Re: Examinations -- give,take,sit,write,...

dontbother <dontbother@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"shreevatsa" <shreevatsa.public@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Does a student "give an exam", "take the exam", "sit the exam", "sit
for the exam", "sit in the exam", "write the exam", "participate in
the exam", "do the exam", or do something else?

What happens to him when he succeeds? Does he "pass the exam", "pass
in the exam", "succeed in the exam", "win the exam", "qualify the
exam", ... ?
I hear a lot of people around me using "qualify the exam", but it
must be a translation from some Indian language, because it sounds
odd to me ("qualifying an exam" means attaching an adjective to it,
right?). I also hear them saying that the student gives the exam and
the teacher takes it, and it seems to me that it's the other way
round. Besides, the top search-engine results for "qualify {an|the}
exam[ination]" are all (at a glance, at least) from Indian sites, so
it's probably not standard English.

It seems to me that the expressions used are not universal. I've heard
people say that they "sat an exam", but that's not how we say it in
American English, in which it is, generally, "to take an exam".

I don't remember hearing anyone say that they had to "write and exam",
but if someone did, my inference would be that they had an essay exam
and not a multiple choice exam, which involves almost no writing
beyond one's name, examinee number, date, and other identifying
information.

In American classrooms, teachers give the exams and students take
them, not the other way around. OTOH, when they have finished the
exams, they give them to the teacher, and the teacher takes them and
then grades them.

When examinees are successful on an exam, they generally "pass the
exam", which might qualify them to do something like take a
higher-level

Insert "exam" here.

or be interviewed for a job.

What about competitive exams, where "pass" does not apply: "Students
who [insert phrase here] the exam are selected to [...]" ? Would
"qualify past the exam" be fine? "Qualify from the exam"?

No. "Students who pass the exam {will / are eligible to} be selected
{to / for} [whatever the exam is for]" is okay in American English.



--
Franke: EFL teacher and medical editor
Posting from Taiwan. Unmunged email: /at/hush.ai
It's all in the way you say it, innit?
.

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