English Entrance Exam Interface
IMPORTANT: Note that our exams are divided into sections. Every time the exam is opened, the questions in these sections may be shuffled. To avoid losing progress, especially for the audio portions, we strongly recommend completing our exams in one sitting, as mentioned. If this is not possible, at least complete the section you are working on before leaving the exam. This will prevent the exam shuffling in a new question when you next log in, or erasing any work you have completed.
Copy/Pasting from Outside Sources
DO NOT paste your answers into the exam's text box from an external formatting program, for any question. Outside formatting can be present in text that comes from external sources (such as Word), which can interfere with our platform and wreak havoc on your accuracy percentages. In particular, watch out for curly quotes, a.k.a Smart Quotes, which will lower your scores if pasted into the exam. Even programs such as Notepad and TextEdit may contain smart quotes if you do not change the program's default settings.
To avoid potential mishaps, always type your answers directly into the box provided. You are welcome to copy/paste your work into a program such as Word or Grammarly to check for errors - we highly recommend this, actually - but be sure to make changes directly into the text box, not by copy/pasting the change from the outside source.
Instructions
At the very top of the screen you will see a set of instructions. Each question contains detailed information as to how to properly complete the question and section as a whole. Read each question carefully so that you know how to properly format your answers.
Audio Player
The audio player contains the following features:
- Play/Pause: This button pauses or plays the audio. Hotkey: Ctrl + /
- Forward/Rewind: These buttons will cause the audio to jump forward or back 5 seconds. Hotkeys Ctrl + . and Ctrl + ,
- Volume: Control the hub's volume from here. Hotkeys are Ctrl + ] to increase the volume, Ctrl + [ to decrease.
- Time Bar: You can jump to a specific part in the audio by clicking on the time bar. The given time - in this screenshot, 7 seconds - shows how far you are into the audio.
Hotkeys
Clicking the blue Hotkeys button next to the Audio Player will open a box showing the hotkeys' functionalities. They do the same as described above, with the addition of Ctrl + ' and Ctrl + ; which speed up or slow down the audio. Remember that both Windows and Mac use C
Please note that these are two-key hotkeys. The plus symbol (+) is used only to indicate that both keys need to be pressed in conjunction with each other.
If you hit the key combination of Ctrl and the plus key (+), you will zoom in your screen. This can be reversed by hitting the Ctrl key and the minus (-) key at the same time.
DON'T Exit Before Completing a Section
If you do NOT follow the above advice of completing the full section before saving and exiting, be prepared to have to redo that full section before proceeding. For the audio sections, this means having to retranscribe each audio or possibly transcribing entirely different ones. When returning to complete the exam, repeat the steps outlined in the Before You Begin section.
Can I backtrack and redo part of the exam?
No. Once you have hit the Next button for a question, you will no longer be able to go back to that question again. If you accidentally skip past a question or you know you have answered a question incorrectly, you will have the opportunity to amend your mistake by using a retry for that section once you have completed the whole exam.