Speaking Tests

So Frau Eilken generously gave us some class time to prepare for the upcoming speaking test, which might even be a good idea for once, as we are now in German III, which means things are starting to look in the dreaded direction of serious...

Still, let's be honest. My Spanish grade is one hundred times more important to me, and so I blew off the practice, because the next hour I had a speaking test (Imaginate, no less!) in Kiser's class, and it was hard enough to keep the Imaginate vocab words in my head without the added bother of having German words attempt to substitute themselves for ordinary ones!

The Spanish speaking test went fine. I learned from my first, painful Imaginate experience that the goal is not, as usual, to make the conversation sound natural and to accomplish reasonable goals within it's context. No, the idea is to use vocab words. As many as possible. Which is usually as many as could conceivable work for a given topic, and then some. "Your fish is rotten? Well! I certainly hope you haven't used it for something you shouldn't have!"

But I know the game by now and I think I slammed the test. The upper goal for vocab usage is 8-10 expressions. I used 11, and possibly one or two more. The worst part came when I brainfroze on how to say, "Are you sure that you had put in the refrigerator?" That silence was actually awkward, but after all Kiser gave us no preparation time, (We volunteered to go first) and I was nervous. :D After that things went fine, and she was generous enough to say that we were 'going at a pretty good clip', and that I 'mixed the expressions well' so hopefully I'll only lose a point or two for fluency.

Still, the whole thing felt kind of awkward. Later this evening, I had a different kind of speaking test.

So there are these two little kids whose mother is Spanish, who go to Spain every summer and whose mother speaks to them entirely in Spanish. Their vocabulary isn't bad, but their grammar leaves something to be desired. And so, I was called in to tutor them. Gah! Would I be found worthy? I tried to warn the mother over the phone that after all I had only studied for four years, but I was nervous...

I kept telling myself, "This is not a normal thing to ask of a high school student. If you aren't good enough you aren't good enough, they won't eat you, YOU didn't shamelessly promote yourself, you left that to a well meaning coworker..."

It was worse than I thought. On the phone they had spoken mostly in English, and I was expecting similar treatment at the home. They didn't use a word of English. Not a one. To my delight, I found I could follow along well enough, but I kept responses to a minimum.

I worked with each child for half an hour, working on reading and pronunciation. And afterwards Mercedes came to me and I thought she'd be reasonable - talk English while we worked out the details. No such luck. And neither was it a simple matter of 'every Wednesday'. We tossed around our schedules for half an hour in Spanish, I dropping errors like flies but keeping up well enough to keep her placated.

Then finally, at the end, her husband wanted to talk a bit and we spoke in English. It was then that she complimented me, saying, "Wow, you're already fluent after 4 years! Incredible!"

Well, fluent may be a bit much... :) But I have the job! And I didn't embarrass mysel when the heat was on in real life!

So did I pass my speaking test?