Ooops

I may have screwed myself.  I just got my placement test scores back, and they’ve put me in a level 3 Arabic class (out of 8).  From everything I’ve heard, this is far beyond my understanding of the language. 

I don’t know how it happened.  It certainly wasn’t a triumph of my own abilities, nor a result of cramming old lessons or vocab words the night before.  I can say with confidence that I didn’t understand a single question on the test, nor the directions of what we were supposed to be doing in each section, cause, you know, it was all in Arabic.  In fact, once the test started, I had no idea what to do.  So, I looked around the room for a while, trying to guess where the other test-takers were from.  I noticed fifteen of the students were working vigorously, and eight others looking around with what was no doubt the same stupid look I wore.  We were all new to the language, and had no idea what was going on.  Meanwhile the kids who had been studying Arabic for 3 or 4 years were filling in the scantron like it was their job (we all got the same test).

One of the students (from Georgia) had been studying for 5 years and is nearly fluent.  During the break he goes, “man that test is hard.  How’d you do?”  I just laughed.  He didn’t get it.  So then I said, “good.”

Seeing how I had no idea what bubbles to fill in on the answer sheet, I decided to give an equal selection of circles ا  ب  and ج. 

We did get verbal instructions (in English) for the writing section.  The last page was blank and we were to write (in Arabic) what we liked to do in our free time and why.  I was able to come up with one sentence.  “I love to run with dog.” (And I may have spelt dog wrong.) Level 3, here I come.