Exams

I've taken enough Arabic to pretty much cruise through this first semester. I got an 18 and a 19 on my first round of exams, which are practically unheard-of scores in the French public education system. After those exams, we had one additional week of classes, and now we are in the middle of our second round of exams.

On Monday, I took the Round 2 exam that corresponded to the exam that I got an 18 on. Keep in mind, we have only had ONE class since our last exam (stupid, disorganized system... what a surprise), so we didn't cover all that much new material between exams. Yet, oddly enough, there were things on that second exam that I had never even seen before. And there were a few other things that I recognized from previous years of Arabic study, but absolutely and without a doubt NOT from this current year.

And I'm thinking: what kind of teacher just throws new vocabularly at students during a translation exam when they aren't authorized the use of a dictionary? She even added in conjunctions and the subjonctive, and we have DEFINETLY not covered those topics yet. I was maybe third or fourth to finish the exam (out of about 100), but I am willing to bet that at least 75% of the people in that room failed. And unfairly, at that.

I just think it's wrong. I know I passed the test just fine because I knew most of the words/terms she asked for, if not all of them. But I knew them because I learned them elsewhere, not because they had been taught to me by my current professor. And not surprisingly, the only people who finished before me were all arabophones and so they clearly have an advantage over the rest of us.

This is why the success rate at my school is under 10%. But that doesn't mean it's right.

Tomorrow I have another exam - an oral - at 9:45 am. I have been having a hard time getting up in the morning, mainly because I have been so active during the days that my body is demanding at least 10 hours of sleep. As I don't usually get to bed until midnight, you can see how this is a dangerous pattern.

At any rate, I am hardly preparing for the exam tomorrow, just keeping my fingers crossed. I'm counting on this professor being more reasonable than the other, which it isn't hard to be.