Today was my last private lesson. <\/p>\n
But first, we had a placement test at 9 a.m. I knew were going to have it, but I didn’t know it was such a big deal.<\/p>\n
When I came to Yamasa four years ago, right after I got off the train and came into the teachers’ office, I was given a placement test. It was relatively short, and not too difficult. It pretty much confirmed that I knew some Japanese, but needed a lot of work.<\/p>\n
So when I heard that there was a placement test this time, I was thinking, “Oh, it’s probably like the one I had four years ago. No biggie.”<\/p>\n
Boy, was I ever wrong.<\/p>\n
If I had known that it was going to be that thorough, I might have actually studied <\/em>for the thing.<\/p>\n Note: If you’re reading this while considering going to Yamasa, you should study some for the placement test. It’s a whopper.<\/p>\n First off was a monstrous grammar test, the likes of which I hadn’t seen in a while. It seemed to just keep going on and on… I think if you do bad things in a Japanese language school and die, this is a bit what Japanese Language School Hell would be like. This test. Over and over.<\/p>\n The questions started off pretty easy. And then they kept increasing the tension until something in my brain snapped.<\/p>\n I have no idea how well I did, because they never told me.<\/p>\n Then we all sat in a room and watched Howl’s Moving Castle<\/em> while we waited our turn to be interviewed. I never did find out what happened in the movie. I suppose I need to rent that sometime.<\/p>\n So I had an interview test in Japanese with S-sensei, which I floundered through. He’s a very nice guy, who did a good job of pointing out that I really don’t speak Japanese all that well at all, despite what random people may tell me.<\/p>\n Well, that’s what I came here for, so I’m not shocked or anything. I’m glad he was honest with me, and I hope they fix my bad habits.<\/p>\n I went back home after that.<\/p>\n The test started at 9, I got done at about 11:30. It was very thorough. At least this time I wasn’t jet-lagged like I was four years ago. But it would have been better if I had studied a bit… and could speak better.<\/p>\n I wish I had known how big a deal the placement test was going to be, just for my pride’s sake. But it’s kind of tricky– if I study for the placement test, then I might wind up in a class I really <\/em>don’t belong in, because I don’t really <\/em>have all of the previous material mastered, instead I know it just<\/strong> well enough to pass the test.<\/p>\n After the conversation test and my talk with S-sensei, I realized that I needed to get into a section that would help me with my speaking a lot. It was rough. So I’m not going to get too worked up over where I wind up. The main reason I’m here is to get better.<\/p>\n Then after I had lunch, I came back to campus for my last private lessons. More tutoring in things I have forgotten (mostly speaking), and then a CALL session, but the teacher wasn’t there. We’ll have to make it up or something.<\/p>\n Tomorrow we’re free to do whatever.<\/p>\n Me? I dunno.<\/p>\n Nagoya? Probably.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today was my last private lesson. But first, we had a placement test at 9 a.m. I knew were going to have it, but I didn’t know it was such a big deal. When I came to Yamasa four years ago, right after I got off the train and came into the teachers’ office, I […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,3,4],"tags":[894,828,12,532,895,106],"class_list":["post-937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foreign-languages","category-japan-trip","category-japanese-language-study","tag-japan-trip","tag-japan2011","tag-japanese","tag-testing","tag-travel","tag-yamasa","category-109-id","category-3-id","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=937"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1538,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions\/1538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}