Out of Pod Experience

There has been recently in news that students in Finland complain that the recent English test has been too hard.

So here's the written part:

Other parts are hearing and a free form writing test from given subjects, both in English.

Since I'm not a native speaker and have done that test my self 15 years ago, I'll take a peer review from the rest of the non native (and native) English speakers on this forum.

So you think that examination is too hard for a student who has studied English from a 3rd grade to high school (10 school years or so) ?

But how can the grades go up each year to "new record pass rates!!" if they are hard.

I'm a native English speaker, but I've taught English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and been a foreign language learner also. That test seems pretty difficult to me. The reading passages are all raw, natural English taken from magazines such as National Geographic, Oprah Magazine, and The Economist. They have quite a few idioms that only fairly advanced English speakers would be aware of. For example: "take ownership of," "intuited," "as we speak, Carson spends his day devouring trade magazines...."

I can't read the questions in Finnish, so I don't know how difficult they are. But those reading passages are pretty difficult for high school level, I think. In addition to understanding the English, the student has to have pretty good reading comprehension skills (in whatever language). I'd bet some native English-speaking high school students wouldn't comprehend the articles100%.

[WTH, I'm doing serial accidental double-posting today. ]

Well you could always learn Finnish

If I understand corectly it's about using the words that have so much meanings and they could be written just by these two words. We can't hold a candle to them.

But deciphering our languages is nothing to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript

Not Finnish here. Paper looks fine to me. It uses a basket of general public of English language articles from a number of contemporary sources. Exposes them to contemporary proper English from different writers, very good approach imo. Some of the questions are a bit tricky, but most of the answers are fairly obvious ... at least to me.

If they're complaining at this level, I'd have to shudder at what future generations will become.
Tell the Finns - adversity builds character. Don't they have Viking ancestors? (or are they seperate people?) ;)

Well no one really knows much about Finland and it's inhabitants before Swedish conquests from 1200's or so and even those records are sketchy at best.
Only thing certain is that there has been very few or perhaps none Viking raids recorded in sagas for the cost of Finland even if the route to Russia went straight past, also no recorded Viking settlements can be found from sagas that would be in Finland proper.
So that does raise a question of why ? when Vikings did settle every other place after all.

Most of the library of Swedish kings were destroyed in great fire so if there was a written evidence of larger settlements before the crusades we may never know.
There is however a curious pulla from pope to 'kuningatz de Rapola' or 'the king of Rapola' to give his castle for swedes to be used in the crusades but other then that no one seems know.

So who knows maybe ancestors of Finns were also Vikings or they lived mostly by them selves before the coming of swedes ?

Not really, that is the first non native to my language forum I am using, and i started using it 3 years ago.

As for Finland, Norway and Sweden you have common native people that were there before the vikings, they are called Saami and finnish language is similar to other languages of Ugric people like the other one in europe, Hungarian. Ugric peoples were natives present from scandinavia to the Ural mountains after the ice age, before more agricultural people started to show in those locations. Germanic and slavic people have indo-european heritage and language. Indo-european languages 500 years before Christ, but it's only probable area of them, people are still discussing those locations, especially at the end points in all directions, like Estonia or Iberia.

Hello again since these forums are filled with math geeks I figured to post these math tests here as well:

Math test (8-10 courses) advanced

Math test (6 courses)

I'll see if I can find those science tests as well (biology, history, chemistry, physics etc. on one paper).

edit:
Couldn't find translated tests or they may not even exist but I did found that the test-board has English translation on their web page: http://www.ylioppilastutkinto.fi/fi/english