jessybxx: (Pokémon - Team Rocket)
( Aug. 16th, 2007 09:56 am)
... let me show you them (XD).
They arrived yesterday.

Boring details that nobody will be interested in anyway ;) )

Finally, uh, hi.
I'm back in Germany.
Tags:
jessybxx: (Kai - Yay!)
( Jun. 22nd, 2007 08:23 pm)
CPE oral exam )

So now I'm sitting here, waiting for [livejournal.com profile] yamasagi to come back from the goddamn summer BBQ party. Gee, at this rate, I'll rot here =_=
jessybxx: (Boffle - Homosexual garden)
»

Heh

( Jun. 22nd, 2007 12:53 pm)
I just listened to the example mp3s of the listeninjg paper that's available on the ESOL site. And it seems that their favourite way to test the candidates' ability to understand all kinds of accents is using Scottish people. There's been one in every listening exercise I've heard. I've had a Scottish hunter, a scottish doctor, a Scottish environmentalist... However, the strength of the accent varies. In the December 2004 exam (the one that's for download at the site), it's much, much stronger than on the CD we used last week. Actually, I prefer the stronger one because it's just so bloody adorable <3

Anwho.
Oral CPE exam today.
I'm not really worried.
For some reason, I'm rather confident in my speaking abilities, apart from the accent. But AFAIK, you don't get penalized for having one. Phew-ness ^^
The girl I've been paired up with turned out to be the kind of "all of my teachers suck, all subjects do, too and I hate them all" high school student I hated even when I was at that age myself. But at least she seems kinda outspoken, which is good, because you can get penalized if you talk too much. Ugh. But I'll manage.

ETA: Lovely. Gotta get going in half an hour and it just started to rains cats, dogs and whatever animals you'd like to see falling down from the sky. Ah well...
jessybxx: (Anime - SUZUMIYA Haruhi)
( Jun. 14th, 2007 08:50 pm)
It mostly went well or very well.
However, writing was every bit as tedious as I expected. And more. I terribly miscalculated the time and so I had to write really quickly during the last half hour to actually get everything onto the answer sheets.
But even if that one turns out to be mediocre, there's still the other papers where I'm pretty sure I did rather well.
Use of English and Reading were fun. And I loved Listening, at least for the most part. It was the one paper I was least worried about, and rightly so. Most of the others think they bombed this one. I... most likely didn't ;)
Right now, I'm not even thinking about the oral exam next Friday. And somehow, I don't think it'll be too bad.
Anyway. I'm tired now. C ya! ^^
Tags:
jessybxx: (Default)
( Jun. 13th, 2007 11:45 pm)
Okay, final post before tomorrow.
Uh... wish me luck?
But even if nobody did, I can do this. It's not something I'm bad at or don't really care about. I can do this! Gonna pwn Cambridge >:D
*clenches fists*

Exams starts at 9:15 AM. Gotta get up at 6:15. Damn trains. Ugh.
I expect not to be home before 7 PM. Double-ugh.
Anyway. C ya tomorrow *wavey*
I finally managed to pull myself together and looked up public transport infos to get to the CPE exams (written: 14 [Thursday], oral: 22 [Friday next week]).
What idiot decided to hold them at the adult education center in Dortmund? Rumour first had it that they were supposed to be at the one in Düsseldorf, but nooo...
Getting there is gonna cost me 20 Euros. Per day. Not to mention I'll have to get up at like, six AM on Thursday. OMFG.
But Julia was cute when telling me that "The center in Düsseldorf is right next to the station". Uh... most of them are ;)

The letter stating the place and time(s) of the exams starts with "We'd like to invite you to the exam..." O_o Invite? Well, I hope they have the red carpet and champagne ready XD
There's also this sheet called "Notice to candidates", telling you stuff you're allowed to do ("drink plain, still water only from a plastic bottle with a secure lid" - What, are they afraid of bombigns?) during the exam and anything that's forbidden. Like, cheating. Woah, big news there. Anyway. Of course, the thing is in English and one of the first sentences on it is "If there is anything you do not understand, ask your teacher or the examination supervisor.". Or don't even try talking the exam, is what I say XD
Another sheet also states the sames of the candidates for the oral exam. You take it in pairs and apparently, I've been teamed up with a woman whose name looks like she's from an Eastern Eurpoean country. Which is nice since people from those countries are usually friendly people and have lovely accents ^^ (What's that, backwards racism? X_x)

