Road to B1 in Dutch

[Ug_Caveman]

Have had food poisoning all day and haven't been able to do any meaningful revision

I'm still going to try and make the exam if I can get out of bed tomorrow, but outlook is bleak

[Ug_Caveman]

Won't give any specific details away as some people are yet to sit the exam:

* Felt better today so decided to go in for the exam.

* Section A was listening: really struggled on question 1, hardly had any full answers and struggled to make out a lot of what was being said - but that was because there was a very distracting ambient noise in the room. We moved to a different room for question 2 and everything was suddenly much clearer. (Sadly due to exam regulations we couldn't redo part 1.)

* Section B was writing: I feel like this was my strongest section, both question 1 and 2 were fine (much better than question 1 from the listening section.)

* Section C was speaking: question 1 was a bit of a dishevelled effort - made a few mishaps where I misinterpreted some of the visual questions and ended up panicking and repeating myself/pausing/panicking and saying an English word (was asked to give opinions on a topic I wasn't personally familiar with.) Question 2 was much better; made use of varied tenses and felt like I got my point across much more clearly (although made a mistake between some prefixes.)

All in all I wouldn't be shocked if I wasn't above the pass mark (thanks to listening question 1); it's been a very tough few days and I was almost at the point of emailing to say I wouldn't be sitting the exam (I've still not had a solid meal in nearly two days.) But at the same time, even if I fail, it's still valuable practice. And it gave me a chance to visit my old university.

[Le Baron]

If everyone performed poorly due to the ambient noise they'll probably mark that in accordance with overall performance or just pass it. They surely can't fail everyone on a question they recognised as compromised?

[Ug_Caveman]

If everyone performed poorly due to the ambient noise they'll probably mark that in accordance with overall performance or just pass it. They surely can't fail everyone on a question they recognised as compromised?

Only two of us really had an issue with it (the others in the room were closer to the speakers.)

Apparently TaalUNIE were made aware of the issue by our exam coordinator (they made a point of emailing to see if we could redo that section), but not sure if that will be taken into account when marking.

It's annoying because of how much better I clearly was able to do on part 2 when the noise was removed

[Le Baron]

Let's see what transpires. Don't write yourself off as 'failed' yet!

[Ug_Caveman]

Let's see what transpires. Don't write yourself off as 'failed' yet!

We'll see - if I have failed then I'll just have to go again next year. A shame they only offer the exams once a year, but I guess 365(ish) days is plenty of time to get ready to go again. And I'll actually be visiting both the Netherlands and Belgium before I'd do it again, so could get some real world practice for the first time in near a decade...

[Le Baron]

Let's see what transpires. Don't write yourself off as 'failed' yet!

We'll see - if I have failed then I'll just have to go again next year. A shame they only offer the exams once a year, but I guess 365(ish) days is plenty of time to get ready to go again. And I'll actually be visiting both the Netherlands and Belgium before I'd do it again, so could get some real world practice for the first time in near a decade...

Blimey, in that time you could visit NL/Belgium and sign up for the exam because they hold them much more often.

[Ug_Caveman]

Let's see what transpires. Don't write yourself off as 'failed' yet!

We'll see - if I have failed then I'll just have to go again next year. A shame they only offer the exams once a year, but I guess 365(ish) days is plenty of time to get ready to go again. And I'll actually be visiting both the Netherlands and Belgium before I'd do it again, so could get some real world practice for the first time in near a decade...

Blimey, in that time you could visit NL/Belgium and sign up for the exam because they hold them much more often.

I thought CNaVT was only held once per year (barring an exceptional exam session for the B2 due to COVID a few years back?)

[Le Baron]

Let's see what transpires. Don't write yourself off as 'failed' yet!

We'll see - if I have failed then I'll just have to go again next year. A shame they only offer the exams once a year, but I guess 365(ish) days is plenty of time to get ready to go again. And I'll actually be visiting both the Netherlands and Belgium before I'd do it again, so could get some real world practice for the first time in near a decade...

Blimey, in that time you could visit NL/Belgium and sign up for the exam because they hold them much more often.

I thought CNaVT was only held once per year (barring an exceptional exam session for the B2 due to COVID a few years back?)

Oh yes it's CNaVT. I keep thinking it's NT2!

[Ug_Caveman]

Having taken a bit of time to relax since the exam (and now feeling considerably more physically healthy and mentally aware after nearly three days of zero proper meals and a massive spike in white blood cell activity) I'm a lot calmer (even though I'm still apprehensive about potential results.)

The only thing I can really do is keep studying - either I failed and have to resit B1 next year, or I passed and have to start shooting for B2 (my original intention was to do B2 in 2025 anyway so my planned schedule isn't particularly screwed up) - doesn't matter which path I end up on, I need to keep moving forwards.

For the next two weeks I'm taking a short break from intense studying as I have some university exams coming up and want to spend some time focusing on revision for those first. Once those are out the way I can focus pretty much all of my free time on Dutch for the foreseeable future.

(I did also look into the NT2 exams, didn't realise all parts had to be taken over multiple days -_-, otherwise I'd have thought about giving them a try later in the year when I go to visit a friend in Amsterdam)