Studieskolen - Studieprøven, Lytteforståelse Prep

The listening portion for the Studieprøve is tomorrow, and it's sort of a difficult thing to prepare for.  Here's how this portion works:

Part I - In the first part of the exam, a teacher reads out an article, usually about something interesting that happened in Denmark's history.  The text is read aloud twice, and our task is to answer 10 questions about the text.  We can take as many notes as we like, and after the text is read twice, we are given 30 minutes to answer the questions.  The good news - we're allowed to use Danish/Danish dictionaries.  The bad news - the texts are usually written at a fairly high level, and will definitely include words that we've never heard before.  For this portion, grammar and spelling aren't as important, as long as the answer is understandable and correct.

Part II - I don't know why, but I kind of like this part.  Maybe it's because I'm one of those weirdos who kind of likes filling out forms.  So, we're given a text with 30 words or phrases missing.  The teacher then reads the article, and our task is to fill in the missing words that we hear during the reading.  The text is read 3 times: once straight through, once with pauses after each missing word or phrase, and then a 3rd time all the way through without breaks.  We're then given 20 minutes to make sure we have everything spelled correctly and with correct grammar.  For this portion, the word or phrase has to be 100% correct, otherwise it's marked wrong.

As far as preparation for this part of the exam, I have only a few recommendations.  First, do this to your dictionary:

For the second section, this will be extremely helpful.  It's recommended that you look up every word in every phrase you've filled in, even if you are certain it's correct, just to be sure.  And not having to sift through the dictionary trying to find the right section will save precious time.

It's also a good idea to listen to as much Danish as possible, and preferably Danish at a more advanced level than everyday conversations.  Listening to Danish radio helps (which you can stream online here), but I also recommend a Danish podcast called Third Ear.  If you like American public radio shows like This American Life or Radiolab, and you're pretty far along in your Danish learning, I highly recommend it.  Really interesting storytelling, usually about Danish history (both recent and not-so-recent).

And as an update to my previous post, the issue with my stolen residence card has been sorted out.  The administrators at Studieskolen sent me an email to print out and bring with me to the exam, which will act as dispensation.  So, thank goodness for that.

So, anyway, that's enough for today.  Good luck to everyone heading into the exam tomorrow.

Studieprøven - How to Prepare

Under two weeks until the first part of the Studieprøve exam, and I'm feeling surprisingly calm.

My grades on the practice exams have been steadily improving, and I'm feeling pretty good about it.  I still have the most issues with the listening and dictation portion of the exam, but that part isn't until next month, so I've got a bit more time.

Today, I had a comment on a previous post from someone who is studying for the exam on her own, asking for suggestions for books or other resources to buy online.  We didn't actually use any books this module, so here are my two suggestion for anyone looking for ways to help study for the Studieprøve:

1.  Read the newspaper.  We spend a lot of time in class reading through recent news articles about topics from Danish and European politics, to climate change, to Greenland, and more.  Not only does this help with building vocabulary, but it also gives a lot of context that can be included in both the written and oral portions of the exam.

2. Practice, practice, practice.  Nearly every day in class, we practice for the exam with one or more portions from previous exams.  It's really helpful to get a feel for the layout and timing of the exam.  For example, similar to the PD3 exam, there is a reading portion in which we're given a pamphlet and asked to scan through it and find short answers.  Easy enough, but we're only given 25 minutes for this portion of the Studieprøve, so it's important to practice scanning and knowing how much time to take for each question.  If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you'll find examples of the various sections of the exam from previous years.  SOOOOOO important to take advantage of these and keep yourself strictly to the time allowed for each section.

Hopefully those tips are helpful to those of you heading into the exams soon.  I'd love you hear how it went for all of you when you're done.

PD3 Part I - THE RESULTS ARE IN!

The reading and writing portions of the PD3 exam were just under two weeks ago, and despite all of the preparation, I still felt nervous and unfocused.  I just barely finished each section within the allotted time, mostly because I spent huge portions of time just staring down at my paper.

