On Campus (Part I)

30 November 2009By Zhu 19 Comments

On Saturday, I got up early once again to go to university since I had to take the second part of my French as a second language exam: the oral exam.

The written part last week went well, also it was extremely boring and quite long. It started with an 400 words essay. It took me about 20 minutes to write it, but I had to sit around for the whole hour since I wasn’t allowed to leave. Then, we had the listening part and the reading part (both multiple choices questions). I hate multiple choice questions, I find them very ambiguous. Even as a native speaker, I had no idea which answer fitted best a couple of times. Anyway, I’ll get the result… in three months! That’s right. Apparently, correcting French exams is a very long process… maybe they send them to Paris?!

Once thing that annoyed me a lot was that the person supervising the exam (I’m not sure whether she was a TA or a teacher) explained the words in the test in English. I mean, this is a French language exam… if students don’t understand the questions in French, I don’t see the point. Plus, she couldn’t explain certain words in English, but she didn’t know what the French word actually meant! No kidding.

Anyway, my oral exam lasted exactly three minutes. It may have something to do with the fact I wrote in big bold letter “I am French !” in answer to the question “where did you learn French?” in the preliminary questionnaire. The examiner was a nice guy and admitted there was no point in testing me any further. Phew, thanks.

After the exam, I wandered around in the university, taking pictures.

Hallway	Message Board
Student Lounge	Reading The Paper
Studying	Dancing
Lockers	Library
No BBQ, We Told You!	Lonely Student

19 Comments »

Priyank said:

Oh the things we need to do due to bureaucracy! But the tour of your campus was very good! I enjoyed it.
Priyank´s last blog ..Three years in Toronto

# 12 December 2009 at 12:44 pm

aline said:

wow. I’ve missed a lot when I was on hiatus. Read some of your previous blog entries to understand what is going on because I found it weird to read that you took the French as a second language exam. It is not easy to balance work and studies but I think that it’s great that you are studying again. Someone who is 26 years old is considered as a mature student? 26 and above? or even lower than that?
I love that photo of the library. I’ve always been fascinated by libraries.
All the best for your studies.

# 9 December 2009 at 5:09 pm

Seraphine said:

lol. i like to sleep on saturdays too.
well, i like the *option* to sleep.
sometimes i get up early and do something but
since its saturday, i should have first choice
in what i want to do.
Seraphine´s last blog ..Shopping Days (Open to Negotiation)

# 4 December 2009 at 1:33 am