PAU Foreign Language II: English (Castilla-La Mancha) study guide
PAU Foreign Language II: English (Castilla-La Mancha) · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The PAU Foreign Language II: English exam is the English component of the university entrance assessment taken by students in Castilla-La Mancha who want to begin a degree at a Spanish university. It is designed for school leavers and older candidates who have completed the regional Bachillerato or an equivalent qualification and need to demonstrate that they can understand and produce written English at a level roughly corresponding to B2 on the CEFR. The PAU Foreign Language II: English (Castilla-La Mancha) study guide has 4 sections and about 2,015 words.
01Reading Comprehension of Authentic English Texts
Reading comprehension opens the Castilla-La Mancha PAU English paper and is the block where technique pays fastest. The text is authentic and unadapted - a press article, opinion column, popular-science piece or short literary extract of roughly 400–600 words - and the questions test global understanding, specific detail, inference, the meaning of words in context and textual reference.
495 words, about 2 min02Written Production: Composition and Opinion/Argumentative Text
The written production block asks for a single text of about 120–150 words on one of two options, typically an opinion or argumentative essay but sometimes a narrative, a description, an informal email or a for-and-against piece. Marks are banded across four things: task achievement (do you answer the exact question, in the right genre and register?), organisation (paragraphing, topic sentences, linkers), lexical range (varied, precise, correctly collocated vocabulary) and grammatical accuracy (tenses, agreement, sentence structure).
513 words, about 3 min03Lexical Competence: Vocabulary in Context, Word Formation, Collocation
Lexical competence questions test whether you can choose the right word and put it in the right form. In the Castilla-La Mancha paper this appears as synonyms in context, word formation (completing a gap from a root printed in capitals), collocation and phrasal-verb gaps, and it is also scored indirectly in the writing.
478 words, about 2 min04Grammatical Competence: Verb Tenses, Syntax, Sentence Transformation
Grammatical competence covers tense choice, sentence structure and sentence transformation : rewriting a sentence so that it means the same, using a given word, usually within a limit of two to five words including that word. The given word must appear unchanged, the meaning must be identical, and the structure requested (passive, conditional, reported speech) must actually appear - a rewrite that keeps the meaning but ignores the cue scores nothing.
529 words, about 3 min