Now that I think about it we literally talked about my Japan trip for the whole GC lol. It's not my best topic but then again it's not my worst (thank god they didn't ask me about school). So basically they asked if I went to school in Japan during my homestay and I was like yeah I went to classes and all that fun stuff. Then I got asked that. Too bad I didn't get to talk about part time work or my hobbies.. Also, I got asked my favourite flavour of yatsuhashi and I was like, shit, how do you say red bean (now that I think about it I could've easily said like strawberry or chocolate but my mind blanked so hard) and ended up just saying I like sweet varieties lol
Kinda weird how we got assessors on opposite ends of the "stay on a topic or bounce around" spectrum ahahaha
To future students: you can and, in my opinion,
should lie (just a little!) in your GC if it means you'll have an easier time forming answers. There's no "factual evidence" criterion and not only do the assessors know nothing about you outside of your student number, they really shouldn't care too much about anything other than your language ability, anyway. Heck, my teacher even said that you can lie about your own name if you wanted to
By the time the DS came along they literally took none of my bait unless the conversation started to slow because they didn't know what to ask. There's always this thought in the back of my head that I misheard the examiner and answered inadequately but what's done is done.
Ah damn, that's a bit of a shame. Still, it's their job to stick to your DS introduction, so surely they just thought what you said so far was already good enough!
Wait how did you lead them to talk about samurai dramas - let alone one's that you haven't watched? I guess those types of topics are good because they probably haven't had any students who have said something like that.
When they asked about hobbies, I talked about Sekiro, which I offhandedly mentioned is a game set in the Sengoku era while I was giving a short scenario summary. So then one of the assessors said that lately, there have been a lot of Japanese-history based media, like dramas and whatnot. Momentary panic, aforementioned mental squaring up because no way in hell am I losing any marks without a fight, literally only got to say "Yes, such as dramas based on Miyamoto Musashi" as my brain started praying to Yoshikawa Eiji to lend me his guidance, before the
other assessor cut in to ask me about my part-time work. On one hand, I'm a bit miffed because I was already like halfway through converting hazy memories of Vagabond into a coherent summary. On the other, that man probably saved my life.
Also, note to future students. I recommend having a script for GC (don't be reliant on it though). It helped me so much as I already had stuff in mind that I wanted to talk about. Even though I only started it last Friday, I would've been screwed without it and there would be a lot of awkward thinking pauses.
Absolutely second this. Having even just a scrap of
something to fall back on not only lets you respond to individual questions more effectively, it's also really good for your nerves.
Another little tip is to try to speak a bit more slowly than you usually do, but really focus on your
fluency as you do so. You'll be hopped up on adrenaline on the day, and it is very, very tempting to just babble as quickly as you can. Consciously compensating for this and focusing on the clarity of what you're saying will calm you down and make your responses
so much smoother. It's a lot better than being a stuttering mess that trips over every second word like I tend to be, anyway.
Other than that, try to smile and act confident. Even if you have some blood in your adrenaline stream, keeping up a smile will probably trick you into thinking that everything is A-OK. The psychological battle against yourself is a big portion of every oral, I think.
(ofc feel free to disregard all of this when I end up with a scaled 2 hehe)
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