French test
I had made another post but it seems to have been eaten. By that thing that eats stuff.
I took a French test on Monday and was half-consumed by test-taking stress anxiety before the test. My HR director (who happens to be second-generation Irish-American which helps to put him fairly squarely on my list of cool people even though he smokes like a steamship) said that it's just a formality. He had put me on the bottom of the list of people who have to test because I've been working here long enough to be called 'old timer' by many and most of them know that my conversational French is much better than it needs to be for the job. I still wanted to kick the ass.
So I took the two hour test. I was informed before I took it that it would be administered by a "native speaker". When I actually began taking the test, it turns out that my test administrator was from Ivory Coast! Needless to say, I was "challenged" by his accent. Once I got used to it, we got on swimmingly but I didn't do as well as I'd hoped. Part of the reason why I had problems is that the texts they gave me had a lot to do with French politics and I'm a little ashamed to admit that since I can't vote, I don't really follow them that closely. A lot of these politicians are people whom I recognize by name only. I also figured out that there are a lot of words that I understand completely but are really hard for me translate back to my native language! Things like "appel d'offre"; is that "bid soliciting"? "Soliciting bidders"? "Recruiting contractors"? I don't know how to say that in English in less than a sentence. Google translate says "tender" (WTF?).
Bottom line: I got a 4 / 5 speaking and a 3+ / 5 for reading, 5 being a native speaker and 1 being able to ask for directions. I don't know if I got the highest score in the agency but my HR director told me that I did very well and that's only the second time that anyone has scored higher speaking than reading but he knows that I 'talk a good game'. Oh well, that's over with.
That was a boring post.
I took a French test on Monday and was half-consumed by test-taking stress anxiety before the test. My HR director (who happens to be second-generation Irish-American which helps to put him fairly squarely on my list of cool people even though he smokes like a steamship) said that it's just a formality. He had put me on the bottom of the list of people who have to test because I've been working here long enough to be called 'old timer' by many and most of them know that my conversational French is much better than it needs to be for the job. I still wanted to kick the ass.
So I took the two hour test. I was informed before I took it that it would be administered by a "native speaker". When I actually began taking the test, it turns out that my test administrator was from Ivory Coast! Needless to say, I was "challenged" by his accent. Once I got used to it, we got on swimmingly but I didn't do as well as I'd hoped. Part of the reason why I had problems is that the texts they gave me had a lot to do with French politics and I'm a little ashamed to admit that since I can't vote, I don't really follow them that closely. A lot of these politicians are people whom I recognize by name only. I also figured out that there are a lot of words that I understand completely but are really hard for me translate back to my native language! Things like "appel d'offre"; is that "bid soliciting"? "Soliciting bidders"? "Recruiting contractors"? I don't know how to say that in English in less than a sentence. Google translate says "tender" (WTF?).
Bottom line: I got a 4 / 5 speaking and a 3+ / 5 for reading, 5 being a native speaker and 1 being able to ask for directions. I don't know if I got the highest score in the agency but my HR director told me that I did very well and that's only the second time that anyone has scored higher speaking than reading but he knows that I 'talk a good game'. Oh well, that's over with.
That was a boring post.