III Year Lettorato 1st Semester Class Test ("esonero") - results

Dear students, please find below the results of the first semester class test.

As a whole, I have been disappointed by the test results. What has been most frustrating is that so many of you did very poorly on the grammar exercise, especially since we concentrated heavily on grammar in the first semester, and because the exercise problems were all based on work you were supposed to have studied in Michael Vince's book. The specific problems on the test were very similar to ones in the exercises we studied. On the other hand, some responses in the translation section were very good, which is an encouraging sign.

In addition to checking your mark, please read the information below the list in order to prepare for the second semester.

Abdipour, Atefeh                                6

Ammoscato, Chiara                            10

Aurizi, Veronica                                  18

Barone, Valentina                               16

Bellano, Maria Grazia                         21

Bernile, Giada                                    18

Bozzelli, Giovanna Fausta                  14

Castrucci, Carola                               16

D'Agnano, Camilla                             10

De Angelis, Maria Laura                    17

De Santis, Luca                                 12

Dell'Aquila, Michele                           15

Di Tullio, Ambra                                 13

Durand Herrera, Erick                        15

Filizzola, Elisa                                     18

* Gentile, Alessia                                13

Grillo, Giuseppina                               14

Illiano, Giulia                                      16

Ingafu Del Monaco, Federica             15

Iuè, Andrea                                        13

La Porta, Valeria                                10

Leone, Elisa                                       11

Macciocca, Giulia                              12

Magnotta, Chiara                               10

Marchetti, Rosamaria                         12

* Mollica, Mara                                 15

Morgia, Martina                                 17

Mulargia, Elisa                                    13

Penta, Giada                                       11

Polito, Noemi                                     11

Pulicani, Valentina                                9

Romualdo, Martina                             17

Tagliavini, Tatiana                                19
Tozaj, Gentiana                          14

SPECIAL  NOTE:

If you received less than 15/30 on the 1st esonero, you must also review intermediate level grammar. In addition to your 1st year lettorato textbooks, you should buy a good intermediate level grammar manual and do ALL of the exercises in it.

Here are some of the books I recommend:

Raymond Murphy. English Grammar in Use. Cambridge University Press.
John Hird. The Complete English Grammar for Italian Students. Oxford University Press.
Norman Coe & Anna Amendolagine. Grammar Spectrum. Oxford University Press.

Before our course resumes in the second semester, you should all very carefully review grammar chapters 1-14 in Vince. You should also review the vocabulary chapters 1, 3 and 4. In addition I strongly suggest that each one of you confirm your knowledge of Upper-Intermediate level grammar (corresponging to II year lettorato) by doing all of the exercises in the Upper-Intermediate section of Grammar Scan. For the exercises you get wrong, check the relevant information and explanations in Michael Swan, Practical English Usage. After finishing the Upper-Intermediate section in Grammar Scan, you may move on to the Advanced section, which we started at the beginning of the first semester.

In addition to all of this grammar work, you should be reading in English as much as possible – at minimum 30 minutes every day. I suggest you get in the habit of reading an English language newspaper every day (the online versions are absolutely fine, but the paper version is probably easier to flip through to quickly find articles that interest you). For example, try The Independent ( http://www.independent.co.uk/ ), The New York Times ( http://www.nytimes.com/ ), The Los Angeles Times ( www.latimes.com/ ), and the BBC ( http://www.bbc.com/ ). Another good option is to read the English section of the Corriere della Sera website ( www.corriere.it/english/ ), composed of English translations of articles originally written in Italian. In this case you can read both the English translation and the original article (you will have to search for it on the Italian site) to get some more clues about how to write good translations.

All of this will be helpful for the second semester and the next test.

Good luck! I wish you all the best!