Tuesday 31 July 2007

Never Ceasing Doom

He completado mi examen oral de espanol y fue muy, muy mal.
I have finished my Spanish oral exam and it was really, really bad.

I wonder if they have a word in Spanish for "god-awful"? I know a certain verb I could use to indicate I screwed myself over...but this is a (fairly) clean blog, and I'd like to keep it that way, even in another language.

There are two parts to the IB Spanish oral. 5 minutes is talking about a photo/picture you've had 10 minutes to prepare 10 (two word) dot points about. You talk for about 3-4 minutes, and the teacher asks some questions about the picture. This leads into 5 minutes of general conversation about two prepared topics (mine were the environment (el medioambiente) and health and emergencies (la salud y emgergencias)).

I had the choice of a picture of a comtaminated beach covered in rubbish or a photo of a person who looked like she'd had a heart attack surround by a bunch of people (probablemente paramedicos) - as you can see, based around my two topics. I picked the rubbish one (ironically, it wasn't rubbish - there was a lot to talk about), but I was rubbish when it came to talking about it (sorry, I'm on a roll). I talked probably por dos minutos about the picture, then Senora asked me some questions which no comprendi (I didn't understand). General conversacion was alright - better than my spiel about the picture and my attempts to answer her questions.

You know how people come out of an exam and are all "OMG it was SO bad!!"? I'm not being melodramatic. I know I was bad. I couldn't even finish some of my sentences (and I'm sure some of them didn't make sense) because I couldn't think of the vocab.

And you know how generally, after an exam, there's this huge relief and you're all "who cares, it's over"? I've just got this huge, depressing disappointment.

[NB: While I may seem like a whiny, self-obsessed, teenage school girl, I'm not. OK, so I'm a tiny bit self-obsessed, but I do care about the environment and terrorism and Iraq and the rest of the world, m'k? Just let me have my moan, and I'll go back to petitioning to save Darfur.]

x
Just a girl

2 comments:

Gabriela said...

I have problems with learning languages too, not with Spanish because that's my first language, but with French. I think I never was good at it. LOL

Thanks for commenting on my blog, I like yours too. Come back anytime. =)

Casey Lewis said...

1) I have enjoyed your comments for the longest time, but I didn't discover your blog until tonight! Such a shame, because I adore it.

2) Until the end of the approaching semester, Spanish class is the bane of my existence. I want to be able to speak another language, but no matter how much I study, I struggle terribly.

I completely relate to your oral exam. Miserable, right?