The third post in a row, I got further info from my sister. About the details of the exam and her feelings. There was no written test this time, there will be one in a few days and it will be a huge advantage for her. Subjectively she felt she was doing horribly. But she kept going. Even if there were many mistakes (how many are "many"? no clue. The teacher said it was ok)
Some things were a bit of a misunderstanding, such as the teacher asking closed questions and expecting open and rich answers (my sister has a point, that some teachers would consider it a mistake, if she started a long and complex presentation after a question "Wie ist dein Vorname?"). There was again the stupidity of demanding a list of prepositions with a case. Nope, I will not train my sister for this nonsense, and it was not really supposed to be the form of examination. And a list of connection words, and she wanted to hear a list of approximately five of them. My sister has been learning the approximately dozen that TA has presented, and with main focus on using them in sentences and with the correct word order. We followed the instructions, preparing for talking in compound sentences, we were not told to memorize dumb lists.
When it comes to grammar, X didn't really get a chance to show off a lot of the cool verb features (or horrible verb torture instruments, whichever you prefer). When she used correctly the praeteritum (as TA insists that in case of the verbs sein and haben, praeteritum is used even in spoken language more commonly than perfectum), the teacher corrected it on perfectum. Only one passive, and she made a mistake in that (well, one question rarely shows mastery of something, either a good or a bad answer can depend on luck)
And the teacher keeps coming back to the "but you've been learning for such short time" point. Fortunately, she is not stupid enough to make her fail for that, as my sister clearly has the average level of her class now. There would be trouble, trying to justify such a decision. My sister worded it nicely: "she can't let me fail just because I wasn't born German".
On the day of the exam, she needs to perform at least as well as today. That's the only thing that should matter. Not stupid opinions like "fast language learning is impossible".
As to our preparation: we clearly need to practice more, and try to make my sister get faster correct reactions. She puts together good sentences, but often needs a moment to think or to logically arrive to the answer. I find it better than the "methods" that make people parrot stuff but without the logic, it will pay off. But we should try to get at least a bit of the needed speed into this decision making process. Or perhaps we'll try to learn a more obvious "wait, I'm thinking" face
It's normal that people around A2 don't speak too fluidly. As this is a school exam, I decided to train her more for accuracy than fluidity or speed. In some other situations, the opposite would be preferable, I know. But I think it is a winning strategy, even though it may feel a bit weird.