A few days before our scores were due to arrive, our teacher gave us a look at the answers to the reading portion.  This was great and all, but with a crap memory like mine, it only helped to confirm the few answers that I could remember.  Since our own answers were off being graded, we only had our own memories to go by as we checked the answers.  What I was able to confirm was that the one question I was almost sure I got wrong was, in fact, wrong.

We celebrated finishing the most time-consuming bit of the exam with a party at our place the Friday after the exam.  Everyone brought a dish from whatever country they came from, and the evening was full of fun conversation and TONS of food.  It was the very definition of Danish hygge.

On Friday morning, as I walked to class, I checked my email hoping I would have the email containing my grades.  I had, indeed, received an email from the school, but it looked at first like it only contained the time and place for my oral exam on the 16th.  As I scrolled further down, though, I got a shock that almost had me shouting out loud right there on the sidewalk:

Resultatet af dine skriftlige prøver fra denne termin:
Læseforståelse:                    10
Skriftlig fremstilling:              10

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles… I actually managed to get the 10s I will need to continue on to module 6 after New Years!

I also received the subject for which I'm supposed to prepare a 2-minute monologue for the oral exam: Illegal dog breeds in Denmark.

We all know I love to talk about dogs, plus the topic was given well before we were expecting, giving us even more time than we thought we'd have to prepare.

Merry Christmas to me!

Studieskolen - HERE COMES THE PD3

What a terrible blogger I've been!

With the looming PD3 exam, I've been utterly distracted.  So distracted, in fact, that the damn thing snuck right up on me.

In fact, it's tomorrow.  Or rather, the first part of it is tomorrow.

Since we've spent the last month or so doing practice exams with actual previous PD3s, I am able to give a pretty good breakdown of how the thing works.  So, here goes:

The first day of the exam lasts about 5 hours.  It starts with the "reading and understanding" portion, which is broken up into 2 sections.  First, we're given some kind of information booklet (so far we've seen booklets about Danish taxes, university programs, nature hikes and short trips within Denmark, among others), from which we answer maybe a dozen questions.  We're given 25 minutes for this bit, so it's all about reading the Table of Contents and scanning through information.  Next, we're given a packet with 2-3 articles and we're given 65 minutes to read them and answer questions.  The tricky bit here is that they're looking for very specific answers, so if you haven't fully understood the text, you're likely to give either too much or too little information for your response, leading to them counting your answer wrong, even if it's mostly right.  An important thing to note for this part of the exam is that, despite being allowed to use dictionaries for this part during all of the previous module exams, dictionaries of any kind are not allowed during this part of the PD3.

We'll then be given a 30 minute break, followed by the writing portion.  Good news, folks - dictionaries of all kinds are allowed for this part!  Here, we're expected to write two essays.  One is a response to a letter or email, in which they're looking for more casual language.  And for the second, we have a choice between two topics:  One is based on statistics about Danes or Denmark in which we're supposed to show that we know how to analyze and discuss said statistics, and the second gives a topic for which there are several points of view and asks that we discuss the merits of some of them.

As I mentioned, we've been doing practice exams for the last month or so, and our teacher has been grading them as though they were real PD3 exams.  Being used to an American grading system in which we're either graded from A to F, or we're graded on a percentage scale up to 100%, the Danish grading system is baffling to me.  The possible grades are as follows: -3 and 00 are the grades below the failure line, a 2 is a passing grade, next is a 4 (which is the score needed to attain citizenship), followed by 7 (the American equivalent to getting a B), and finally 10 and 12.  You need a 10 on all sections of the PD3 in order to proceed directly on the module 6.

How have I been doing to far?  In the beginning, I was getting 7's on absolutely everything.  Even the ones that I thought I'd done really well on, always a 7.  Lately, though, I've been doing better.  Mostly 10s, and even a 12 last week on a "reading and understanding" portion.

Here's hoping tomorrow's exam goes as well.  A lot is riding on it.

No pressure or anything...

That Time I Woke Up Danish

Just an absurd little anecdote for your first day of Fall:

Last Thursday, I had a very minor operation in what I hope to be the undramatic dramatic conclusion of my adventures getting an up close and personal look at Danish healthcare.

