I did Japanese last year and ended up with a 32 (which sounds dodgy, but apparently gets scaled to like a 40?) For a 32 my three grades with my study score were: A, B+, A
I never dropped below an A on any SAC, so I only got a B+ for Unit 4 after it was standardized I think.
How do you think you went on your Oral exam?? Both exams really arent as scary as your teacher probably makes them out to be (mine did!) The examiners DO NOT expect you to be perfect. They expect you to be competent & relatively sensical; like a student studying japanese.It isn't exactly an easy exam though either. I found the
listening most challenging.. make sure you do
lots of practice (leading edge & past exams are good). Listening is tricky, because you can't really predict what it'll be about and its hard to look up words exactly if you miss them or write them down wrong. Hence, go over and make sure you recognize most of the words on the VCAA (i think)
grammar list, even if you hear them (you don't really need to be able to recall most of it). For instance, our exam was about freaking earthquake survival tips.. when I got in there I was just like wtf? HELP!
For
reading, as with listening,
get a hold of as many chunks of texts as you can in the next week or two and answer all the questions you can find on them- if there aren't any questions, summarize the thing; turn it from polite to casual form or vice versa.. and be able to
recognize the kanji. I mean, you do have your dictionary, so don't stress too much if your kanji recall isn't perfect, but you've got to know it. Revise your grammar points too, as you cant exactly look most of them up in the dictionary. Make up cue cards or construct sentences, whatever you need to do.
For
writing, make up a few generic
sentences encompassing most - if not all - grammar patterns that you can manipulate and utilise in the exam. As I said before, you have the dictionary in the reading and written areas, so don't stress too much if your kanji and that aren't perfect, either. And
know your text types!! They can save you in this section. (Generally the easier prompts are letters or speeches or articles too, so brush up on them -- if I were you I wouldn't even consider the creative prompts!)
We had to have a
written piece in at least once a week, but if you havent been doing that, its not too late to get a heap done, even if they don't get corrected, you've still got the practice there and it will help.
I know that was all pretty generic, but it does really help.. if I think of anything else, I'll stop by and let you know 
OH! and dw about failing practice exams, I failed all of mine too.. you're generally in a different mind set in your actual exam -- you know its the real thing and that you have to do the best you can -- as soon as someone says 'practice', most people stop caring.
Home
Help
Search
Login
