An unsigned text by an insurance company, the center of a Catalan exam of the PAU without authors

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 exam. An exam that, after the mandatory readings were eliminated last year, 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 Truth by Pere Calders, and in the multiple-choice questions, The Count Arnau and The Fable of Mr. Esteve appeared. All in all, an exam in which no female author of Catalan literature appears or is mentioned.

Regarding the true or false section, 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 were asked.

Nothing/nobody, so/such

In the linguistic reflection section, there was a section where it was necessary to analyze pronouns, sentences, and phrases and answer five questions requiring the completion of sentences by choosing between res/gens, tant/tan, perquè/per què, que/què, and si no/sinó. Additionally, it 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 required, the question would be directly graded with a zero.

Finally, there was a short text in which it was necessary to identify which dialectal variety of Catalan it belonged to (Roussillonnais, Central, North-western, Valencian, Balearic, or Alguerese) and in the written expression section, it was asked to rewrite a text by changing the present verb tenses to imperfect forms.

Now, at 12 p.m., it is the turn of the applied mathematics for social sciences electives – one of the most dreaded exams – performing arts, artistic drawing, Greek language and cultures, and cultural and artistic movements.