I've been conducting all of these meetings and examinations at the hospital in English, partially because I'm much worse at Danish when I'm nervous, but also because I don't want to mistranslate something that's said to me and have it lead to major confusion.  That was the case on Thursday, of course.  I chatted with all of the nurses in English, chatted with the surgeon in English, chatted with the student doctor who was watching the whole thing in English as well.

And then, they put me to sleep.

In my half-awake, drug-induced daze, I don't remember what questions they asked me when they woke me up from the anesthesia, nor do I remember if they asked them in English of Danish.

I do remember realizing almost immediately that I was responding to them in Danish.

In fact, the one thing that I very clearly remember saying as they rolled me back into the recovery room was, "Jeg ved ikke, hvorfor jeg taler Dansk."

Or, "I don't know why I'm speaking Danish..."

Pludselig Kan Jeg Forstå Dig!

So... all of a sudden, I can speak Danish.

I'm not sure when the shift happened from me feeling like I just didn't understand enough Danish to converse to suddenly feeling fairly comfortable with it.  The change seemed to just appear from thin air.

It's a nice change.

Last week, I was hunting for a used digital piano on what is basically the Danish equivalent to Craigslist.  I wasn't feeling terribly optimistic, because I'd never had a response from anyone I'd ever contacted from the site about anything.  This time, however, I felt at least confident enough to write my inquiries in Danish, so I responded to two ads.  And within an hour, I had responses from both.  I arranged to take a look at one of the pianos, and when I was biking there, I decided I would try to get through as much of the conversation as possible in Danish.

We ended up doing the entire deal in Danish, and he actually seemed surprised to find out that I wasn't Danish.  Point for me!

And just now, while out walking the dog, I struck up a conversation with a woman who's daughter I normally see walking their dog.  She asked me where I was from, and when I told her, she said (in Danish, of course), "Oh, yes, I thought I heard a bit of an accent."  She was then surprised to learn that I'd only been here a little over a year.

Granted, I've gotten pretty used to responding to the kinds of questions other dog owners ask, so it wasn't anything too complicated, but I'm feeling a little bit proud of my Danish skills lately.

It's refreshing to suddenly understand most of the conversations going on around me.  There are still countless words that I don't know, but I'm feeling more and more confident that I might be able to do fairly well on my PD3 exam in November.

Studieskolen - Module 5.1, The Overachievers

Who goes to Summer classes at Studieskolen?

The overachievers, that's who.

At least, it seems that way.

While the class is supposedly supposed to have 11 people in it, it seems that there are actually only 5-7 students.  This is the smallest Danish class I've been in at Studieskolen, and it's nice to be able to have more individual attention.

Like I said, though, the other students in the class are all damn good at Danish.  One girl said on the first day that she only reads books in Danish, so her vocabulary is freakin' enormous.  One guy (the only guy in our class, other than the teacher) said that he learned Danish at age 16, though I'm still not quite sure why (he's Turkish, and Danish seems like a pretty obscure language to learn in high school). Still another girl has already done module 5.1 once before, so she's got all of the answers in her book already.  Not to mention, when I arrived in class this morning I saw her reading the dictionary!

So, I'm feeling a bit behind at the moment.

The good news is, the class is as relaxed as a Summer class should be.

The bad news is that it turns out that our class will be cut short by 2 weeks, as the teacher who was supposed to teach at the end is in the hospital (she's fine, but won't be able to teach, from what I understand).

So, more than ever, I'm glad that I decided in advance to repeat module 5.1 in the Fall, so that I'm sure not to miss anything important.

I'm still annoyed that my own memory for words sucks so much.  Anyone have any memory-improving tips?

Studieskolen - Module 4.2, Exam Part II

Oops!  More than a week later, and I still haven't posted about the second half of the module 4 exam.

So, here it is:

On the day of the first half of the exam (which was a Friday), the teacher paired us up and gave us our time-slots for the spoken portion, which would take place the following Monday.  I was paired up with a friend that I'd been in classes with since module 1, so I felt good about that.

