Road to B1 in Dutch

[Ug_Caveman]

So finally went and had my trip to Sweden (with connecting flights via Amsterdam.)

On the way there I didn't shy away from having to use my Dutch (apart from one situation where my debit card wasn't working so realised understanding what was happening would be more important than using my A2/B1 level Dutch and accidentally getting my card blocked.)

In particular on the flight from Amsterdam into Sweden, where most people were speaking in Swedish to each other and got served in English, the cabin crew managed to pick me out as someone who understood Dutch (presumably because I was obviously listening to and understanding the Dutch tannoy announcements) as unlike most people on the plane I was served in Dutch throughout (maybe the thrum of the engine covered up for my accent.)

Once I was in Sweden I don't think I said a single phrase more than "jag prata inte Svenska" for the three days I was there. According to my friend I looked and acted (as in body language-wise) like a local, and when I would answer "jag prata inte Svenska", I did so with a pretty good accent and thus for some people it may have sounded more like a joke than a real statement (and given that I was clearly a more proficient English speaker than my friend, who is obviously not Swedish themself, that may have added to the confusion.)

Despite not speaking much, I could pick out bits and pieces of speech like bus stop times and announcements, and was even able to identify someone as speaking either Norwegian or Danish correctly (it turned out to be the latter) due to them saying "ikke" where I was expecting "inte".

From a linguistic perspective, it turned out to be quite the fun journey (and that wasn't even the coup de grace - as I have to say despite the weather I was truly amazed at how beautiful Sweden turned out to be, and I'm very much looking forward to returning soon.)

Now my little trip is over I'm planning to return to my study of Dutch (and maybe a small, low-intensity side project over a long period of time.) Fact is no matter how many times I get distracted, I just love Dutch too much to stop it (and getting to use it again definitely reinforced that love.) Indeed, a return trip to the Netherlands is likely to be next on my travel itinerary some time in the winter, so I better brush up more...

[Ug_Caveman]

So I've decided to go back to the basic building blocks of Dutch for a while - I've already redone MT F-CD1 and want to get through the whole course at least once by the end of summer (so the beginning of Sept for me.)

Also planning to go back to nightly reading, and want to start working through Routledge's Basic Dutch Grammar and Workbook. My intention is to really hammer home sentence structures and basic grammatical rules to the point it's impossible for me to forget them.

I'm also making good progress with my mystery side-quest language - and it seems to be going faster than expected, so might have some news later in the year...

[Ug_Caveman]

Am moving steadily through my two languages (indeed my side quest language is actually going far better than I'd have thought!) - have had to take a pause for tonight though as preparing for last day of school before breaking up for summer.

[Ug_Caveman]

As suspected I wasn't able to pass this time - too many bad situations stacking up at once - food poisoning plus the technical issues in the exam room. I rarely get sick so when I do it's quite a shock to the system, and I'd not eaten for over 24 hours before I actually sat the exam. I feel like if I'd been stronger in part 1 of the speaking I'd have passed, but I've not yet seen the mark breakdown - writing was the most solid by far though, without a doubt.

For what it's worth, I'm actually not that disappointed. Yes, it would have been nice to say I'm B1 and get a nice shiny certificate next month, but my plan was always to study for another two years before trying B2 anyway - so I'll just keep doing what I was doing, and go again for B1 next year. I'm making good progress with my other language too and am considering sitting an A1 exam in October.

Given I'll be finished with my MSc by September, I'll have a lot more free time to study and potentially seek out guided tuition.

Also, I'm not sure if I've written about this here before, but I'm moving schools in September - my current school has virtually zero MFL (only French and Spanish up to GCSE [16 years old]) - my new school prides itself on it's language department and teaches five (I think?) to A-level (pre-university) with the headteacher being one of the language teachers. So I'll be surrounded by far more like-minded people when it comes to it next year (and if I needed to ask for leave to sit an exam I suspect it would be a less awkward conversation!)

[Ug_Caveman]

As suspected I wasn't able to pass this time - too many bad situations stacking up at once - food poisoning plus the technical issues in the exam room. I rarely get sick so when I do it's quite a shock to the system, and I'd not eaten for over 24 hours before I actually sat the exam. I feel like if I'd been stronger in part 1 of the speaking I'd have passed, but I've not yet seen the mark breakdown - writing was the most solid by far though, without a doubt.

