PAU Foreign Language II: Italian (Canary Islands)

You receive a booklet with one or more Italian texts and a set of comprehension items, usually a mix of multiple choice, true/false with justification, and short answers, followed by guided written production tasks such as a short composition, a letter or a summary. Grammar and vocabulary are assessed through the comprehension and production tasks rather than as a separate isolated section in most recent models.

Candidates generally describe it as comparable to the other second-language options, pitched around B1–B2. The reading texts are accessible if you have done two years of Bachillerato Italian, but the production tasks reward accuracy in verb forms, pronouns and agreement. Candidates with no school Italian but strong Spanish or Catalan often progress quickly because of shared vocabulary.

The official body sets and publishes the duration and the number and weighting of items for each year's call, so check the current official documentation and the model papers on the university access website for the Canary Islands rather than relying on older versions. As a rule, plan your time so that comprehension does not consume the minutes you need for the writing tasks.

Retake rules are set by the access procedure in force for your year, so confirm the current conditions with the Canary Islands education authority or the university you are applying to. In practice, candidates often sit the exam again in a later call to raise the grade used for admission, and the higher mark is the one that counts where the regulations allow it.

A workable split is roughly half your time on reading and vocabulary in context, a third on grammar accuracy, and the rest on timed writing. Read a short Italian article every day and note five useful expressions. Then write one 120–150 word text per week and correct it against a checklist of tenses, agreement and connectors.

Typical losses come from answering comprehension items in Spanish instead of Italian, copying whole sentences from the text instead of paraphrasing, ignoring word limits, and letting verb endings and adjective agreement slip in the writing. Others misread the task type, for example writing an opinion essay when a formal letter was asked for, or omitting the required greeting and closing.

Yes, a small part of the paper and of the marking criteria relates to cultural and intercultural knowledge of the Italian-speaking world, and cultural content can appear in the reading texts. You do not need exhaustive knowledge: familiarity with Italian geography, regions, main cities, everyday customs and a few current social topics is enough to handle the tasks comfortably.

Prioritise present, perfect and imperfect tenses, the future, the conditional, and the subjunctive in the structures the tasks invite, plus direct and indirect pronouns, agreement of articles and adjectives, and prepositions. Also practise the connectors that make a text coherent, such as inoltre, tuttavia, quindi and d'altra parte, because examiners reward organisation as well as correctness.

The Canary Islands education authority and the universities publish the current syllabus, the structure of the paper and model exams for the access procedure. Download the most recent ones for your year, because the format can change between calls, and use them for timed practice. This page is independent study material and is not affiliated with the official bodies.