The spoken exam was almost exactly like our spoken exam for module 2.  In the first half, we blindly chose from a list that we'd made of the 3 books we'd read during the module and two topics which we'd researched and prepared a 2-minute presentation for.  I ended up choosing one of those topics, and spoke a bit about the difference between how radio stations and media conglomerates work in the US as compared to how radio functions here in Denmark.  The friend that I was paired with spoke about one of her books, which I believe was called something like "Den Grå Mand" ("The Gray Man").

In the second half, the teacher handed us a piece of paper with a topic and a few words to use as jumping-off points.  The goal was simple to have a brief conversation with our partner about the topic.  Ours was TV, so we chatted a bit about how neither of us watches much Danish TV, but that she likes the show "Matador" (which is an older Danish program), and that my husband and I are planning to get caught up on seasons 2 and 3 of "Forbrydelsen."

In the end, we passed without any major issues, as was the case for everyone in the class (as far as I know).

Since it's been a week and a half since all of that, expect another post about my impressions of the start of module 5 sooner than later.

Studieskolen - Module 4.2, A New Hope

The new teacher walked confidently into the room wearing jeans and an open button-down gingham shirt over a plain white t-shirt, looking like a mix between Paul Giamatti and Tim Curry.  His hair was wild and curly and his smile was big and full of humor.

I knew immediately that this was going to work out.

From the start it was clear that the new teacher had been teaching Danish longer than our previous teacher.  He was infinitely more sure of himself and of the answers he was giving to our questions.  Not only that, but his Danish was far easier to understand.  Both because his pronunciation was clearer and because he seemed to have a better understanding of which words and phrases we had and had not learned in previous classes.

I already feel more optimistic about the class going forward.  To be honest, I had started to seriously lose hope and motivation, and was beginning to wonder if continuing was a waste of time.

It's clear that he's going to be a tough teacher.  Strict but kind. Insisting that we speak Danish whenever he's in the classroom, even before class starts and during breaks.  But always with a smile on his face.

It's nice to feel a renewed sense of hope.

En Film på Dansk

Strange as it feels to say, this is already the last week of module 4.1, and I'll be heading to module 4.2 next week.

Not only that, but it seems like we're changing horses midstream.

Instead of continuing on with our nice-but-frustrating Monday/Wednesday teacher, Studieskolen has altered the class a bit and we will have a brand new teacher next week.  We'll still have our other teacher one day a week, but our less experienced teacher is being replaced by someone who has, apparently, been working at the school for many years.

I, for one, am relieved.

So, today was our last class with the aforementioned inexperienced teacher.  We spent the first hour of class going over our homework, and took the following two hours to watch a Danish movie.

He asked the class if we would prefer English or Danish subtitles, and I think I was the only one to meekly squeak "...English...!"  That's was my insecurity speaking.  Everyone else enthusiastically voted for Danish.

So, Danish it was.

We watched a film called "Adams Æbler," (which, as you might have guessed, translates to "Adams Apples).  This is a film from 2005 starring famous Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen.  You might know him from the current American TV serious "Hannibal."

I went into it fully expecting to be completely lost, but I surprised myself.  I actually understood most of what was said.  To be fair, I would never have been able to figure it out without the subtitles.  But with the subtitles, I found that I could follow fairly well.

This gives me hope.  And maybe even a tiny bit more confidence.

By the way, speaking of subtitles... It's now a word that I often have difficulty remembering in English. I find myself always wanting to use the danish word (which is "undertekster").

I'm not sure I have room in my brain for both languages, and may eventually forget English completely.

A Mixed Bag Round-Up

I've been a bit distracted this month, so it's been a full 2 weeks since my last post.  But with April coming to a close, it seems like a good time for a quick round-up of recent events.

Let's go back to April 16th, which is the Danish queen's birthday.  It's traditional for her to step out onto the balcony at her palace here in Copenhagen on her birthday and wave at the gathered masses.  A girlfriend of mine who I met my first module of Danish classes wanted to go see, so she and I took my puppy, Wooster, and joined the celebration.  It was a perfect day for it:

That's the queen in the red jacket on the balcony.  Wooster was, as you might expect, quite impressed:

As far as Danish class goes, it's been a bit of a mixed bag.  One of the main issues this module is that the "textbook" that they're having us work from is what appears to be a not-yet-published version of a future textbook.  So we've been receiving each chapter as large stapled-together packets.  It's chock-full of errors and missing information and incorrect page numbers, making for a lot of confusion.  Not only that, but the DVD that they handed out to go along with the "textbook" was a burned DVD with a hand-written title, and which we were asked to download onto our computers and then return.  In addition, the track titles on said DVD don't match the names of the assignments in the book, so it's a bit of a guessing game to figure out which video to watch.

