First Foreign Language Assessment

I took the telephonic French foreign language assessment on the morning of the 28th. I got the results this morning – I didn’t pass at the required, “working level proficiency” level.

Though I’m a little bummed, this wasn’t that critical. Passing wouldn’t have moved me too far up the List of Conditional Eligible Hires, and if I pass my Chinese test, it won’t make any difference. What mattered was that I learn what the test was like.

I heard that the tests start at 9:00am Eastern Time, but I was able to work it out so that I could do it at 8:00 Hawaii Time (2:00pm eastern). I called the number they gave me, and the secretary connected me with the person who would do the test. They explained the process a bit, and then we started with some freestyle conversation.

The assessor, Fatima (Algerian descent?), asked me questions like where I was calling from, where I was born, what brought me to Hawaii, what I’m currently doing, what I’m studying, and where I would like to go if I was hired. On this part I did fairly well.

For the second part, I had to give a short speech on a topic of my choice. I had to pick from five areas: 1.) Foreign wars and their causes and effects, 2.) Economic relations and foreign investment and how they are affected by public opinion, 3.) Technology and how it affects health care and the quality of life (I imagine the French lady who had the facial tissue transplant would have figured nicely into this one), 4.) Family values – is this just a buzzword or not, and how do alternative lifestyles figure in, and lastly 5.) The media – how does bias affect industry and how we get our news.

I chose the last one, and had five minutes to generate a speech while they put me on hold. Fortunately, I brought along my French-English dictionary.

Even so, I know I made a few mistakes: I confused nouveaux with nouvelles (news), and I used the word "réseau" for network (as in media network), which I don't think was correct.

So oh well, I knew that my French was decent, but not really professional. And for not having studied it formally in the past 10+ years I feel pretty good about having done well in the first part. The real test will be on June 19, when I try to past the Chinese one.