Reading Time, Response Choice, and the External Examination
The external examination for Armenian has a reading and responding section. Students receive a small number of texts in Armenian, have a set reading time, and then answer questions in Armenian. One question offers a choice: respond to Text A or Text B. Text A is a short opinion piece about language maintenance in the diaspora, written in a formal register with several abstract nouns. Text B is a longer personal narrative about a family's return visit to Armenia, written in a simpler register with more concrete vocabulary but more text to read. Students have 15 minutes of reading time and 50 minutes of writing time for this section. Mariam reads Armenian confidently but writes slowly; she estimates she needs 30 minutes to compose a full response. Her classmate Tigran reads slowly but writes quickly. Their teacher has advised the class to 'choose the text you understand best'.
1. Analyse how Mariam should decide between Text A and Text B, using the constraints of the section rather than the teacher's general advice.
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The teacher's advice - 'choose the text you understand best' - is incomplete because understanding is only one of the constraints. The binding constraints are time to read, time to write, and what the question asks you to do with the text.
Mariam's budget: 15 minutes reading plus 50 minutes writing. She estimates 30 minutes to compose a full response, leaving 20 minutes of writing time unallocated - a buffer for planning, checking, and the possibility that the response runs long. So her real constraint is reading and planning, which must fit inside 15 minutes plus whatever she borrows from the 50.
- Text A is short but formal and abstract. For a confident reader, the reading time is low, but the response may demand abstract language in Armenian, which is harder to produce under time pressure - a risk for a slow writer, because abstract phrasing takes longer to compose and revise.
- Text B is longer but concrete and simpler. Reading takes longer, but the response is likely to be more straightforward to compose: narrative and concrete vocabulary are easier to produce fluently.
For Mariam, the deciding factor is composition cost, not comprehension cost. If the question on Text A requires her to argue abstractly in formal Armenian, the 30-minute estimate may be optimistic and she risks an incomplete response. Text B's longer reading is absorbed in the 15-minute reading period plus a few borrowed minutes, while its simpler register protects her writing time. She should choose Text B, unless a quick scan of the Text A question shows it can be answered concretely.
Tigran's profile inverts this: slow reading makes Text B's length a real risk to his reading time, while fast writing means the abstract composition cost on Text A is manageable. The same advice produces different choices because the constraint that binds is different.
2. During reading time, what should Mariam actually do, and how should she use the 50 minutes of writing time? Justify the allocation in terms of where marks are typically lost in this section.
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Reading time (15 minutes) should be used to decide and to plan, not to draft.
- First 3–4 minutes: read the question(s) before the texts, so she knows what she is reading for. Then skim both texts to confirm the choice.
- Next 6–8 minutes: read the chosen text closely, marking the parts the question directs her to. Underline the words the question uses (e.g., 'explain', 'compare', 'according to the writer') and locate the corresponding evidence.
- Final 3–4 minutes: write a skeleton plan in the margin - the points in order, and the specific evidence from the text attached to each. This is the highest-value use of reading time because it converts reading into a structure she can write from.
Writing time (50 minutes):
- 5 minutes: expand the skeleton into full sentence openings for each paragraph, in Armenian. This locks the structure before prose takes over.
- 30–35 minutes: write the response, following the plan. If she runs short of time, the plan guarantees every required point has at least a sentence.
- 8–10 minutes: check. Priorities: (a) does every part of the question have an answer? (b) is the evidence from the text actually cited, not paraphrased from memory? (c) agreement, case endings, and verb forms in the sentences she wrote under pressure.
Marks in this section are typically lost in three places: not answering every part of the question, asserting without evidence from the text, and language errors in the final rushed paragraph. The allocation above targets all three: the plan protects coverage, the evidence column protects the second, and the reserved checking time protects the third. A student who writes for 45 minutes and checks for 5 will usually lose more than one who writes for 35 and checks for 10.