One long German test
Well, in our school at any rate, German is supposed to be the easiest third-
and therefore, second-language that one can take. Me, I disagree. And so would
any other tenthy or ninthy. Honestly, if German can be said to be easy, it’s
only because the level of German in our school is really low – which means that
an eigthy knows about as much German as an eight-year old German. And anyway,
German was only scoring (was because it isn’t scoring any more)
because the syllabus wasn’t much, the paper wasn’t long and one didn’t study in
each and every German class.
Now, German is exceedingly tough. As a
language, at any rate, it seems to me to be loads more complex (as I’ve already
mentioned before). And the papers no longer seem to be too short. See,
normally, a German test can be completed in 20 minutes and an
exam in, say, around half an hour to 45 minutes. But on Monday (last Monday,
that is) we had this special German test which took a whopping
one hour to complete (which, in case you haven’t noticed, is
even more than the time taken to complete an exam). And, of course, the marks
we got were inversely proportional to the time taken to complete the paper. The
paper consisted of 3 essays and 2 comprehension passages. Questions in the
comprehension passage all had answers of 2 lines, and were all of 3-4 marks
each!
Comments
Well, I don't know if the third-language scene has improved much since I left school but I'd say that equating an eighthy to an eight-year-old native speaker is a bit of an overstatement. I don't think even tenthies who're finishing a third-language in a CBSE school can be equated to the proficiency level of an eight-year-old.
hullo hullo i can tell you you german guys are still lucky. French has letter,postcard,message adn every other concievable english writing skill excluding the debate ! And yeah by the time we complete 10th board french we can talk normally to a french native! It is BLOODY Difficult! I remember the days when french used to be all objective :(
ps: sorry for the late comment, something went wrong with the feed it didnt show you as updating at all
@skaran: six year old perhaps? anyway, i would expect at least that since we've been studying german for 7 years, one should at least have been able to have some knowldege about speaking in the past tense?? [we only learnt that last year, and past perfect this year]
French is difficult, yes.. but, also brilliantly interesting? YES!!!!!
You gotta love it.
hi sahil,
I know this is VERY late, but i just now happened to come across this. I totally agree with you on this subject. As you know i am learning french over here. And it is no understatement that in the one year of french i have had here, i know more french than the 5 years of german i had in india. I mean in just one year i can have a basic conversation in french while even after 5 years of German i could hardly speak a few sentences (most of which i had just practically memorized). I feel the way of teaching foreign languages here is much better. And no, it is not all work and no play... in fact we work one class and then have fun two classes (like see a movie in french with english subtitles, etc.). Anyways, I have totally forgotten any and all German i ever knew (except perhaps good morning, day, evening, and night).