Jap Oral interviews!!

[dav132]

lol you guys are lucky, i had to do mine today at 11.55am -.-"
it was ok though, i didn't think i went too bad.
and are some of you guys native?
coz uve used heaps of kanji i dont know,
...k now im worried :S

[IntoTheNewWorld]

lol you guys are lucky, i had to do mine today at 11.55am -.-"
it was ok though, i didn't think i went too bad.
and are some of you guys native?
coz uve used heaps of kanji i dont know,
...k now im worried :S

yay another Japanese learner. Wah you've done your oral already?? どうだった？

I don't think kanji typing ability is a reliable indicator of Japanese ability lol *shifty eyes*. 心配しないでください。On a completely irrelevant note the rikaichan add in for firefox gives you automatic readings for kanji

[moshi]

when you type in hiragana into the computer, pressing the space bar automatically changes it to kanji, regardless of whether you know what it means - i can't read a fair few of the kanji that people post on here sometimes, so i sometimes have to find the furigana readings just to know what's going on
but anyway, how was your oral? were the examiners nice to you? and did they interrupt you a lot and ask you questions that you hadn't directly planned for during 会話 and とくべつけんきゅう?

[dav132]

そうですね！
ええと、だいじょうぶだったと思います。
thanks for the tip, that rikaichan add on is awesome!
i wish i could use that for reading sections in exams :S

btw ppl, how do u give good karma?
im still new to all this...

yeh the examiners are quite nice, but y wouldnt they be anyway?
there were 5 rooms, and one of my friends got 2 natives :S
but i dunno if ppl prefer that or not?
umm as far as i can remember they didnt really interrupt me,
but i didnt really give them great amounts of information after each question unless they were really open ended questions.
i think they just prefer that you acknowledge that it's a discussion.
i only had to ask them to repeat a question once,
but i still wasnt sure if i answered it correctly.
but all in all i think there's not much to worry about.
every1 on vce notes seems so clever anyway ^^

[IntoTheNewWorld]

Rikai-chan is awesome isn't it? You and I can magically read every single Japanese website now =] You need at least 50 posts to give karma

You make Japanese Orals seem like a relaxing conversation, must be pr0. Hmm I wonder how I'll feel on exam day eh >_>

Did they give you a lot of those open ended questions, namely ○○について、どう思いますか　Or were there more factual based questions?

[dav132]

ah k, kewl.

nah im definetly not pro at it.
but yeh the worst part is waiting to go in, it kills you.
cause u arrive half an hour early,
then you wait downstairs with the other 4 ppl who are doing it at the same time,
then waiting outside the room is the worst part, as you see each person going in.
i was the last coz my examiners were running a little late.
so i was waiting like another few minutes, which felt like ages.
my hearts beating hard just remembering it lol.

anyway yeh i think if you make it more natural instead of being like a robot forking out info,
they'll probs be more interested in you, and not ask you mean questions to throw you off that you mightn't have prepared for.
my examiners didn't really give many 。。について・どう思いますか？ questns,
they seemed to ask more questions sparked by what i was saying.
but i dunno, it was all a blur to me lol.
also, i cant guarantee all the other examiners are gonna be the same :S

[moshi]

at least it's over right? i can't wait until mine's over, but at the same time, i don't want the day to come so fast!
do you still remember what question they asked you to start off your convo? i'm kind of hoping that it'll be something like "how was your year" or "talk about your family", etc, but i guess there are no guarantees

[dav132]

yeh true that.
i think they asked me what i do on weekends first or what i do to relax.
for general they managed to ask me about most main topics like ひまな時・リラックス・週末、しょうらい、しゅみ、家族、日本、学校、アルバイト。
then they just branch out from there, like after saying i like listening to music in my spare time, they asked me about that.
but i think most of us preempt that kind of stuff anyway.

[dejan91]

Wow congrats on finishing it! I'm glad to hear the examiners weren't mean (now let's just hope none of us get's one who is! ) For me, by far the hardest starting point is 学校について話してください。 I just can't seem to initiate a good conversation from that topic. What does that honestly stem to?? You can't mention your school name obviously and is just seems to go nowhere. I'm scared of them asking me that question! For the discussion, did they let you talk for long or interrupt you constantly and ask you questions which went deeper into what you've studied? Also, were you asked to define any key words you used? Sorry for the questions haha

As for the kanji on here, don't worry it automatically changes when you type in Jap I was in the same situation when I first read posts in Jap on here...freaked out because I thought I didn't know enough.

[moshi]

...by far the hardest starting point is 学校について話してください。 I just can't seem to initiate a good conversation from that topic. What does that honestly stem to?? You can't mention your school name obviously and is just seems to go nowhere. I'm scared of them asking me that question!

there's plenty of stuff other than your school name like location, subjects, club activities, sports, etc

[IntoTheNewWorld]

...by far the hardest starting point is 学校について話してください。 I just can't seem to initiate a good conversation from that topic. What does that honestly stem to?? You can't mention your school name obviously and is just seems to go nowhere. I'm scared of them asking me that question!

there's plenty of stuff other than your school name like location, subjects, club activities, sports, etc

My teacher keeps telling us to not mention anything that could possibly identify our school >_> He tells us to just talk about our old schools instead, in case some examiners have a grudge against MHS (Are we that hated? =[)

[moshi]

there are plenty of schools in melbourne! so i hope they don't guess.. though it'd be funny if someone from mhs rocked up in your very distinctive rugby jumpers, haha.
i don't think it's necessarily that you're "hated", but rather that mhs has done fairly well in japanese and that the examiners knowing would perhaps cause them to mark you more harshly because they expect you to be of a higher standard

[GerrySly]

there are plenty of schools in melbourne! so i hope they don't guess.. though it'd be funny if someone from mhs rocked up in your very distinctive rugby jumpers, haha.
i don't think it's necessarily that you're "hated", but rather that mhs has done fairly well in japanese and that the examiners knowing would perhaps cause them to mark you more harshly because they expect you to be of a higher standard

That blows, we gotta go to our orals in school uniform, gonna be screwed if they hate our school

[IntoTheNewWorld]

there are plenty of schools in melbourne! so i hope they don't guess.. though it'd be funny if someone from mhs rocked up in your very distinctive rugby jumpers, haha.
i don't think it's necessarily that you're "hated", but rather that mhs has done fairly well in japanese and that the examiners knowing would perhaps cause them to mark you more harshly because they expect you to be of a higher standard

That blows, we gotta go to our orals in school uniform, gonna be screwed if they hate our school

lol why what?

[GerrySly]

lol why what?

Well if they have a grudge against our school they could mark us harsher or whatever, I think that's why it's in a neutral venue and you never talk about your school or your name (just your VCAA number)