What's a Klaseur?

Before Ferien, I had the lovely honor of writing my very first Klaseur. A Klaseur is simply a test that comes either once or twice a year depending on the subject area. There are some subjects where you must take this test such as math, German, a science (of your choice), and any foreign language (ie. english or french). Afterwards, it is recommended that you choose six subjects in which to take a Klaseur, but which subject you choose is up to each student. I have found you can even write one for gym class over the anatomy of the body during a specific game or in art class over a particular artistic technique.

I found that the atmosphere regarding each Klaseur was roughly the same as the ACT. These Klasueren are timed 90 minutes to finish with a few minutes grace period to finish a thought. All students are set up in one room and sit at individual desks. Luckily, I the schedule worked out to where math was my first and english was my second Klaseur so I was able to see the set-up before a particularily difficult subject. The math was set up just like every other math test with one calculator and non-calculator section set up with questions and answers. There were a few questions in which we had to give descriptions of how we came to that answer.

The english Klaseur was a little different in the fact that each student was given a german to english dictionary, great for everyone else but not so much for myself. The test was essay and analysis based, where each student was given the same text to analyze the writing format, atmosphere, characters, and text structure. For this particular english Klaseur, we were also given an argumentative essay section where we justified our opion based on what the text had given us over the subject. I found out that most Klaseurs are set-up with the question essay based format and you cannot find a test in Germany that is multiple choice.