Our Monday/Wednesday teacher actually seems to have gotten his act together a bit.  Instead of just assigning a ton of homework and spending class time going over the answers to that homework, he's now having us work on more interesting, varied, helpful assignments during class.  He still hasn't prepared enough to actually know all of the correct answers, but at least he's moving in the right direction.

It seems, however, that we are going to have a mid-module teacher change.  The new course schedule came out this week, and it looks like our Monday/Wednesday guy is going to be replaced by a Monday/Wednesday/Friday guy (with Thursdays remaining with our other teacher) when we move to module 4.2.  We've been told that this new guy has been teaching Danish for a long time and is very good.

And finally, today is my birthday.

The big 3-2.

Happy birthday to me.

Studieskolen - Module 4.1, Correcting Teacher

Started module 4 yesterday.

Meet the new teachers, same as the old teachers.

Indeed, I have the same two teachers as I had for module 3, and things with our Monday/Wednesday teacher have begun in style.

And by style, I mean with me having to explain the difference between past tense and present perfect tense to the teacher, after he gave us the wrong answer on an assignment during class.

To be fair (sort of), he seemed to be much more prepared prepared for the start of module 4 than he was for the start of module 3.  Then again, he didn't even know he was teaching on Mondays at the start of module 3, and showed up more than half an hour late.

You can't see it, but I'm rolling my eyes.

We also worked on an assignment in which we had to figure out where the "stød" (or glottal stop) was in each of the seasons and months of the year.  If you've been reading my posts for a while, you know my feelings on "stød."  Now, I've come around a little bit on the idea.  A very little bit.  For example, on words that sound almost exactly the same, sometimes the stød and the context of the surrounding sentence are the only way to know which word is being used.  However, insisting that we listen for something that is both difficult (and often impossible) to hear and usually unnecessary for the sake of being understood... feels like a waste of time.  Time that we could be using to learn useful things like... words and grammar.

Not to mention that stød is generally the least of people's problems when it comes to Danish pronunciation.

The good news is, our Thursday/Friday teacher is also the same as well, and I find her knowledgeable, easy to understand, and downright delightful.

Studieskolen - Module 3 Test Prep (and a small update)

Technically, as far at the Studieskolen module calendar is concerned, this module doesn't end for another 2 weeks.  However, since påskeferie (or Easter vacation) is next week, our teachers decided it would be better to have our module test the Friday before the break.  I know I don't expect to speak much Danish during my week off, so I can understand the logic.

One small problem...

My husband and I booked tickets to go see the family in England long before they decided when they were going to have the exam, and I leave on Thursday.

Luckily, the folks at Studieskolen are generally pretty understanding about the fact that their students are adults and have lives outside of Danish class, and are totally accommodating.  What that means, however, is that I'll be taking the test by myself in a different room during class on Thursday morning.

As far as what the test will involve, here's what I know:  There's no spoken section of this exam, and no listening section either.  As far as I know, the test is made up of a few sections that involve reading texts and choosing correct answers based on that test, and then a writing section in which we'll need to write a formal letter and possibly an informal email.

We spent the last class working on informal emails, and we spent one previous class working on understanding the formal and commonly used expressions in formal emails.  However, as I mentioned in a previous post, I feel like this is a skill that would have been helpful MUCH earlier on.  At the very least, earlier on on module 3.  Hell, even closer to the beginning of module 3.2.

But I don't write the curriculum, so...

We'll see how it goes.

And a quick update on this post:  I went to the hospital on Friday, and they took a family history and and gave me some additional information about the implications and preventative measures if I do end up having the gene (all of which was actually more distressing than I'd previously thought), and then sent me downstairs to get blood drawn for the test itself.  And now, I wait.  I wait somewhere between 1 and 2 months...

