Class of 2015!

[Orb]

How many words is everyone's general conversation so far? Mine's only 5000
And no you're not behind, I haven't finished my general conversation or started thinking about my detailed study ahaha

Take it from someone who failed (but I did get 95+/100 for the oral)
I had not started writing my detailed study til midway term 2 and only completed my general convo by then, so you're not behind!

[Splash-Tackle-Flail]

Take it from someone who failed (but I did get 95+/100 for the oral)
I had not started writing my detailed study til midway term 2 and only completed my general convo by then, so you're not behind!

Did you find the a+ cutoff for 2014 a fair bit higher than last years/usual? As in it seemed like silly errors became really real costly with this years written exam.. But holy moly congratulations on that oral score!! Mind I ask what your topic was?

Personally ( to all you 2015's ) I aimed to finish my general conversation, and one minute report (for detailed study- this was basically given to us by our teacher and we just changed bit for each of our topics) on the summer holidays. I actually got a list from drake on here- which includes the most common questions (and some different ones e.g I remember I was lucky I used his question list as in my oral I was asked (你和你的父母有什么代购？), which wasn't covered at my school ( and I definitely would have been able to answer this without preparing haha). But even though I finished the basic question list- I think just about every single answer I originally had I changed later in the year.

Maybe if I have time I might try write up an "experience" thing on here- depends though because it might be better for someone who got a better score than me to give advice-idk well see!

[Orb]

Did you find the a+ cutoff for 2014 a fair bit higher than last years/usual? As in it seemed like silly errors became really real costly with this years written exam.. But holy moly congratulations on that oral score!! Mind I ask what your topic was?

Personally ( to all you 2015's ) I aimed to finish my general conversation, and one minute report (for detailed study- this was basically given to us by our teacher and we just changed bit for each of our topics) on the summer holidays. I actually got a list from drake on here- which includes the most common questions (and some different ones e.g I remember I was lucky I used his question list as in my oral I was asked (你和你的父母有什么代购？), which wasn't covered at my school ( and I definitely would have been able to answer this without preparing haha). But even though I finished the basic question list- I think just about every single answer I originally had I changed later in the year.

Maybe if I have time I might try write up an "experience" thing on here- depends though because it might be better for someone who got a better score than me to give advice-idk well see!

Haha there's too much of an emphasis on the oral score. With a good written you can get ~45, orals the main differentiator between the 46-50 students and that's about it.

The study score is what counts and you got a pretty decent one

Because the SLA exam was different from the SL exam, the exam was notoriously easy, so mistakes meant a lot more in terms of splitting the students. SAC scores also meant considerably...

[Shinkaze]

How many words is everyone's general conversation so far? Mine's only 5000
And no you're not behind, I haven't finished my general conversation or started thinking about my detailed study ahaha

Hmm mine is more than 10000 characters in total but don't worry too much about it I'm doing SLA instead

And yeah thank you everyone for the advice everyone Any input is greatly appreciated!

Because the SLA exam was different from the SL exam, the exam was notoriously easy, so mistakes meant a lot more in terms of splitting the students. SAC scores also meant considerably...

Wait do you mean the SLA exam was easy or the SL exam was easy? Thanks

[Splash-Tackle-Flail]

Haha there's too much of an emphasis on the oral score. With a good written you can get ~45, orals the main differentiator between the 46-50 students and that's about it.

The study score is what counts and you got a pretty decent one

Because the SLA exam was different from the SL exam, the exam was notoriously easy, so mistakes meant a lot more in terms of splitting the students. SAC scores also meant considerably...

Haha thanks I think I saw drakes statement of marks in one of the posts last year, and he still got 50 after dropping 3 or 4 ( can't remember) in the written and acing the oral so they must have had a much harder exam than we did. Yeah and them Sac scores- gotta envy the XJS cohort in regards to that..

The silly errors had a big influence I think (considering in the listening section I lost quite a large portion of marks- more than usual) , and there was quite a few on my statement of marks where one examiner gave full and the other took off one so I'm thinking harsher markings due to the easier exam..

