Meaning & use
external exam
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Meanings
nouncountable
An exam set and marked by people outside your own school, often by a national board or university.
Grammar: Countable: say an external exam or external exams; the opposite is an internal exam, marked by your own teachers.
Patterns
- take an external exam
- sit an external exam
- an external exam in something
Students here take external exams in five subjects at the end of the year.
Because it is an external exam, our own teachers never see the questions beforehand.
She sat an external exam in chemistry and did better than in her school tests.
nouncountablemedicaltechnical
In medicine, an examination of the outside of the body rather than inside it.
Grammar: Used mostly in medical writing; often appears as external examination.
Patterns
- perform an external exam
- an external exam of something
The doctor began with an external exam of the injured knee.
An external exam showed bruising but no broken bones.
Word forms
| plural | external exams |
|---|
Common combinations
- sit an external exam
- British students sit external exams in May and June.
- external exam board
- The external exam board publishes the results in August.
- take an external exam
- You must take an external exam if you want the certificate.
- external exam results
- Her external exam results were good enough for university.
Synonyms and how they differ
- public examination
- A more formal, mainly British term for a state-run external exam; it sounds official and old-fashioned in everyday speech.
- board exam
- Used especially in South Asia for an exam set by an official education board; it is narrower than external exam.
Opposites
Word family
- examiner noun
- the person who sets or marks an exam
- examination noun
- the formal word for an exam or a careful check
Commonly confused: external exam or entrance exam?
external exam vs entrance exam
An entrance exam decides whether you get into a school or university; an external exam is about who sets and marks it, not what it is for.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'external exam' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'External exam' means the exam is set and marked outside your school, so a national board fits. Option 0 describes an internal exam, option 2 confuses it with an internal medical exam, and option 3 wrongly uses the noun as a verb.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “external exam”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.