Centria Guide for Thesis and Academic Writing

In order to graduate with a bachelor’s degree, the student of a university of applied sciences must pass a maturity test. The purpose of the maturity test is to demonstrate the students’ knowledge of their field of study, as well as the students’ proficiency in writing academic texts in English. The student writes either an essay or a press release as a maturity test. The student must agree on the type of text of the maturity sample when registering in the maturity test.

The maturity test is similar to an exam and thus it is taken under supervised conditions. Each student takes the test independently. The students decide together with their thesis instructor whether they will write the text by hand or type. In case the maturity test is written by hand, it should be written on every line of the test paper sheet. The time reserved for the maturity test is three hours (180 min). NB! Finnish citizens studying in an international degree programs must write the maturity test in their language of schooling (Finnish/ Swedish).

The thesis supervisor provides the student with a few (2-4) topics based on the thesis. These topics are given to the student at the actual test occasion, and the student chooses one of them. The required length of the text depends on the nature of the text. If the student decides to write an essay, it should be at least 400 words. However, if the student decides to write an internal release, the required length is 200-300 words. The internal release is written by computer under supervision, following field-specific guidelines.

If the student writes the test using a computer, the computer used must be particularly assigned and appropriately cleared for this purpose by the university of applied sciences. Students are not allowed to use any additional material when writing the maturity test.

The structure of the text and the heading must support the text type and match the contents. For instance, an essay is a critical and reflective text beginning with an introduction and ending with a concluding paragraph. The subject of the maturity test can be, for example, a certain perspective of the thesis topic or a closer examination of one of the sub-areas covered by the thesis.

The student must not assume that the reader is familiar with the bachelor’s thesis in question. The content of the maturity test is assessed by the thesis supervisor and the language and style is assessed by an English language teacher.

The maturity test is assessed as either “passed” or “failed”. In case of a failed test, the student is obliged to get feedback from the language teacher before re-sitting the test.

A maturity test is always written as a part of the thesis. Crediting is not applied on the maturity test. If a student has passed a maturity test from before that is a testimonial of the student’s language level and the new maturity test does not need language assessment. However, the student still writes the maturity test and the contents is assessed. 

Dyslexia and the maturity test 
 

When writing the maturity test, there are the following special arrangements possible for students with dyslexia. The special arrangements require the student to present an expert assessment (by i.e. a medical specialist or a special education teacher).  

- A student with dyslexia is allowed more time when writing the maturity test. The added time is 20 minutes on every hour reserved for the maturity test, unless the expert assessment for that student recommends something else. 

- A student with dyslexia can choose to write the test by hand or on a laptop, depending on the nature of the dyslexia.

- A student with dyslexia is allowed to complement the maturity test verbally.  

The student must present the dyslexia assessment or the assessment of some other learning challenge requiring special arrangements to the maturity test examiners in good time, at the latest when registering to write the maturity test. 

 Requirements for the language and style of a passed maturity test
 

• The text must be clear and understandable.
• There must be no factual errors in the text.
• The text must have a heading and address the topic stated in the heading. The heading and the contents must match. Subheadings are not to be used.
• The text must be written in academic style and colloquial expressions must not be used.
• The text must be built of well-organized, coherent sentences and it must be divided into paragraphs. The statements presented in the text and the arguments used must be logically combined.
• The sentence structure must be functional, non-fragmented and versatile. The word order in the sentences must be unambiguous.
• The language in the text must be mostly grammatically correct and spelled correctly.
• The text must not include any formulas or pictures.
• If the test is written by hand, the handwriting must be clear and easy to read. The reader must be able to distinguish upper case letters from lower case letters, as well as words boundaries.

Characteristics of a failed maturity test
 

The maturity test is failed if it has serious errors in contents or if it does not meet the demands of a well-organized, clear and readable factual text. Typically, the test is failed if it includes several of the following characteristics:

• mistakes regarding punctuation, compound words, upper case and lower case letters, numbers and other signs, pronoun reference, subject-verb agreement, genitive case, jargon, word order and spelling
• the text is not in line with the maturity test assignment
• the content of the text does not match the heading or the heading is missing
•  the text is fragmented and it is hard, or impossible, to understand
• the text has several deviations from the style and register of the chosen text type
• the text cannot be understood as such, without any background information or material
• there are problems in sentence structure