answer questions about The Domestic Tree from Chronicles of Hidden Truths by Pere Calders, and in the closed questions, The Count Arnau and The Fable of Mr. Esteve appeared. All in an exam in which no female author of Catalan literature appears or is mentioned.
Regarding the true or false section, questions were asked about aspects such as whether the terms hyperbole and hyperbaton are synonyms, whether a soliloquy is a play performed by more than one character, or whether onomatopoeia is a syntactic rhetorical figure.
Nothing/anything, so/as much
In the linguistic reflection section, there was a section where it was necessary to analyze pronouns, sentences, and phrases and five questions where it was necessary to complete sentences choosing between res/gens, tant/tan, perquè/per què, que/què, and si no/sinó. Additionally, it was also asked to complete sentences with the appropriate verb form of concebre, interrompre, cabre, néixer, and saber.
On the other hand, in one of the exercises, adolescents had to identify and correct five errors in the sentence: «Ves-t'en ara mateix per tal de que puguis agafar el primer tren. Quant surtis, tanca bé la porta. Ja saps que els lladres no tenen escrupols alhora d'entrar a robar.» Here, the statement already warned that if the student identified more errors than expected, the question would be directly scored with a zero.
Finally, there was a short text where it had to be identified to which dialectal variety of Catalan it belonged (rossellonès, central, nord-occidental, valencià, balear, or alguerès) and in the written expression section, it was asked to rewrite a text changing the present verb tenses to imperfect forms.
A controversial video of a doctor, in social mathematics
After the drama of the scientist's mathematics this Wednesday, one of the fears of today was the applied mathematics for social sciences test. However, the feelings upon leaving had nothing to do with those of Wednesday. "The best exam of my life," celebrated one of the students from Institut Mireia, while a classmate of hers cried and assured that it was "too" difficult. However, the teacher accompanying them defended that the exam "was indeed manageable".
The test included a series of exercises where students had to calculate the evolution of followers of a doctor who published a controversial video on social media, which harmed him, and then made a new one that was very successful. There were also problems where students had to calculate the price of boxes of various fruits from a farmer or analyze how the loading time of a web page varied, among others.
In the afternoon, it will be time for the last exams of this year's selectivity: chemistry – again, one of the most feared – technical drawing, art history, music and dance history, Castilian literature, and graphic-plastic expression techniques.