English writing performance in the 2025 Bulgarian matura examination – examiner observations and pedagogical implications

Abstract

The Bulgarian English State Matriculation Examination (Matura) is taken by approximately 13,000 students each year and plays an important role in university admission. Despite its importance, little published research has examined authentic examination scripts from an examiner's perspective. This paper presents observations from the assessment of 506 anonymized scripts from the 2025 examination, focusing on open-ended reading-comprehension responses, formal email writing, and argumentative essays. The analysis identified clear differences across task types. Most candidates completed the email-writing task successfully, demonstrating appropriate genre conventions and communicative purpose. In contrast, reading-comprehension responses frequently relied on verbatim copying or only limited paraphrasing of the source text. The essay task proved more demanding, with common difficulties in developing ideas, maintaining coherence, and addressing all aspects of the writing instructions. A recurring pattern was that candidates who produced stronger essays and emails also tended to perform well on the open-ended reading-comprehension tasks, whereas the reverse was not consistently observed. The findings suggest that productive writing ability may provide a broader indication of communicative competence than reading-response performance alone. The paper concludes by discussing implications for English language teaching, writing assessment, and future research on the Bulgarian English Matura examination.