Studieskolen - Module 3.2, Frustrations

I'm about a week away from my module 3 exam, and there's definitely tension in the air in my class.  It seems that quite a few of my classmates are frustrated with the class for various reasons.

Some feel like they're not learning anything new, or they don't feel like we're focusing on the things they need help with.  Others are simple lost completely.  Still others (myself included) are getting tired of our Monday/Wednesday teacher's teaching methods.

It's been a very different vibe in class during module 3, and not always in a good way.  Especially on Mondays and Wednesdays, when many of us feel that even the teacher doesn't know the correct answers.  And if he doesn't really know what the answers are, then how are we supposed to learn?

Today was especially frustrating.  We spent part of the class working on the "tryk" or stress on words in sentences.  Danish is a sort of musical language, and the inflection has a sort of rhythm to it.  Unfortunately, our teacher doesn't seem to be a terribly rhythmic guy, so even when he's saying a sentence with the stresses clearly on one word, he tells us that the stress is on different words.  It's baffling and frustrating.  It's never been an exercise that I've had problems with until I started taking classes with him.

As far as the module 3 exam, it's entirely made up of reading and writing exercises.  No listening or speaking this time around, which is fine with me.

However, we've just now started learning how to write the more formal letters that we'll have to write for the exam.  Things like job application letters and formal requests for various things.  If it were up to me, that's the kind of thing we would have been working on from the start.  The Danish job application letter is very different from an American cover letter, and I just today found out that I've been writing them incorrectly since I got here.

It's frustrating.

More frustrating still, it looks like I'll have the same teachers for module 4.  I still really like our Thursday/Friday teacher, but Monday/Wednesday-guy needs to get his act together.

Hodgepodge for 500, Alex

It's been a bit of a quiet month as far as posts go.  Oddly enough, this is more because there's been too much going on than that I've had nothing to write about.  So here is a brief rundown of this months news:

I'm about a week and a half into module 3.2 now.  It's been a bit of a strange experience, as we had a whole bunch of new students join the class.  So many, in fact, that there are now more new students than people I know.  Stranger still, most of the new students were put into the class directly from module 2.  It seems their teacher thought that they were all so good that they should skip 3.1 completely.  It's entirely possibly that the really are that good, but it does mean that the our teachers in 3.2 are having to repeat a lot of the stuff we learned over the past 6 weeks, and that does slow class down quite a bit.

In other news, I've had my first experience with Denmark's national healthcare system this month, and I have to say... so far, it's a huge improvement from my experience in the US.  I decided it was time to meet my doctor and ask a few medical questions that I've had on my mind for a while, so I called to make an appointment.  They assign a doctor to you when you get your CPR number, and that doctor's name and number are then printed on your "yellow card" (your CPR card).  I was a little worried at first, as the first time I called I got a message saying there were too many people waiting on the line and that I should try back later.  Next time, though, I got through no problem and made my appointment.  Once I got to the office that day, all I had to do was swipe my yellow card in their little machine, and my appointment time popped up on the screen, and I was officially checked in.  The doctor was very nice, and everything seems to have gone just fine.  Even better still, I didn't have to worry about if or when I would get a bill in the mail.  So far, so good.

And finally, my folks have been in town for the last week.  They fly out this morning, but we've spent the past week walking all around the city, seeing the sights.  When learning a new language, it helps to put things in perspective by being visited be people who don't know the language.  I was reassured by how often they would ask what sometime meant and I was able to give them an answer.

Then again, my mother was picking the words up quickly enough that we're fairly certain she'll know Danish before I do.

4 Tips to Learn Danish Quickly

Danish is an extremely difficult language to learn.  However, it turns out that there are a few factors that can greatly improve your chances of learning it before other people.  Today, I give you a few of those factors.

1.  Have a Danish boyfriend/girlfriend or spouse.  Your Danish teacher may very well assume that you have one, and therefore some of the homework that you are assigned will involve talking to said significant other.  For those who do not have a Danish significant other, see option number 2.

