Done my IELTS.
I wouldn't have needed to pass the stupid test again had I not been horribly hungover when I did it the first time 4 years ago. But since I ended up with 6.5 and I need 8 for applying for a Marketing Masters in Warwick, I had to waste another 100 quid and a whole Saturday.
It was totally weird, taking a test for a language I've spoken for 15 years now and especially having lived in the UK for 3 years now. O_o For listening, I didn't even get what's supposed to be difficult, I spent hundreds of hours taking notes at uni and tell you what, some lecturers' accents are WAY worse than what's on the tape at IELTS. For reading, I finished half an hour early cuz I've been trained at skimming for ages. For writing, I nearly ran out of the booklet after answering a question which was very close to the topic of consumerism (am I a marketing student or what?)
For speaking, the interviewer was looking at me like "IDEK WTF you're doing here". I suppose that has something to do with the fact that everyone who hears me speak assumes I'm American. O_o Or that I practically retold half of my Work Psychology course on the relationship about work satisfaction and performance when asked a simple question: do people work better when they are happy with their job. So then he asked me a question about a recent event that made me happy. Before he could finish the sentence "you have now 2 minutes to prepare your speech and make some notes", I was already twittering about Collectormania and how bloody awesome it was. I could already see him making a mental note "total geek" in his head. It got worse. For him, obviously. The next question was my fave TV shows. Gotta give him credit, he was very polite at shutting me up after a few minutes.
I'm expecting a friggin' 9 at least. Phew.
It was totally weird, taking a test for a language I've spoken for 15 years now and especially having lived in the UK for 3 years now. O_o For listening, I didn't even get what's supposed to be difficult, I spent hundreds of hours taking notes at uni and tell you what, some lecturers' accents are WAY worse than what's on the tape at IELTS. For reading, I finished half an hour early cuz I've been trained at skimming for ages. For writing, I nearly ran out of the booklet after answering a question which was very close to the topic of consumerism (am I a marketing student or what?)
For speaking, the interviewer was looking at me like "IDEK WTF you're doing here". I suppose that has something to do with the fact that everyone who hears me speak assumes I'm American. O_o Or that I practically retold half of my Work Psychology course on the relationship about work satisfaction and performance when asked a simple question: do people work better when they are happy with their job. So then he asked me a question about a recent event that made me happy. Before he could finish the sentence "you have now 2 minutes to prepare your speech and make some notes", I was already twittering about Collectormania and how bloody awesome it was. I could already see him making a mental note "total geek" in his head. It got worse. For him, obviously. The next question was my fave TV shows. Gotta give him credit, he was very polite at shutting me up after a few minutes.
I'm expecting a friggin' 9 at least. Phew.