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Text analysis and class-use in the examen práctico

Part 1A-Oposiciones profesores inglés varies greatly from one Autonomous Region to another.

Part 1A varies widely from one Autonomous Region to another

Canarias: Didactic orientation

In some Autonomous Regions like Canarias, the examen práctico has a wholly didactic orientation.  The candidates have to choose one action plan among several to develop it as a practical case in a Secondary School. The specific information  for the exam was provided here

Assessment criteria were included in the published call although we assume that the panels were provided with more specific guidelines or rubrics.

Other Autonomous Regions combine language and teaching proposals

Other Autonomous Regions combine text analysis of sorts with various types of language exercises and one or more proposals on how to teach some aspects of the text or even the whole text. Some include listening while others have a bit of translation. Or some years they do, and others they don’t.

I will briefly comment on the ones I know about because some of you, taking part in Poppies as a Collaborative Project in the making have sent me information on what you remember about the exam. More on this aspect at the end of the post.

Preparación Oposiciones Profesores Inglés

Andalusia

There was a text from the Washington Post of highly topical content, particularly in the USA. The exam included:

• Definition of words and verbal idioms (or phrasal verbs) from the text using as an example a complex sentence where those words/verbs were used in a different context.
• Translation of two paragraphs from the text into Spanish.
• 5 sentences to complete using one word from the text per sentence.
• Essay explaining how to use the text with CSE students.

Catalonia

There was a text analysis where candidates had to comment on:

• Style and the different topics covered in the paragraphs.
• Literary devices such as metaphors, anaphors, etc.
• Register, adequacy, cohesion, etc.
• How to use the text with 1st Bachillerato.

For the second task, the candidates had to design a Halloween workshop to be given by 4th-year CSE students for 1st-year students.

Murcia

Assessment criteria in Murcia were provided with a lot of detail for English on June 15th.

There was no listening this year, although there had been a listening activity in the previous call. Candidates were given 2 texts, one by C. Dickens the other by V. Woolf with 30 questions to answer. The questions included, among other:

• Identify the novel or mention other novels by the same author.
• Features of the novel
• Identify various literary devices such as simile, satire, humour, etc.
• Explain the meaning of some phrases
• Cohesion, deixis, endophoric reference, etc.
• Use of verb phrases in a given paragraph
• Lexical fields
• Phonetics and explanation of sounds
• Punctuation
• Dichotomy and its meaning
• Word-formation processes in certain words
• Questions on literature
• Imagery and its purpose
• Syntactic analysis
• Translation into Spanish
• Text types, genre and narrator
• School of literary criticism
• Learning Standard for Bachillerato most appropriate for text in terms of block of content, number of Learning Standard and summary of Learning Standard.
• Methodological guidelines for FLT in Bachillerato
• Lesson to foster productive oral skills on either gender equality or technological and industrial progress.

The two Castilles

In Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla-León there was also a combination of questions on text-analysis and how to teach something related to the text in question.

Castilla La Mancha had a text by Tom Wolfe. We covered Wolfe in Poppies Building Block 3 and is available for Poppies’ students and Sls Hallam’s former students regardless of the course they are doing. You’ll need a password, so contact me if you want to have access.

I do not include the type of questions because I haven’t been specifically told about them, although I do know they had to do with text type, genre, style and then some other questions related to teaching.

At all events, I encourage those who did the exam to share the contents as comments in this post.

As this is getting too long, I’ll comment on the Madrid Exam Práctico in the next post. You may also be interested in reading about Part 1B