Ha haaa. I changed the system operating language on my laptop to run in deutsch. guess i am getting more confident with my abilities.
...but i so didn't feel confident before my B1 prüfungs/exam on friday the 13th. which also pisstakenly started at 1300hrs. A week before i kept thinking about my friends birthday which was also on the 13th and how badly i would perform on the day. Seriously i am not superstitious, but the friday the thirteenth trepidations weighed on me like a large lorry carrying two hundred dead bodied to the morgue with only lawn mower engine under its bonnet. I carried my note books every where i went and every second i had spare on the train i pulled it out and read. i still felt i wasn't doing enough. How does one successfully revise for a Deutsch exam?? The fact that König Jakob had trained us over and over and over again, using several past mock papers was a very welcomed nervous alleviator. So i kept telling myself; i should be ready. I believed the voices 60% of the times. hence i didn't open my book even once, one day prior to the exam. What i did was to listen and read more random books newspapers and watched deutsch programs on youtube. Hitler stories were quite informative.
The orientierungs course Prüfung felt a tad less mentally challenging than this one. Maybe cos we had a definitive set of questions to learn. This time it was different. i went through my
artikel table to refresh my memory with the loosely fixed artikels in my head. I am still yet to develop a system/mnemonic for the conjuctions; annoying!!
Stayed calm on the exam day. no stress on this guy, unlike Metall who called me 30mins before the start of the exam asking what time the exam started. I was totally shocked but she made it there on time. Exam room was on the fifth floor of the school. nice vantage point. i chilled out almost hypnotised by the height, looking down through the large windows onto the life proceeding. I could even recognised people on the ground. photo from my mobile is below. looking at Nollendorfplatz Uban station.
One could tell that Stephan our exam invigilator had handled these exams before. too many times that he could do it in his sleep. He walked into the class just before 1300hrs to be met by just 4 students out of a possible 16. he knew something was wrong after checking the list and saw there was room for confusion as to the location of the exam. He went to the other school building where he found the rest of the students waiting in the wrong room.
After a 20min long nursery school style, step by step clarification on how to write our names on the exam paper. amazingly some people still managed to get it wrong.
The exam began okay, then during the listening part someone decided ask a question. Thank goodness Stephan appreciated the disturbance hence replayed the CD question. next annoying person was my nachbar/neighbour to my right. She grabbed my eraser but thought it was okay not to return it immediately. Then when she started running out of time on reading section of the test, could not seat still and became increasingly annoying by also vocalising her emotions. Unlucky for me, on monday i officially have to do my speaking test with her. OMG!!! give me strength to get through it without stuffing a rotten chicken in her mouth.
the listening sections 1, 2, 3 and 4 were actually pretty easy. Luckily.
i started to sweat after i saw the reading section. OMG!!! i knew i was in serious trouble when it took me 5 mins to read the first question and could not find the answer that went with it. 8mins passed and still no question in the reading section answered. so i left it; did the other questions in the reading section 2, 3, 4 and 5. then came back to the advertising section that made me lose brain cells. The writing section was okay ISH too. i kept it very short and sweet.
All in all, i was 70% pleased with my performance. fingers crossed that is reflected in the results too which we wont receive for another 7 weeks or more. GSUS!!! that is way too long.
try out
sample tests here if you are so brave.