2.0 THE EXAM

2.0 THE EXAM

2.1 Information about the exam may be found on the CEETC website under Preparation.

2.2 There are two parts to the exam:

Part One (The Objective Language Tasks)

This part of the exam deals with the grammatical rules of English and evaluates the student’s ability to recognize and correct common errors.

A number of different kinds of errors are specifically targeted:

commonly misspelled, misused or confused words;

 common structural errors such as subject-verb agreement and other verb form errors;

punctuation errors including semicolons/colons, comma splices;

run-on sentences;

use of apostrophes, quotations and capitalization;

Gallicisms or “faux amis”.

This part consists of ten (10) multiple choice questions and twenty (20) short answer questions.

The short answer questions will test your knowledge of the grammatical rules of English concerning adverbs, apostrophes, capitalization, double negatives, Gallicisms, homophones, object pronouns, past participles, spelling and sentence structure. The multiple choice questions will test your ability to recognize and correct common errors in the use of direct and indirect speech,  punctuation, verb tenses and sentence structure.

Part Two (The Professional Writing Tasks)

This part of the exam consists of two tasks that are based on the reading of a source document (taken from a current MEES document) and a table of numbers.

The student is asked to take the role of a teacher at a Québec school.

For the first task, students are required to read the authentic source document and to write a letter of between 300 and 500 words to parents summarizing and synthesizing the information in the document and inviting their participation in a school or board initiative based on the document.

For the second task, students are required to read the table that shows parental responses to their letter. Based on the table, students  must write an email of between 150 and 300 words to a colleague or group of colleagues at their school summarizing the table and noting patterns in the responses that can be discussed at an upcoming staff meeting.

Responses to either of the tasks that do not meet the minimum number of words will not be corrected.

2.3 Students must pass both parts of the exam.

2.4 The use of a paper dictionary and/or thesaurus is permitted during the Professional Writing Tasks only. Students are not permitted to share dictionaries or thesauruses.

2.5 The time allocated for the exam is 120 minutes: 30 minutes for the Objective Language Tasks and 90 minutes for the Professional Writing Tasks.

2.6 Students write the exam on a computer provided by the university.