State Exams

BC State Exam Topics – valid from summer term 2024

The exam covers two fields – Literature (15′) nad Linguistics (15′)

Topics in Literature

Topics in Linguistics

 

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MA State Exam Topics – valid from summer term 2023

Didactics. (New Version) Length of the part – 20 minutes.

            The exam will include:

  1. Discussion of a theoretical issue in ELT methodology (see the list below).
  2. Practical task to be designed impromptu.

A student will be assigned teaching materials (a text for reading or listening, a picture/pictures, song lyrics, etc) and will have to suggest a set of activities  in order to achieve a certain objective. For example:  Reflect upon  the following picture. Suggest some activities to use them as stimuli for oral work/skill integration at A2 (B1) level.

  1. Discussion of a portfolio. The portfolio should include:
  • lesson plans (minimum 6) with all the necessary supporting materials
  • reflective paper based on the competences defined in the EPOSTL with the help of ‘can-do descriptors’. The paper should also contain description of your further steps in learning teaching.

 Theoretical issues for discussion:

  1. Historical overview of language teaching methods. Advantages and disadvantages of the methods of the past. Post method era. Principles of language teaching.
  2. The Informed and Enlightened ‘Approach.’ Communicative Language Teaching.
  3. CEFR versions (2001 and 2018) and their impact on foreign language teaching in the Czech Republic. The action-oriented approach and common reference levels.
  4. Motivation in language learning. Characteristics, types and sources. The components of motivational teaching practice.
  5. Teaching listening. An overview of listening comprehension: Processes, building mental representation of meaning. Factors that make listening difficult.
  6. Teaching listening. Learners’ competences for listening in CEFR new companion (B1). Pre/while/post-listening stages and their rationale.
  7. Research findings related to teaching reading. Categories for reading in CEFR.
  8. Intensive and extensive reading. Skimming and scanning. Techniques for checking reading comprehension. Purposes of pre/while/after-reading stages.
  9. Oral communication skills in ELT research. Oral interaction. Characteristics of spoken language.
  10. CEFR (Companion volume with new descriptors). Categories of overall spoken production and spoken interaction. Examples of descriptors for Pre-A1 – B1 level.
  11. Types of classroom speaking performance. Principles for teaching speaking skills. Maximising speaking opportunities and facilitating autonomous language use.
  12. Teaching talk as interaction. Simulation and role-plays.
  13. CEFR (Companion volume with new descriptors) levels for writing. Categories of overall written production.
  14. Research on second language writing. Difference between written and spoken language. Social and cultural aspects of writing.
  15. Approaches to teaching writing. Teaching writing: types of classroom writing performance. Principles for teaching writing skills.
  16. Ways of presenting grammar: deductive vs inductive. Texts and contexts. Grammar as a communicative resource. A cognitive model of learning stages. Communicative criteria and grammar activities. Types of prompts for practicing grammar.
  17. Teaching lexis: how words are remembered and learned; ways of presenting vocabulary (explanation and illustration of meaning) and practicing vocabulary. Types of activities for vocabulary practice or integration.
  18. Teaching phonetics: goals and principles. CEFR on phonological control. The Lingua Franca Core and the most important phonological features. Activities.
  19. CLIL: core features and underlying principles.
  20. Teacher development: reflection, collaboration with colleagues. Teacher competences.

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Linguistics: Exam domains for distribution

  1. Theories of reference: a) The referential theory of meaning b) Categorization principles and prototypes
  2. Features of verb semantics: a) Lexical aspect and verb meaning b) Manner, motion and path
  3. Linguistic paradigms: Shifts and challenges: a) Theory formation in linguistic history b) The Philosophy of language
  4. Language and culture: a) The neo-Whorfian model of semantics b) Anthropological linguistics
  5. Language change and the history of English:  a) Sound change: types and motivations b) Lexical change: borrowing and lexical loss
  6. The linguistic study of pragmatics: a) Speech acts and discourse situations b) Coherence and cohesion
  7. Language acquisition: a) Nature vs. nurture b) First vs. second language acquisition
  8. Language in society: a) Language and social groups b) Varieties of English world-wide
  9. Language and cognition: a) Conceptual metaphors b) Language processing
  10. Research methods in linguistics: a) Questionnaire design & field research methods b) Quantitative data evaluation