And no, I'm still not scared. The different types of exams and exercises are all fun and challenging and the overall feel kinda compares to playing Sudoku... if I palyed Sudoku ^_~
So I'll try approaching the whole thing as calmly as possible because I know I'm not totally hopeless =)

ETA: What? I just read that to achieve a grade A, you need 80% and above? I thought that eprcentage was much higher O_o
jessybxx: (Anime - SUZUMIYA Haruhi)
( May. 11th, 2007 01:59 pm)
On Wednesday, CPE prep class broke its own attendance record. And yes, I mean that in a very negative way.
K., the teacher and me. Three sodding people. Holy fuck.

Also, something else happened which left me utterly frustrated and terribly disillusioned. It took me a while to figure out how to tell this little tale and I'll now be doing it the other way around compared to what I first had in mind. Anywho, here we go.

It all started with S. (teacher for Wednesdays, an American who's probably in her late fifties) asking whether we're worried about the exam. I truthfully said that I'm not. Then, she asked whether P. (other teacher) has done a lot of listening comprehension in class. We - again, totally truthfully - said no. Then, she looked at me, asking "So you're not worried about the audio part of the exam even though you didn't have much audio..."
Before she could even finish then sentence, I protested, telling her that I in fact get a lot of English audio at home. When I told her that I watch UK/US TV shows/series on a daily basis, two things became quite clear:
a) She thinks The Daily Show is a normal news program. Which means she has no idea about it. I didn't even start on Colbert. Wouldn't have made sense, eh?
b) She has not even heard of House.
Y'know, I'm happy the windows were far away from me during that class or I'm afraid I might've jumped.
What causes an American to become like that?
A hint might be the fact that her husband is an English professor who owns thousands of books. Maybe they just don't get in thouch with modern media.
If it's living in Germany, I gotta warn you people out there: Stay the fuck away from this country or at least leave after a few weeks!
I... have no words.
=_=

Also, K. keeps going on about the "I know my language (Like hell you do) but I'm having problems with the topics" issue. Please, leave me alone, it's not my fault and I can't teach you how to conjure answers to nearly every damn question out of thin air either. It's a talent. Or why did you think you're working on your PhD in chemistry/engineering and not literature?
jessybxx: (Kai - Sleepy *awwww*   ^______^)
( Mar. 12th, 2007 11:30 pm)

456.
Baaad, I know. But I've been out job hunting all day and right now, my feet are more blisters than feet =_=
It was a long and weird oddyssey that will best be forgotten. However, I have a test day tomorrow. At the grocery store that's just around the corner. Or, to be more precise, at the butcher's O_o
Good that it's so soon. This way, I hardly have time to think about it and maybe get scared. I know I tend to. So yeah, I'm just gonna plunge into this, head first. And maybe I can actually do it ;)
Self-earned money? Whee :3

Also, it looks like the deadline to register for the June CPE exam is tomorrow. Nobody told us and we expected to have until the middle of April to decide. Well, lucky the teacher just happened to check tonight *curses*
We'll still be able to register afterwards but it'll just get more expensive. So, hopefully, I'll somehow make it to the school tomorrow to apply. They have terrible opening hours and I have no idea when I'll get out of work, so wish me luck :|
Other than that, class was fun. I had to read my proposal and everyone clapped XD Also, when I admitted having some routine with writing, teacher said she'd noticed ^_^
Unfortunately, about two thirds of the class now look at me when they don't know a word.
We also have yet anohter new student. Who seems to be worse than everyone else.
A typical dialoge went like this:
Teacher enters, everyone starts speaking English
New girl: "Doesn't she know German?"
Desk neighbour: "No, not much"
New girl: "Oh, crap"

*headdesk*

Anyway.
'Nother busy day tomorrow.
Hooray!
*keels over and dies*
jessybxx: (Tobi - Hellfire Club style (Really cool)
( Mar. 5th, 2007 04:43 pm)

