Hi
At a typical lycée, when do French speakers/students/teachers use the term ‘examen’ and when do they use ‘épreuve’? As I understand examen is an exam and épreuve an assessment, but I’m not sure how French speakers differentiate them.
I look forward to your feedback.
Well in the baccalauréat “examen”, there are several “épreuves”: French, Maths, History/Geography, Physics, Biology,…
To pass the exam, you must have at least 10/20 on average of all the notes of the “épreuves”, each of them having a coefficient varying according to the cursus you’re following.
So (if I understand you correctly) an exam(examen) is a series of assessments (épreuves). Anglophones generally think of exams as individual tests that are marked to give a general score. We sit SATs or GCEs. In France (from my uderstanding) the Bac/Baccalaureate is referred to in the singular only.
I don’t speak French, but I wonder if the situation could be similar to the English words test and exam. If someone asked me what the difference was between the two (in the academic as opposed to medical setting) I’d have a difficult time coming up with a good explanation.
I’m curious if you’re in the USA, and is this another regionalism that I’ve never heard before. I grew up in NY and we never “sat” tests, we “took” them.
It sounds more like a British expression, so I’m wondering if parts of the USA use it too.
I think in the UK we wouldn’t have so firm a distinction. We talk about A-level exams, subjects or papers, referring to the individual subjects taken at that level, as well as to them collectively. But I think we would generally understand “test” to mean either a simple pass/fail, or a limited assessment of competence (like a driving test), or a progress check on how well pupils have learnt a specific area of a subject. Whereas an exam is the overall final, erm, test - or assessment - of what you know of the whole programme in the subject.
Some countries have leaving certificates (Ireland comes to mind). The Bac is something similar I presume. So presumably you ‘get’ your Bac/Leaving Certificate.
Here at McGill, we use test for a test taken in class and fairly informal. Often called a class test. Final exams are quite formal and, although made up by the instructors (or in committee for a multi-section course) and vetted by another professor. In the old days they were then typeset and invigilated (= proctored in US) by hired hands, usually graduate students who are paid to watch quite closely. They have mostly become less formal, but you cannot just make up a final the night before and write it on the blackboard in the exam as I used to do in the US. It seems to me that in the US there was no difference between test and exam.
I have the impression that in Quebec French they are all called examens, but I could be wrong. I don’t recall seeing épreuve used here.