@shinkaze the Chinese sL exam was much easier for 2014 but the sla was apparently much harder.

[lisax3]

What topics would everyone suggest for detailed study? I originally wanted to do pandas but then I realised its too common. I want to do something interesting and uncommon. I was thinking about xx? But I'm not sure how common it is. I also want to do something related to food or animals

[Splash-Tackle-Flail]

What topics would everyone suggest for detailed study? I originally wanted to do pandas but then I realised its too common. I want to do something interesting and uncommon. I was thinking about tofu? But I'm not sure how common it is. I also want to do something related to food or animals

I did pandas, ”大熊猫” and I found it really really interesting and you learn lots of vocab with it! It's really important to do a topic you enjoy especially because you will be spending quite a lot of time on it! Personally as long as you engage the examiners and keep them interested (with cool facts and what not) you'll be fine. Even though it's quite common I still got 96 in my oral, so I guess as long as you really research it you'll be ok! It's more on the quality of the answers and your delivery than the topic you choose!

Edit: however if your aiming mid high forties maybe a less common topic would be better gl

[99.90 pls]

I did pandas, ”大熊猫” and I found it really really interesting and you learn lots of vocab with it! It's really important to do a topic you enjoy especially because you will be spending quite a lot of time on it! Personally as long as you engage the examiners and keep them interested (with cool facts and what not) you'll be fine. Even though it's quite common I still got 96 in my oral, so I guess as long as you really research it you'll be ok! It's more on the quality of the answers and your delivery than the topic you choose!

Edit: however if your aiming mid high forties maybe a less common topic would be better gl

How did you get your oral score?

[Splash-Tackle-Flail]

Statement of marks- gives both oral and written

[Shinkaze]

What topics would everyone suggest for detailed study? I originally wanted to do pandas but then I realised its too common. I want to do something interesting and uncommon. I was thinking about xx But I'm not sure how common it is. I also want to do something related to food or animals

 I reckon xx is a really good topic although I'm not sure how common it is Haven't heard of anyone doing it though although once you decide you might want to take the post down just in case anyone who is not part of AN see this and steal your topic
Also, I reckon it will be easier to do food than animals....

Also, thank you for the tips guys

[lisax3]

I reckon xx is a really good topic although I'm not sure how common it is Haven't heard of anyone doing it though although once you decide you might want to take the post down just in case anyone who is not part of AN see this and steal your topic
Also, I reckon it will be easier to do food than animals....

Also, thank you for the tips guys

Good idea LOL thanks
Also what sub topics would you have for animals and food? Do you get to choose your sub topics? Like what if the examiners ask you a question outside of your sub topics?

[Shinkaze]

Good idea LOL thanks
Also what sub topics would you have for animals and food? Do you get to choose your sub topics? Like what if the examiners ask you a question outside of your sub topics?

I reckon for animals, you can say their eating habits, their features and maybe a legend or story about the animal while for food, you can say the history, why is it famous and where is it commonly eaten and things like that If they ask you something outside your sub topics and you can't answer it, I would say:对不起，我没有研究到这个，但是 (link to something else). But I'm not really sure I think it's mentioned once on the exam reports If you would like, I'm willing to help even more over PM Just send me one and I don't bite ( I just don't want to post too much on the forum and let other not AN people see...)

[99.90 pls]

Statement of marks- gives both oral and written

Tiny bit off topic, but how long do the statements take to arrive? I'm about to post mine off tomorrow.

[Orb]

Tiny bit off topic, but how long do the statements take to arrive? I'm about to post mine off tomorrow.

3-4 days
This year was easy as fk, everyone i swear got 95+ for oral

[Splash-Tackle-Flail]

3-4 days
This year was easy as fk, everyone i swear got 95+ for oral

Which didn't help with an easy written as well. Could it be more lenient assessor s last year? I know people in my cohort (me inclusive) were only getting around 80 max in the mock orals, but it would be interesting to see the grade distributions and assessors reports when they come out (y)