1216 words for Monday. Quite good, I'd say *nods*
This is all for today since I'm off to CPE prep in half an hour and won't be back before 9:30 PM. And then, I'll prolly be too tired to turn on the laptop again ~.~
(I actually stuck a Biffno logo to my prep course note book to remind me of the fun during those dry and frustrating hours ^_^)
But! I finally made it past the introductory stuff (Whoops, that turned out to be a bit long XD) and right into the action. And wow, so far, I'm absolutely lovin' it. Can't wait to get on with it tomorrow!
Right now, I feel like I'm in the middle of a cool movie and I'm the director :D
...
Yeah. Good times.
[/shameless squeeing]
jessybxx: (Badger badger badger)
( Mar. 1st, 2007 08:41 am)
Three people.
Three frickin' people, goddammit =_=
But! Teacher #2 is an American. Which I didn't expect at all since CPE is a British.... thing.
Call me racist, but I so could've hugged her :3
Still... I thought seven people (out of twelve) was bad. But... three?!
Well, we did the gapped text thingy and started on the next unit... Globalization (or, as written in the book, "Globalisation" *lol*).
Also, stupid old me got to give a lil' speech about the Japanese language and how to distinguish between Chinese, Japanese and Korean writing. That was cool ^^

In other news: DLing SEB 175 right now *excited*

Oh, and BTW: Good luck to everyone doing the BFNoWriMo ^____^
jessybxx: (Game - etna (Disgaea) #2)
( Feb. 27th, 2007 12:23 pm)
So, I had my first (for the others, it was like, the eleventh, but anyway) CPE prep class yesterday.
And I died.
And came back to life because I had to.
Several times.
For one, about half of the course was missing for some odd reason (the teacher suspected a mix of last week's Carnival and the flu making the rounds).
For another, I felt like being back in highschool. Gap texts, vocabulary discussions and listening comprehension. Holy hell O_O

And that also includes:
- people not being able to use the right tenses unless you tell them
- people who can't pronounce a "th" and don't really seem to bother
- people who switch to German repeatedly because they're running out of words and getting stuck in their own sentences
-people who are unable to follow a discussion on tape that's been recorded in the clearest British English imaginable and at about half the normal talking speed

The teacher is a very funny and friendly, small and chubby black woman who was actually late for class *lol* She has a tendency to REALLY get distracted from the subject we're talking about or the exercise we're doing at the moment and to tell us personal stuff instead. And when I - new student, yasee? - stayed to talk to her afterwards, she told me that it's always difficult to get stuff done in class so a lot of self-study will be in order. Heh, that's fine with me.
Oh, and last but not least: Most people in there apparently don't know jack shit about idioms. And I thought I was bad at those. But apparently, the 'net did teach me quite a few of 'em after all. At least I wouldn't try to sell "the top of the iceberg" to my teacher like certain other people did. Owwies =_=
Long story short: I won't take responsibility for any fits of rage that might occur during the next couple of months.

What really bugs me is that I read the course description beforehand. And it sounds really intimidating. Somehow, afterwards, there wasn't much left of that feeling.
We'll see what's gonna happen tomorrow (second part of class, diferent teacher), but my hopes aren't exactly high.

BTW, am I sounding too arrogant here? If so, feel free to slap me. I'm just a little... surprised at the level of the class right now.

And... Eurobeat people, please stop speeding up songs to fit into your megamixes. Right now, my dear Manuel sounds like he'd had a can of helium before recording "No control" ;_;
jessybxx: (Anime - Redhead #III)
( Feb. 22nd, 2007 04:37 pm)
Stuff I did yesterday:

- Beat public transport that tried to fuck with me. Haha >:D
- Had my ugly mug photographed for applications (Maybe I'll show you the thing later...)
- Ate donuts and other bakery stuff from a take-away bakery. I had no idea these exist, but then, I'm from the middle of nowhere XD
- Bought a couple of socks because I'm running out of them (Blackadder reference, anyone? :3)
- Wrote biiig application to the store I told you about yesterday (GoshIhopetheytakemeohprettypleasepleasethanks ^_^;;)

Stuff I did today:

- Scanned and copied high school graduation certificate and uni kickout certificate
- Called too see whether I can still join the running CPE prep course. Will apply (and pay) for it tomorrow morning, first class on Monday *squee*
- Applied online for another job at another electronics store. Ahem ;)

Yes, looks good so far.
OMGROFL. Just now, the cats stretched in unison. Awww ^^
Ah, there's Yama. C ya!!
.

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