Since we started back at school, it seems all of the language teachers have been focusing on preparing us for our oral exams. I’m sure they see this as a nice, easy little bit of work to get us settled back in to school but seriously – it is just traumatic for us. Tomorrow, I start Japanese classes again, and inevitably, there will be oral work. If any 4th or 5th years are reading this – I WARN YOU! DO NOT TAKE 2 FOREIGN LANGUAGES PLUS IRISH UNLESS YOU HAVE A MAGNIFICENTLY WIRED BRAIN!
Right. Enough with the pessimism. While last year, I found it entirely amusing that I would wind up speaking Japanese in the middle of Irish class, this year, I’m thinking that such antics would probably cause a slight problem. Aside from that, I seem to aquire most marvellous Irish skills while attempting to do german oral work… Is anyone else having this problem?
I’ll close this with a bit of advice (shamlessly stolen from my german teacher). If you wish to succeed in your oral exam, a good idea would be to hunt down a native speaker of whichever language you are doing (german, french, spanish…) and seduce them.
Use them.
Exploit their fluency.
Bribe them if you must.
Good luck =P
-Hey and if any german or japanese people are reading this…………. 😉
I’m liking the advice and from personal experience it does work rather well. Then again it would have been usefull if i was actually taking italian for my leaving but you never know i might use it 1 day….
You probably won’t be able to use it one day; it’ll have disappeared.
It kinda only makes sense that the best way to learn a language is to speak it…
Cellena?! I did not know you were doing this too.
Is Japanese still like the old Music class days?
Fellow Nihongonian! Lame coinage, and I probably didn’t even coin it, but anyway. I love Japanese, but I feel as if the kanji are mocking my foolish gaijin brain every time I look at them. Good luck! I hope you’ll have plenty of Japanese melt-downs that’ll make my own feel somewhat normal.
Aisling – what, you haven’t been facebook stalking me? =P
hi.
Naoise – You have an awesome name. It’s pretty cool that you’re doing japanese too! Do you do it in school, or extra cirricular? This year’s the last that’s being funded for extra cirricular.. Just found out today – for some reason this means there’s suddenly a bunch of 5th years and TY’s in my class. Not cool.
I have, I just didn’t see anything pertaining to this.. I must redouble my efforts.
I have that problem that I speak brilliant Irish in german and German in Irish (I am thinking about creating a language called Gerish which has the best from both languages without the genders) I find that if you know a film or show really well then watch the german dub without subs is very helpful if you want to challenge yourself do it with something you don’t know
Also a really good german film is “mord ist mein geschäft liebling” it is really funny