second esonero

LCLT2 - 2^nd esonero - ORAL EXAM - notes for students

At the beginning of the exam, you will be asked to show your document – just the part with your name/surname and the photo, so for example, if you have a carta d’identità, you need only show the front page (name/surname) and the third page (photo) – not the second page where there is sensitive data.

PART 1 – the book.

Examples of questions you could be asked:

1. Why did you choose to read this particular book? This is a question about why you chose the book, not what you thought about it afterwards – be careful.
2. Describe one of the main characters.
3. Describe a secondary character that you particularly liked.
4. Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why/not?
5. Did the book teach you anything about yourself or about the world around you? What?
6. Did you enjoy the book? Why/not?
7. Describe an episode that you found particularly effective or powerful in some way. Why did you find it so effective?
8. In your opinion, what are the good aspects and/or the bad aspects about the book?

It is not necessary to recount the plot of the book – We are more interested in what you thought of the book, and in your experience of reading in a foreign language. Therefore, you will need to think about what made the book easy/difficult/enjoyable to read – too much dialogue? too many descriptive passages? language too complicated/too simple? too much new vocabulary? Students often say that there is a lot of slang in the novel, but this is usually incorrect & what they mean is that there was simply a lot of new vocabulary.

You should bring your notes to the exam, including a list of new vocabulary. From that list you should select 5-7 items that you personally think will be useful, i.e. that you could imagine yourself using – I don’t mean just single words (e.g. new adjectives) but chunks of language (e.g. ... we were supposed to be V+ing ...) or an idiomatic expression, or a new phrasal verb ....

You will need to listen carefully to what the other students are saying about the book they have read so that you can ask them a question yourself if you wish to do so – about one of the characters, the plot, the language, a particular episode or anything that you are CURIOUS to know more about.

Part 2 – course content.

In this part of the exam, you will be asked to translate a short sentence (or two) relating to English File (units 1 – 10) from Italian into English or to explain an particular form.

Part 3 – general conversation.

In this part of the exam, you will be asked to comment on something that was said earlier in the exam or else you will be asked some questions about yourself – your studies, your ambitions, your experience during this emergency period of lockdown, etc.