Our Test
The long-awaited-for day dawned rainy and a bit chilly this past Monday morning. After sleeping in a bit to make sure we weren’t too tired that morning, we ate a healthy breakfast of eggs, pineapple, and yogurt – all designed to help stimulate our brain functions to the highest level. Then, after making sure we had two sharpened pencils, the timer set, and our heads on as straight as possible, we began to take the first of our Japanese language tests.
We started with the kanji and vocabulary section. For those of you who don’t know, kanji are the Chinese pictorial characters the Japanese use in their writing system. In this section of the test, we had to identify the correct readings and kanji for various words. We also had to choose which answer was most similar in meaning to the question.
Next came the grammar section and reading section. Here, we had to identify the correct particles, verb tenses, forms, etc. to complete various sentences. At the end, there were two short articles for us to read and answer comprehension questions about.
Lastly, was the listening comprehension section. This was the part we were most nervous about. It involved listening to dialogues on a CD and answering various comprehension questions. Because of some of our prior listening practice, we were afraid that the dialogues would be fast and difficult to follow.
After having completed the test, I am pleased to say that each section was actually much easier than we thought they would be. We understood both the kanji and grammar parts well, and the listening dialogues were actually a very good speed. We took our answers to our language tutor’s house the next day where she graded them and we found that we both passed! It is a wonderful relief and weight off our shoulders to know that this first of many milestones is now behind us.
What is next you ask? Well, because of preparing for this test so much last week, we actually did enough study to cover last week and this week. With that in mind, we are going to take a bit of time off the rest of this week so that we can catch up with various things around the apartment. Next week we will begin with our religious language studies with the help of one of our friends here at the church. We will focus primarily on that for the next few months until we have gone through that material and then we will continue on with regular Japanese study at an intermediate level. We are excited for the change of pace and look forward to continuing on in our learning!
Thank you all for your many prayers for us concerning this test. Praise the Lord with us that we were able to pass it. Please pray that the grammar concepts and words we worked hard to learn would become second-nature to us in daily conversation.