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MA State Exams in English and American Literature
Instructions for the British and American Literature Final State Exam
The content of the final state exam covers the historical development of literature from the beginnings to the 20th and 21st centuries, ie. the material of the subsequent courses (British Literature 1, 2 and 3, American Literature 1 and 2). Your basic orientation tool for studying for the exam are the syllabi for the courses, available in the moodle. The syllabi also contain the “Recommended Readings” section, ie. references to secondary sources useful for your study.

However, the syllabi provide you only with the basic structure for your preparation, you need to do a lot of reading and studying independently to prove your competent orientation in the given subject. For the exam, bring a reading list, which you can understand as a representative portfolio of your work in literature. For preparing your reading list, heed the following guidelines:
• Your reading list must contain a minimum of 50 titles of primary literature.
• Your list must be organized chronologically, neatly and clearly structured and computer-typed. The items must be numbered.
• Your reading list must cover the material discussed in all the literary courses in equal proportion, that is, all the major periods of the historical development of British and American literature.
• Only 70% of the titles can be texts indicated in the course syllabi.
• The titles on your reading must represent all the major literary genres, ie. poetry, prose, and drama, in reasonably equal proportion. (To be precise, all three major genres must be represented by the minimum of 20% of the titles on your list.)
• An item/title on your reading list generally means a book-length text. That means you need to list collections of poetry or short stories, or selections of poems or short stories by the same author or of the same genre or time period, not individual poems or short stories. Exceptions are long poems such as T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland, or long short stories.
• Do not list more items than two for one author. Exceptions are poems and short stories (see the point above), and truly major writers such as Dickens, and, of course, Shakespeare:
(You can list more items by one author on the condition that it is above the minimum count of 50 items total on your list. You can use this “bonus count” to indicate your
reading preferences and strong points, and thus to inspire the discussion during the exam.)
• Your list must include five plays by Shakespeare, generally in the following proportion: two tragedies, two comedies, and one other play (historical play, romance etc.)
• Besides primary readings, your list must contain a minimum of 8 titles of secondary readings – literary histories, reference books, critical essays etc.

The oral exam will start by the discussion of your reading list, and test your knowledge, and, more importantly, understanding of the titles you have put on it, with focus both on their thematic structures and formal and stylistic features. (While preparing, do not focus on retelling plots, but on analysing and interpreting them. And, do not forget to take the language of literature into consideration!) From there we will move to the discussion of the context – that is, you will be asked to demonstrate your understanding of the historical and cultural background of literature, and the relevance of the individual works within it.
And, most importantly, do not forget to have fun with literature!

 

Master State Exam Questions – Literature

  1. The Aesthetics of the English Renaissance. Literary and Cultural Tradition of the Renaissance. Theoretical and Critical Reflections of Renaissance Literature.
  2. From Classicism to Neo-classicism. The Archetypal Patterns in Literature in English. The Classical Tradition and its Transformations.
  3. The Age of Reason. The Ideology of the Enlightenment. Forms and Manifestations of Realism in English-language Fiction.
  4. The Aesthetic Ideology of Romanticism. Theoretical Reflections of Romantic Poetry. Transformations of Romanticism.
  5. Transformations of Realism in English-language Literature – Naturalism, Regionalism, Aestheticism.
  6. The Context and Aesthetic Ideology of Modernism. Forms and Manifestations of Modernism in English-language Literature.
  7. From Modernism to Postmodernism. Postmodernist Concerns and Their Manifestations in English-language Literature.
  8. Women’s Writing, Feminisms, and Their Reflections in English-language Literature.
  9. Multiculturalism as Aesthetic Ideology. Reflections of Cultural Diversity in English-language Literature.
  10. Ways of Reading, or, From Text to Context. New Criticism, Structuralism, Reader-Response Criticism. Interfaces of Literary Texts and Literary Theories.