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Post by Pinda on May 5, 2015 14:08:23 GMT -5
So, next week I will be taking my exams. Exams in the Netherlands are the state-run tests you make at the end of your secondary education. You have to score a 5,5/10 on average for them and they count for 50% of your final grades (which will determine if you get a diploma or not). So these exams are very important... it's basically what you prepared for 6 years (or 4/5 depending on your education level) during secondary education. So I just wondered how you would do on such exams, most importantly the English exam. I wonder if native speakers of English would score a 10/10 or not. Sometimes I think even native speakers would not be able to answer certain questions too well. So I have an idea: Once my exams are done I can post the questions of the exams here. The English exam will probably be written in English entirely, so it would be easy for you to understand that. Then you could make that exam and sent me the answers. Then I will tell you your grade and we'll see if those English tests actually make sense  English exams are only reading exams. You get a text and have to answer questions about it. I could do the same for other exams in these subjects: History (This year's exam focuses on Germany between 1850-1950, the Enlightenment and revolutions, The Dutch Revolt - I'll leave that out to keep things fair and the Cold War. I'll also leave out the so called "Kenmerkende aspecten" which are basically really long paragraph titles you have to know for the test.) Geography (Focuses on Southeast Asia, the Netherlands (again I'll leave that out) and natural disasters, social developments and stuff like that) Economics (Focuses on world and national economics, but also business related economics at times) Business economics (Potato is Awesome that subject!) I could translate them to English and see how well you would do on such exams (without taking Dutch education). Keep in mind that these exams are VWO level, which is the highest... so they can be harder then you'd expect. Also keep in mind that the average of every exam is a 6,4. So... is anyone interested in trying this? Or should I just delete this thread? |
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Post by Newan on May 5, 2015 17:43:00 GMT -5
I'd try English first but I believe your current courses are equivalent to grade 12 here (since its your final year before college) and I'm in grade 11 so idk how I would do. The others like Economics we don't focus on or at least I don't.
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Post by Spidyyr on May 5, 2015 17:49:39 GMT -5
sure bro
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Post by Pinda on May 5, 2015 18:07:30 GMT -5
I'd try English first but I believe your current courses are equivalent to grade 12 here (since its your final year before college) and I'm in grade 11 so idk how I would do. The others like Economics we don't focus on or at least I don't. Well, I don't think the kind of education is quite the same. But it would be interesting to see how well you'd do despite not having any Dutch education. Since those exams take about 3 hours I guess I should shorten them for you though. Unless you want to spend 3 hours to make an exam just for fun |
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Post by Star on May 5, 2015 20:10:00 GMT -5
I'd be interested in doing this, although you're a few grades ahead, so I'm not sure how I'd do on certain aspects of the assessments, considering I may not have learned several parts of them yet.
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Post by Newan on May 5, 2015 20:54:25 GMT -5
I'd try English first but I believe your current courses are equivalent to grade 12 here (since its your final year before college) and I'm in grade 11 so idk how I would do. The others like Economics we don't focus on or at least I don't. Well, I don't think the kind of education is quite the same. But it would be interesting to see how well you'd do despite not having any Dutch education. Since those exams take about 3 hours I guess I should shorten them for you though. Unless you want to spend 3 hours to make an exam just for fun 3 hours is a suggested time people have to complete exams usually I finish them in half that time then leave |
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Post by Pinda on May 6, 2015 5:24:09 GMT -5
Well, I don't think the kind of education is quite the same. But it would be interesting to see how well you'd do despite not having any Dutch education. Since those exams take about 3 hours I guess I should shorten them for you though. Unless you want to spend 3 hours to make an exam just for fun 3 hours is a suggested time people have to complete exams usually I finish them in half that time then leave Believe me, for exams you won't finish in half the time... well for English maybe, especially since you are a native speaker... but for history and economics and subjects like that you will need a lot of time... my regular history tests, that were 75 minutes, already required me to write 6 pages by hand... |
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Post by Newan on May 6, 2015 8:49:38 GMT -5
3 hours is a suggested time people have to complete exams usually I finish them in half that time then leave Believe me, for exams you won't finish in half the time... well for English maybe, especially since you are a native speaker... but for history and economics and subjects like that you will need a lot of time... my regular history tests, that were 75 minutes, already required me to write 6 pages by hand... We don't hand write stuff |
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Post by Pinda on May 6, 2015 9:00:38 GMT -5
Believe me, for exams you won't finish in half the time... well for English maybe, especially since you are a native speaker... but for history and economics and subjects like that you will need a lot of time... my regular history tests, that were 75 minutes, already required me to write 6 pages by hand... We don't hand write stuff True. You wouldn't have to do that if you made these exams... so that would save you a lot of time I suppose. |
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Post by Ivar-Jedi on May 6, 2015 11:01:19 GMT -5
I'm so happy i've got all of this behind me already |
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Post by Pinda on May 21, 2015 9:35:25 GMT -5
So the English exam officially ended at 4 PM (I already finished it at 3 PM though). The answers and questions will be online at 5 PM (so in 30 minutes). It consisted of 11 texts about 40 questions (of which about 8 were open questions). The time you officially have to complete it is 2 hours and 30 minutes, but I finished it in 1,5 hours... and I'm not a native speaker, so all of you (except Ivar maybe) would probably finish it faster. I'll translate the few questions that were in Dutch (some of the open questions were) and then post the exam here so those that want to make it can do so. Just send me the answers and I'll give you your grade. They don't reveal the formula for calculating the grades on the 11th of June. They can decide to increase or decrease the grade by an entire point (our grades are between 1 and 10). Which formula they choose is actually based on the average scores across the country and the opinion of teachers... so if you are bad at a subject that a lot of people are good at you are screwed. Anyway I'll just use the standard formula for you, I could always tell you what your grade would be with another formula later. |
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Post by Pinda on May 21, 2015 12:16:16 GMT -5
The CITO (government institute that makes these exams) protected their PDFs of the questions and texts... which means I couldn't edit them. So I had to use alternative programs to translate the dutch questions. I missed question 6 though. I should say: "In which order should these paragraphs be placed in the text?"Other than that I think I translated everything that was Dutch. Just skip to the third page of the question file, that's were it really starts. The translations I made are written a smaller font, I didn't delete all the Dutch text but I just wrote the English translation above/beneath it most of the time. I didn't change anything in the text file. The texts themselves are in English (obviously) there aren't really any Dutch words that need translating there. QuestionsText |
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Post by Newan on May 21, 2015 18:44:12 GMT -5
I'll check them out later tonight or tomorrow, got to do some work for a few hours
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Post by Pinda on May 22, 2015 6:57:34 GMT -5
By the way, I - and many others - think there is a mistake in the exam, or rather in the answers. One of the questions should have "no" as its answer while the answersheet says "Yes". But since these are state-run exams it will take a while for the exam-makers to check if this is indeed a mistake or not. But it would be interesting to see if you got that question right or not...
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Post by Star on May 23, 2015 20:06:02 GMT -5
I won't have time this weekend since it's Memorial Day weekend and I've got my exams to study for, but after that, I'll look into this.
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English exams are only reading exams. You get a text and have to answer questions about it.
it’s been quite a while. I’ve been pretty good, how about yourself? 