Classical Studies: Exam with 1 hour preparation time and 30 min. of examination

About the subject

Classical Studies is a compulsory subject – we have to take it on the C-level meaning that we take it for one year. I had it in my final year of high school.

Throughout the year we learned about five different topics

Rhetoric and democracy
Drama
Epos
Philosophy
Achitecture

Under each topic we read and discussed texts in class:

Rhetoric and democracy:

Lysias’ first speech: On the Murder of Eratosthenes
Lysias’ twentyfourth speech: On the Refusal of a Pension
Thucydides: Pericles’ Funeral Oration

Drama:

Sophokles: Antigone

Epos:

Homer: The Iliad (excerpts)
Ovid: Heriode III

Philosophy:

Plato: The Allegory of the Cave
Plato: Protagoras

Achitecture:

Various elements on Greek and Roman temples
Greek and Roman architecture’s influence on posterity (Neoclassicism and historicism)

And then of course we learned about the historical background and the influence on posterity.

Format of the exam

Oral or written?: Oral

Preparation time: 1 hour

Examination time: 30 minutes

One hour before the exam starts you meet at the examination room, hand over your cell-phone to your teacher and the external examiner and then you draw a card with a number on. The number on the card refers to a text (which you’ve read in class) and a text from the present (which you have not seen before) or a picture of an antique building (again, which you haven’t seen before).

Then you are walked to another room where you have one hour to prepare two small presentations:

The known, antique text from class:

You have to prepare a presentation – the best method to use is Bloom’s taxonomy (make it your best friend!):

Present! What happens before the extract? What happens in the extract?
Analyse! Use as many terms as possible – but use them correctly!
Contextualise! Contextualise the text historically, draw parallels to other texts you have read in class and draw parallels to the that exact period of time and also the present.

The unknown texts from the present:

Again, use Bloom’s taxonomy – but focus on the analysis and the contextualisation!

Basically answer these questions:

What is the texts about?
Which parallels to the Antiquity can I draw? and to which texts?
Where does the text differ from the Antiquity?
How can I see a development from the Antiquity to the present?
What terms can I use to answer these questions?

The antique, unknown building:

Again – Bloom is you best friend! Just answer these questions:

What kind of building is it?
What terms can I use to describe the building?
Which other building(s) does it look like?
How has the architecture developed since then and how can you see it in the present?

Throughout the examination the teacher and external examiner will ask you questions which requires that you have a broad knowledge on the whole topic and on the other topics you’ve learned about throughout the year.

After approximately 24 minutes you will be asked to leave the room in order for your teacher and the external examiner to deliberate.

Then you will be called back to the room and you will get your grade and an explanation – and then hopefully leave the room satisfied and happy!

How did I prepare for this exam?

Number one thing to do is: Pay attention in class and take notes!

In class we had usually read some text and then we would get a sheet of questions we had to answer in small groups. After that we would always go through the questions in plenum.

These questions proved to be indispensable!

So what I did was I made a “master document” to each topic. In each document I included:

Key facts such as genre, dates, author etc.
The historical context
In depth details about the texts and the author(s)
A dictionary with terms
In some cases also a list of persons and their patronyms etc.
The questions we answered in class
The analysis of the example of texts from the present we went over in class.

Then I of course read all the texts and questions again, marked the important passages and added information and analysis where I felt the need to.

At the preparation is was therefore easy for me to quickly find the questions we had answered to the excerpt and then say this at the examination.

What this meant was that I could quickly find the information I needed during the very short amount of preparation time – you do not have time to analyse two texts, write everything down and whatnot in one hour! You need to be prepared!

Doing it this way also meant that I knew exactly what my teacher wanted me to touch on and which specific terms I could use to analyse – therefore Bloom was no problem 😉

Also, because I am very paranoid and never feel prepared, I also read around the topics – this is not necessary but very useful! It helps you get a broader understanding and it also helps you look more prepared. Your teacher and the external examiner will think that you are very smart, that you know your stuff, that you care and are interested. Knowing stuff from outside the curriculum will also give you some show-off points and you will leave a good impression. Yay for showing off at oral exams 😉 Keep in mind that this is only something you should do when you have the whole curriculum under control and if you have extra time.

All this made me leave the exam with a 12 – aka. the highest possible grade. Also, my teacher and the external examiner were very impressed and told me they had a hard time coming up with new questions – which in hindsight I feel like I noticed.

#Oralexam #Classicalstudies