UNIVERSITY OF MALTA
THE MATRICULATION CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION
INTERMEDIATE LEVEL
SPANISH
MAY 2011
EXAMINERS’ REPORT
MATRICULATION AND SECONDARY EDUCATION CERTIFICATE
EXAMINATIONS BOARD
IM Examiners’ Report – May 2011
IM SPANISH
MAY 2011 SESSION
EXAMINERS’ REPORT
The following statistical table includes this year’s results together with those of the
previous six years for comparative purposes. It represents the number and
percentage of candidates attaining each grade.
YEAR
No. and % of candidates
obtaining each grade
B
C
D
E
A
F
ABSENT
TOTAL
2005
0
0%
0
0%
4
30.8%
2
15.4%
3
23.1%
2
15.4%
2
15.4%
13
100%
2006
0
0%
0
0%
5
35.7%
2
14.3%
4
28.6%
2
14.3%
1
7.1%
14
100%
2007
0
0%
3
23.1%
5
38.5%
3
23.1%
2
15.4%
0
0%
0
0%
13
100%
2008
2
11.1%
5
27.8%
4
22.2%
5
27.8%
1
5.6%
1
5.6%
0
0%
18
100%
2009
3
33.3%
2
22.2%
2
22.2%
0
0%
1
11.1%
0
0%
1
11.1%
9
100%
2010
4
25.0%
2
12.5%
5
31.3%
1
6.3%
3
18.8%
1
6.3%
0
0%
16
100%
2011
2
10.5%
5
26.3%
6
31.6%
2
10.5%
1
5.3%
3
15.8%
0
0%
19
100%
General Comments
The number of candidates applying for this examination has once again
encouragingly increased to 19 this year, the highest number as yet. The level of
marks obtained was also high, with 68% obtaining a grade C or higher. All scripts
were seen by three markers and a marking scheme was used for all papers.
Focused remarks
Essay writing (Redacción)
The choice of topics offered this year was again intended to present situations and
themes related to the candidates’ lives and experiences. The vast majority chose to
write about a film they had watched and particularly enjoyed. The second most
preferred topic involved creating an advert to find a student with whom to carry out a
language exchange. A few chose to write a letter of complaint to a computer-selling
company and one chose to write about having fallen victim to a rumour or a
misunderstanding. No one chose to tackle the argumentative essay about the idiom
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IM Examiners’ Report – May 2011
‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.’ Candidates seem to feel less at ease
writing argumentative essays and more comfortable describing familiar situations,
talking about their experiences and expressing their personal opinions.
In general, the candidates fared quite well in all the five criteria assessed in this
writing task, namely adequate pragmatics, semantic coherence, grammatical
cohesion, normative correction and the use of varied expressions and idioms. The
candidates fulfilled their expected communicative objectives, respected social
conventions and expressed themselves well by including all the necessary
information in their writing. Most candidates demonstrated sound knowledge of the
topic chosen and of the discursive conventions required for the genre or essay
structure, whether it was a letter, advert, narration, description, etc. In some specific
cases, candidates tackled challenging aspects of the task and employed advanced
stylistic characteristics including a variety of expressions, complex sentence
structures and different figures of speech. These efforts were positively evaluated.
However, major problems were noted with regard to semantic and grammatical
cohesion in the use of conjunctions, juxtapositions and linking words. Serious
problems were also observed in the use of punctuation marks. As regards normative
correction, one should point out that there was a serious lack of good accentuation,
frequent errors in orthography and a recurrent interference of other languages –
particularly Italian, and French to a lesser extent – which was penalized by the
examiners.
Reading Comprehension (Comprensión)
The reading text presented to test the candidates’ comprehension skills was adapted
from a recent article which featured in one of the most widely-known Spanish
newspapers, ‘El País’, about an interview to a famous song-writer and singer. The
candidates demonstrated a good understanding of the text in general and tried to
answer the open-ended questions in their own words. However, this turned out to be
the hardest exercise of the whole paper, with an average mark of 17 out of 30. In
some cases, the lack of appropriate lexical knowledge made it difficult to formulate a
precise answer. The majority of the candidates also found it difficult to find
synonyms, as was required of them in question 5, especially for what are considered
to be common words: ‘canción’ (‘melodía’) and ‘disco’ (‘álbum’). The global result of
this comprehension exercise indicates that the candidates need to be better
prepared to tackle current texts for communicative purposes such as: cinema guides,
advertisements and literary, musical or sport criticisms – texts which are considered
to be important for students studying the language.
Literary texts and cultural themes (Textos literarios y temas culturales)
In this section, candidates must choose to attempt either the section dealing with
Literature or the one which tackles Cultural topics. Candidates still prefer to choose
the literary option rather than that of culture, and once again, El Quijote was the most
popular choice in this section. As has already been stated in last year’s report, one
needs to investigate the reason for this preference over El Lazarillo de Tormes and
whether a better choice of literary texts could be offered in prospective syllabi to
generate a more equal balance in the candidates’ choice.
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IM Examiners’ Report – May 2011
The board of examiners observed that some of the candidates’ essays demonstrated
a certain depth of analysis and were of good quality, both with regard to content
knowledge as well as language use. In general, the candidates fared well in the topic
chosen although, in some cases, the candidates limited themselves to a mere
description of particular literary aspects rather than a literary analysis with superficial
commentaries. The very few candidates, three in all, who chose themes related to
the Hispanic culture section, tended to be vague in their answers, speaking too
generally and using terms too wide about the topic. Their essays were not concrete
and were poorly structured. Particularly for this section, the board of examiners
would like to make it clear to future candidates that more specific, detailed and
relevant answers are expected.
Oral - Conversation (Conversación)
In this part of the examination, pronunciation, lexical and grammatical competence
as well as fluency were examined. Six themes were given which, once again, were
considered to be familiar to the candidates’ everyday situations: talking about one’s
daily routine, describing friends and friendships, recalling a childhood memory,
imagining one’s future in 15 years time, recommending tourist visits in Malta and
arguing about recycling and sustainable development. The majority of the candidates
presented a high level of competence in all the four skills evaluated and it is highly
satisfying to state that the lowest mark obtained in this exercise was again 5 out of
10 and that the average mark for this section of the exam was 7.
Conclusion
As was concluded in last year’s report, still more importance needs to be given to the
candidates’ discursive and communicative competences. This year, this was mostly
evident in the candidates’ answers to the reading comprehension section.
Chairperson
Board of Examiners
May 2011
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