2.  Regularly go to a job where most of your colleagues are Danish and will happily be patient with you while you struggle to express yourself in Danish without switching to English, despite the fact that speaking English is far easier for both of you than speaking Danish together might be.

3.  Be a highly logical person who already has a fairly firm understanding of grammar rules.  Learning Danish will test the grammar skills of even the most literate of native English speakers.  If you don't already have a basic understanding of grammar, learning Danish will teach you more about the structure of the English language than you ever thought you needed to know.

And finally...

4.  Already speak either German, Dutch, Swedish, or Norwegian.  There are a few classmates of mine who, from early on in our Danish classes, were able to understand most of what the Danes said.  At first, I found this extraordinarily frustrating.  What was I doing wrong that I just didn't know what all of these words meant, even if I could understand what words were being said (which is a challenge unto itself, especially early on)?  Turns out, the only thing I was doing wrong was not knowing one of the aforementioned languages.  Enough of the words in those 4 languages (and possibly a few that I've forgotten) are similar enough to words in Danish that it's entirely possible to understand Danish very quickly.

Those who are lucky enough to fit into 2 or 3 of these factors will find themselves racing ahead of the others in their class.

As for me?  The only category that I even vaguely fit into is #3.  In most cases, I'm able to understand and remember the grammar rules easily enough.  Unfortunately, it's the words that I have a tough time remembering.

There's very little that one can do with even a perfect understanding of Danish grammar if they can't remember any of the words.

Studieskolen: Prepping for Danish Module 2 Test

The test to finish module 2 for Danish at Studieskolen sort of snuck up on me.

All of a sudden, it's less than a week away.

The whole process has both been spelled out for us and remains shrouded in mystery, so today I'll fill you in on what I know about the process.

The module 2 test for Danish is provided by the government, not by the school.  So everyone trying to move on to module 3 will be taking the same test.

There's a lot more to it than the quick-and-painless oral exam for module 1, which took less than 10 minutes.  This one is set to take a couple of hours, and is broken down into 4 parts:

1 - Writing: We'll likely have to compose an email about a given topic.  We did a practice run in class yesterday where we composed an email to some friends about our Danish class detailing what we do in class, homework, our teacher, our classmates, etc.  There may also be some fill-in-the-blank worksheets to complete for this section.  The practice we did for that was shockingly simple.
2 - Listening: In this section we'll listen to some audio of people speaking Danish and have to answer questions or match up correct answers or fill in blanks as it relates back to said audio.
3 - Reading: This will involve reading various texts and once again include things like answering questions, matching up correct answers, and filling in blanks.  Our teacher also mentioned that we'll have one section that involves crossing out sentences in a text that don't make sense with the context
4 - Speaking:  During module 2, we've been given 3 short novellas to read.  As part of our spoken exam, we'll give the teacher a list of the 3 books we've read and two other topics (either from essays we've written or informational texts in our textbook), and she will choose one at random.  The idea here is that we walk into the test able to talk about any of the 5 topics, but we only talk about one.  We go into the spoken exam in pairs, so that we can also have a dialogue with one of our classmates as part of our "grade."

Actually, the tests aren't given a grade.  You either pass, or you fail.  Failing means repeating module 2.2 and trying again after another 6 weeks of classes.

Passing, of course, means moving on to module 3.

I'd kind of prefer the latter.

The Week of Worry

What a week!  Where to start?

It has been a week of worry, on various levels.

Starting with the largest:  I mentioned in my last post that Hurricane Sandy was heading straight for most of my family.  Sunday through Tuesday were spent trying to get updates from anyone who still had power, and finding out if everyone was okay.  Seems that they are all fine, thank goodness.

Then there was Monday's module 2.1 Danish test at Studieskolen.  The teacher had sprung the news of the test on the class on Friday.  I happened to be out sick on Friday.  Of all of the days that I decide I need to take my first absence...  I had nightmares about the test the day before.  It was a long test (took an hour and a half), but it was mostly a formality.  It seemed she only gave it to get a reading on who was still following the course, and if anyone should repeat module 2.1 before continuing to 2.2.  My test was full of minor mistakes, but she met with us individually afterwards and told me that I was fine and that I was clearly taking the class quite seriously.

