Catalonia PAU Foreign Language - English study guide
Catalonia PAU Foreign Language - English · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The PAU English exam (Llengua estrangera: Anglès) is the foreign-language component of Catalonia's university entrance assessment, taken by students finishing Batxillerat and by candidates entering through other routes. It is used by Catalan public universities as part of the admission score, and the mark can also count towards the specific-phase weighting for degrees that treat English as a relevant subject. The Catalonia PAU Foreign Language - English study guide has 5 sections and about 2,056 words.
01Reading comprehension
Reading comprehension is the first block of the Catalonia PAU English paper. You get a text of roughly 400–500 words - usually an adapted newspaper or magazine article - and a set of items that test four things: locating explicit information, following the writer's argument, working out the meaning of unfamiliar words from context, and reading between the lines.
438 words, about 2 min02Written production (guided composition)
Written production is the guided composition. The paper gives you a choice of two tasks; you write one composition of the length stated in the prompt (typically around 120–150 words).
415 words, about 2 min03Lexis and vocabulary in context
Vocabulary is tested in two places: inside the reading questions (word in context, synonym matching) and in the Use of English items (gap fill, word formation, collocation). What is measured is not translation knowledge but whether you know how a word behaves - which words it combines with, which preposition it takes, which word class the gap requires and whether its register fits.
402 words, about 2 min04Grammar and sentence-level accuracy
Sentence-level accuracy covers the grammar that appears in gap-fill and transformation items: tense and aspect, subject–verb agreement, articles and quantifiers, conditionals, modal verbs, relative clauses, gerund versus infinitive, and pronoun reference. In transformation items the rule is absolute: the new sentence must mean the same as the original, using the structure or word the prompt gives you.
397 words, about 2 min05Coherence, cohesion and text organisation
Coherence and cohesion is how the examiner judges the organisation of your composition, and how the reading paper tests 'which sentence fits the gap' items. Coherence is the logic - ideas in a sensible order, one per paragraph.
404 words, about 2 min