The last big subject is done: That was the English central matura

With the exams in English, this year’s written Matura came to an end on Friday for the majority of the exam candidates. In the coming week there are still exams in French, Spanish, Italian, the minority languages ​​and those subjects whose tasks are not specified centrally. However, there are only a maximum of 1,000 to 2,000 high school graduates per day.

After the 46,000 exam candidates in German and 45,000 in mathematics, the last “big” exam day was on the program today with 29,000 people in English. However, the central Matura will not be formally completed until May 12th with the Italian exams. For those students who missed an exam due to illness, there will be alternative dates from May 16th. If you fail, you can improve your negative grade in the compensation exams on June 1st and 2nd.

The tasks for download

You can download part of the English Central Matura (language use, reading and writing) in the following PDF documents. You can find more tasks at matura.gv.at.

The annual author review

The traditional author criticism of the literature task at the German Central Matura is almost part of the Matura program. This year, one of the task packages available to choose from contained a comparative interpretation of two springtime poems by Bertolt Brecht and Marie-Luise Kaschnitz. This year, too, the “unfortunate narrowing of the final examination format, which puts a pathetic corset on the wide, exciting field of literature,” is evident again, according to the IG authors in a broadcast.

“The high school graduates must be trimmed in regular classes to this work-immanent interpretation of very short texts by de facto completely negated authors, which is demanded every year with almost identical sparse formulations,” it continues. This is “a state reading and literature distribution program”.

Without the corresponding biographical and work backgrounds, the texts could only be roughly classified, says the authors’ representative. If you absolutely want to stick to the central Matura, she suggests a changing reading list for the upper secondary schools and vocational schools. Knowledge of the authors of these works could be assumed. In general, however, the subject German is considered unsuitable for a central Matura.