I've now seen my mark breakdown, and I'm not sure how I feel. I scored above 50% in every section... Apart from the first listening section where we couldn't hear anything due to a dodgy AC in the room - where I scored 4/16.

(The 'slaggrens' [pass boundary for the whole exam] was 350, my overall score was 317.)

I don't know if they took the technical issue into account or not, but part of me is considering lodging an appeal to taal:unie, but I'm worried about damaging my relationship with the examiner for future efforts and looking like a whinging child who didn't get their way.

Either way, I did much better in speaking than I was expecting (10/17 and 12/17) which has surprised me.

[Ug_Caveman]

Haven't lodged a formal challenge or anything, but I have decided to query the issue with Taal:Unie; I'm not sure it will get me anywhere, but I need to try for my own sanity...

I'm still going with language no. 2 as well, and am considering an A1 exam at the end of the year depending on how well my written skills pickup.

[Ug_Caveman]

Took a few weeks off to finish my thesis which has nearly doubled in length these last few weeks from 10000 words to 19800 (and in all honestly I'd like to do more but we're constrained by a word limit...) Simply haven't had the time to study languages!

Haven't heard back from TaalUnie yet and I'm not sure if it's worth chasing them up, I doubt it would change the outcome but I'm still very... Annoyed that I failed on the basis of a technical fault.

Also accidentally downloaded an Afrikaans audio lesson instead of a Dutch one recently and was pleasantly surprised at how much I could understand (100%... Although it was a slow and basic lesson), tempted to add Afrikaans to my study list once I've exhausted my Dutch resources just to train myself to hear and understand different accents for similar words (and the rugby World Cup is around the corner too!) Thinking of doing then same for West Frisian but obviously this lacks the same resources.

EDIT: Also, apologies to anyone who has received a blank PM from me or a disappearing notification saying I've sent a message. To the people who messaged me asking if I sent them, yes I did, but for some reason the message text didn't send?

I can assure you I've not been messing around and sending blank messages to people or deleting them before they leave the outbox and I'm not sure why the full messages haven't gone through

[Ug_Caveman]

I've had a long enough layoff and now my thesis has finally been submitted I'm straight back to Dutch.

Have already done a pass through of MT Foundation again, and completed the first 5 pages of Oosterhoff's Basic Dutch: A Grammar and Workbook.

Plan is to go through that book, TY Dutch and (maybe) Living Language: Spoken World Dutch before Christmas to reinforce the basics that have atrophied a bit due to all my time going on thesis writing - then to move onto Intermediate Dutch: A Grammar and Workbook and Colloquial Dutch 2.

In between all of this, I've got plans for visits to Amsterdam and Brussels (and possibly Antwerp but that's a bit less likely), and I'm hoping to sort myself out with some actual Dutch instruction from a teacher so I can practise speaking beyond MT.

I'd like to pass my B1 next year and B2s (given there's two exams) in two years and I do believe I can.

[Ug_Caveman]

Had a comfortable blitz through section 1 of Spoken World Dutch - made me realise just how far I've come in a few years that none of the lesson phased me at all and I didn't even need to look at English translations for the passage once.

I'm really looking forward to getting this B1 exam next year.

Also found out that despite the decision to cut the Dutch A-level, there is an Afrikaans AS-level available to sit as a possible extension project once my Dutch is properly up to scratch. Given the ongoing construction of the Square Kilometre Radio Array, jointly based in Western Australia and Northern Cape, South Africa, it might not be the worst investment for someone with an interest in going into astrophysical research. Dutch itself is rather useful given ESA construct all their space telescopes (such as Euclid) in Kootwijk, NL, along with Spanish for the various telescopes based on the Atacama desert (such as the Vera Rubin Observatory), Chile and French as ESA's primary working language with English (and launch site in French Guiana.)

[Ug_Caveman]

Completed chapter 1 of Basic Dutch: A Grammar and Workbook and actually learnt a new verb in the process ('raden' - to guess).

I seem to have misplaced my copy of Teach Yourself Dutch, so for now I'll just stick with Spoken World Dutch.