And then, of course, there's the puppy.  Ladies and gents, meet Wooster, our 8-week-old papillon.

I picked him up yesterday out in Strøby.  Did you know that puppy training is exhausting?  I certainly know that now.  He wasn't especially happy overnight, so I didn't get much sleep at all.  Even when he was quiet, I was wide awake worrying about if and when he would cry again.  His little cry breaks my heart, and I have to learn to be less of a pushover.  Puppy training is shockingly tiring.

I think all of my worry over the past few days hasn't helped him to be less nervous about his surroundings, so I'm working on staying calm now.

So far so good.

Studieskolen - Module 2, Back to School

Okay.

Module 2.

Class started Monday, we this time the classes are longer, but only 3 days a week.

So far so good.  It mostly feels like a continuation of module 1, since we're in the same room with the same teacher, and almost all of the same students.  We have a few new people, and a handful who didn't continue with us for one reason or another, but it's mostly the same.

We're starting to get a bit more into the nitty-gritty of Danish grammar, and that's good.  I wish there was a bit more focus on vocabulary, but that's probably just me being impatient.

I've found it kind of funny that the few Danish speaking people who I've told that I passed module 1 have assumed that I am now pretty much fluent.  From friends to my hairdresser, as soon as I passed the module 1 test, they started speaking to me and sending emails in Danish that were way beyond my current skill level.

I think it's easy to forget how long it really does take to get to a conversational level.  I'm definitely not there.  I can understand most of what my teacher says, but that's because she knows what she's taught us, and tries not to stray too far from that when she speaks to us in Danish.

We've been told that module 2 is longer than module 1.  Twice as long, in fact.  So it won't be until December that we take our test for module 2.  My impatience to be fluent made that news a bit frustrating.

But they know better than I do how long it takes to learn the language.  Best to trust the professionals.

Studieskolen - Module 1.1, THE TEST

Today was the big test to see if I would move on to module 2 in Danish at Studieskolen.  Here's how the whole thing went down, in as much detail as I can remember:

Since the module 1 test is a spoken test, the teacher gave each of us a 10 minute time slot.  My test was scheduled for 11:50, so I spent the morning doing some last minute studying, and writing down key words for the stories we were supposed to talk about (we were allowed to bring one page of notes containing key words into the test).

I left my place by bike around 11:40 and was home again by 12:05.  The test itself took a total of 8 minutes, and seemed much shorter.  For a big test, it was an awfully small test.

Walking into the test, I was feeling mostly confident, but with that little, irritating voice in my head whispering "Don't choke..."

The teacher had me pick from a few overturned scraps of paper on a desk, on which were written either "A" or "B."  The letters indicated whether we were supposed to tell her about our day-to-day life, or tell her about our families.

I pulled an "A."

I decided it couldn't hurt to start with a bit of humor, so I spoke about how I wake up at 6am, when my husband gets up for work... and then go back to sleep.  Until 9am.  Once that got a laugh, I started feeling like I was going to be okay.  I went on to tell her about how I study Danish, and how I make dinner during the week, but my husband cooks on the weekends.  She seemed amused by that as well.

Next, it was time to talk about the little stories we'd read in our textbook, for which I'd spent the morning writing out key words.  She chose to have me talk about Katrine's family.  So, I spoke a bit about Katrine's half-brother, whose father is an artist in India, and who moved out when he was 16 because he didn't get along with Katrine's father.

These are not the kinds of stories we read when I was learning Spanish in high school.

And I hear the stories get more and more tragic as the classes get more advanced.

Finally, the teacher had some cartoons taken from our workbook, and we had to figure out the dialogue for each picture.  That wasn't all that difficult either, which meant...

SUCCESS!

She then handed me a slip of paper with the details for starting module 2, and we chatted briefly about the class itself.  It was really nice to hear her talk about what a smart, nice, balanced class we were.

I have to say, I completely agree.  I'm not sure I've ever been in a class where everyone seemed to like each other so much and be so genuinely curious to get to know everyone else.  I guess that's just how it is with expats.

On to Module 2 on Monday!