In this paper, we investigate the discourse of the closed-book examinations using a commognitive perspective. We analyse the routines of the discourse aiming to describe lecturers' expectations about students' engagement with mathematical discourse. Our data consists of the examination tasks of a year one course from a mathematics department in the United Kingdom and interviews with the lecturers of the course. In our analysis we distinguish between mathematical and didactical routines in the lecturers' discourse about examinations. Our analysis reveals that the majority of the mathematical routines are substantiation and recall and that the didactical routines focus largely on: directions given on the how of the mathematical routines; the gradual structure of tasks; students' enculturation.