Maturità 2025, here are the tips to arrive ready for the Italian test

The reform of the first test of the state exam drawn up by the commission headed by the late Luca Serianni in 2018 was intended to overcome the abstractness of the textual types proposed up to that time, such as the so-called general theme, the short essay or the newspaper article, which for the most part had little function in real communication.

The aim was to test the 'maturandi' on concrete communication experiences, thereby enhancing the argumentative techniques of written Italian because 'any school discipline, any work that is not merely executive and, more generally, the critical awareness that must be assumed in a citizen of age, whatever course of study he or she has attended, requires such mastery' (Commission document). The current first test, in force as of 2019, must therefore serve to assess the student's ability to comprehend and elaborate in writing, a future citizen ready to face, after secondary school, further studies or professional life.

As a corollary to these premises, what guidance should be given to the final year students? First of all, a note of reassurance: there is no single solution to the questions posed by the tracks, to which each student must respond according to his or her own skills and course of study; this does not mean that it is permissible to write anything, but that, within the limits of relevance and coherence, each student must draw on his or her own educational path and experiences and construct personal syntheses. It also follows that every student, of whatever school order, can deal with all three types: students coming from technical or vocational courses should not exclude the analysis of a narrative or poetic text just because they have studied literary subjects in a less specific manner. Each student, in fact, is called upon to use the tools in his or her possession on the basis of the path they have followed during their school years, the knowledge they have acquired and the skills they have acquired. The results will necessarily differ between students of different school orders, but what really counts is not so much the abundance of knowledge, even very refined knowledge, put into play, but the demonstration of having understood the assignment and of having been able to carry it out coherently, each with the tools they have acquired.

The important thing is to follow a few steps. The first is understanding both the proposed outline and the questions. It seems a simple objective, but it is not; comprehension requires slow and concentrated reading and an exercise of method is necessary to prepare oneself to read the text carefully, to grasp the passages of meaning and expression; I recommend reading and re-reading the text, summarising it at least mentally and marking each time the stimuli that emerge. One should not be frightened if one finds oneself faced, for type A, with an unknown author or text; the choices of recent years have gone in the direction of authors from the tradition, also to reassure the mature students after the pause due to the pandemic; but if the text is by an author who was not read at school (it can happen: Italian modernity is very rich and the canon, fortunately, is in constant flux), one should not be discouraged; the questions concern the text itself and it is with that that the student must confront himself by deploying his own comprehension and interpretation skills. The same comprehension exercise must be carried out for the argumentative text of type B; here too, what counts is not so much knowledge of the subject matter (it can help, but is not indispensable), but understanding of the junctions of the discourse in front of you, the method and sequence of reasoning followed by the author/author, the expressive and rhetorical solutions used for the purpose of greater communicative effectiveness. Understanding how a text works, whether literary or argumentative, allows one to decode any other text and thus to face the challenges of real life with sharper tools.

The second step to follow is that of coherence and relevance of the argumentation and it is necessary, here too, to understand the delivery exactly. It is useless to accumulate notions and data if they are not absolutely pertinent; let us imagine that we are in a real communication situation and not simulated for an exam; the important thing is to argue one's thoughts in an orderly and coherent manner, to follow a common thread, not to deviate from the delivery, to show respect for the opinions of others: a citizenship test and a critical exercise necessary to deal with all situations in life with responsibility, awareness and civic spirit. Each candidate must use the tools he or she has acquired in his or her studies and experiences and which must enable him or her to express his or her opinions and compare them with others.