How the English érettségi is built

The two levels

The exam runs at two levels. The official requirements map középszint to CEFR B1 and emelt szint to CEFR B2, in those words. Both levels are worth 150 points in total and both test the same five areas: reading comprehension, use of English, listening comprehension, writing, and speaking.

What differs is not the shape of the exam but its difficulty, its length, and the weighting between the papers. If you have seen one level, you can read the other from the tables below without learning a new format.

Középszint: 180 minutes written, 117 points

The written exam runs in four papers, in a fixed order, with a 15-minute break between use of English and listening.

• Reading comprehension - 60 minutes, 33 points
• Use of English - 30 minutes, 18 points
• Listening comprehension - 30 minutes, 33 points
• Writing - 60 minutes, 33 points
• Speaking, taken separately - 15 minutes, 33 points

Emelt szint: 240 minutes written, 120 points

The same four papers, longer, and weighted evenly at 30 points each. The 15-minute break again falls between use of English and listening.

• Reading comprehension - 70 minutes, 30 points
• Use of English - 50 minutes, 30 points
• Listening comprehension - 30 minutes, 30 points
• Writing - 90 minutes, 30 points
• Speaking, taken separately - 20 minutes, 30 points

The point distribution is where preparation material goes wrong

At középszint, use of English is worth 18 points, not 33. You can check this without trusting anyone: four papers at 33 points would be 132, and the written exam is worth 117. Reading, listening, and writing carry 33 each, and use of English carries the remaining 18.

This matters for how you spend your time. At középszint, use of English is the smallest paper on the exam and the one with the shortest working time. At emelt szint it is worth exactly as much as every other paper and you are given 50 minutes for it.

Dictionaries

A printed dictionary may be used for the writing paper only, at both levels. No dictionary is permitted for any other paper, and none in the oral exam.

What the 2024 reform changed, and what it did not

For living foreign languages, the reform made no structural change. The Oktatási Hivatal states this directly: the two levels, the five areas, the timings, and the point distributions all carried over unchanged.

What changed was the topic list. Two topics were dropped at középszint, two at emelt szint, one topic gained an addition, and one communication situation was rewritten. The list of communicative intentions, the grammatical structures, and the vocabulary framework are unchanged.

So the common worry is backwards. Preparation material written before 2024 is still right about the format, the minutes, and the points. Where it is out of date is the topic list - which is exactly the part most students assume is stable.