Mar 05

The Last Chapter

Being back for almost a week now and I figured I should post a closing blog thing here.

A last look at the exams perhaps: I passed all my four exams (20, 22, 28 and 30 on 30), now I still need to get the “Transcript of Records” with those grades so I can officially present them to Group T. Mailing the incoming office of PoliTO asking for it is all you have to do… if all your professors have registered your grades already, which one of mine hasn’t done yet. Typically Italian-style, no rush ;)

There have been a lot of rumors about the exams at PoliTO, I can’t confirm them but ‘my sources’ tell me 90% of the people cheat on their exam and they easily get away with it! Such a thing is completely unthinkable in Belgium but scenarios such as “Please put away your slides, if I see them when I pass next time, you’ll get minus 4” aren’t uncommon. People texting, taking photos and collaborating, it’s pretty insane if you ask me.

I’m not generalizing of course but I’ve heard this from a lot of different people so it must be a thing. Italians are so focused on getting 28 or higher as companies expect nothing less than those grades. I’ve seen people retake their exam with a 25 out of 30 because they thought it was a “low” grade.

Retaking at PoliTO isn’t really hard, so failing the first time is not a big issue. You can send an email to your professor asking to delete the ‘bad’ grade and register for the second time which is usually about two weeks later. If you still haven’t passed then you’ll have to come back in another exam period (February, July or September).

That was it for me, Erasmus has been such a great experience you can only believe it if you have experienced it yourself. And so I close this Erasmus segment of my blog, feel free to ask me questions about Torino or PoliTO in case something is not clear for you, I’ll be happy to help you!

Dec 10

Italian A1 exam

Last week we finally had our Italian level A1 exam. This is the most basic version of the Italian language course you can take. If you don’t know a single word (besides mama mia! perhaps) you usually take this difficulty level.

For anyone coming to Politecnico di Torino and having this exam as a part of their Learning Agreement, rejoice, as it’s six credits you will never get as easy again as these. Basically, if you summarize the grammar rules you get from the coursebooks and learn the gender of a handful of words along with the irregular participio passato forms table you will do just fine on the exam.

This is a multiple choice test without error correction. There are fifty questions testing your knowledge of prepositions, verb conjugation and the like. However, of the five possible answers there are always four that are too obviously wrong. If you have some notion of Italian you can easily guess the correct answer by eliminating the, sometimes hilarious, possibilities.

So don’t be afraid or be stressed for this exam. It’s easy, especially if you went to the courses at the beginning of the semester. I’d say you would need about 2 to 4 hours of studying if you want to get 45+ out of 50. To my surprise I only made one mistake, sadly enough you cannot view what it was.

I really don’t know if the A1 exams of Italian are all this easy around the world, but an A1 certification tells someone you understand Italian on a really basic level. If you’re motivated I suggest you skip A1 and start with the A2 level, that might be more interesting and challenging for any student who has notion of Roman languages.

Nov 29

Examens, paperassen en andere dingen

Italian Exam Confirmation

Italian Exam Confirmation

Het is nu al even geleden dat ik nog een blogpost gedaan heb. Er is niet veel nieuw speciaals gebeurd tot gisteren. We vroegen ons al een goeie maand af wanneer ons Italiaans examen zou zijn want er was ons eerst gezegd geweest half november wat dan veranderd is naar eind november. Het is uiteindelijk de eerste/tweede week van december geworden. Nu, dit is een ideale manier om te zien hoe je je moet inschrijven voor examens op de PoliTO. Op je Didattica pagina vind je een link “Prenotazioni esame” die je naar een lijst brengt met alle mogelijke ingerichte examens. Je kiest een datum waarna je een bevestiging pdf krijgt die je moet afdrukken en meenemen naar het examen.

Letter of Confirmation

Letter of Confirmation

Deze week ook nog een papier gekregen van Groep T om te laten invullen door de PoliTO. Een bevestiging dat je hier weldegelijk gestudeerd hebt. Gelukkig is er tegenwoordig geen kat meer aan het aanschuiven bij het incoming office en heeft het dus amper twee minuutjes geduurd om het papier in orde te krijgen.

In de tussentijd nog een paar steden bezocht (Verona, Venetië, Padova en Rome), met de auto en met ErasmusTorino, die de vorige trip naar Firenze/Pisa/Bologna ook georganiseerd hebben. In december gaan ze ook nog naar Les Deux Alpes skiëen/snowboarden maar daar ga ik voor passen want het wordt hoog tijd om m’n samenvattingen verder af te werken zodat er in de kerstvakantie toch al een beetje geblokt kan worden.