The Big Test
Travel Location: Asia,Thailand,Central-Thailand,Bangkok
Well last Sunday was the big day that I have been preparing the last two years for. I wrote the Grade 6 Thai test, which the Thai government has set as the standard of fluency. Passing this test is one of the requirements to be able to get a missionary visa.
On Friday, my Thai teacher took me and the other student in my class to see where the test was going to be held. She told us that we needed to take the number 4 bus, which is part of a new line of buses called the metro bus. All of the buses in this fleet are brand new, with air conditioning and even T.V.s. But they are also the most expensive buses out there. Some of them are 20 baht, some 30 and there are even some that are 40 baht. For comparative purposes a fan bus costs only 8 baht, while other types of air conditioned buses will run you anywhere from 12-18 baht, depending on how far you are going.
Getting back to the story at hand, on Friday I watched the land marks as we were going, so that I would be able to do it again on Sunday morning with no trouble. I picked out three major landmarks: First we passed the Fortune hotel, then we passed Victory Monument and finally we came to the Dusit Zoo. I needed to get off two stops past the zoo.
The bus ride on Friday took about one hour. The test started at 9:00am on Sunday, so I figured I would leave at 7:00am to allow lots of time for me to get there and not have to worry if we hit traffic or some other problem. I was very glad that I did that. The buses in Bangkok are different than in Canada. There is no schedule for them. And while the government is involved in how they run somewhat, buses are privately owned by the drivers. There is no such thing as a transfer here. So there are many different bus numbers that all run down the main street that I live near. When you want to go somewhere, you just walk to the bus stop and wait for the number you need. Sometimes, if it is a less popular run, you can wait for a while before your number comes along. So I was very pleased when just as I was getting to the end of my street, where the bus stop is, the very first bus I saw pulling up was the number 4. I quickly flagged it down and jumped right on, with out having to stand and wait at all. And much to my delight it was a 20 baht bus too.
Given that it was a Sunday morning, traffic was clear and we were making great time. We passed the hotel and came to Victory Monument (which is a huge traffic circle with the monument in the center.) I knew that in just a few minutes we would come to the zoo and it would be time for me to get off. So I was intently watching for the zoo and I waited, and I waited and I waited. I was starting to get worried that somehow I had missed us passing the zoo. I asked the driver if we had passed it already and he told me that this particular bus didn’t pass the zoo. It had a red sign in the front window of the bus that I hadn’t noticed in the quick events of me climbing on right as I was getting to the end of my street. He told me that I needed the 30 or the 40 baht bus to get to the zoo. I got off straight away and crossed the street to go back. I thought that we had passed the zoo, but what had actually happened was at Victory Monument, we had turned around and were heading back the way we had come. I waited for a fairly long time for another number 4 to come along, so I was feeling slightly edgy, wondering if I would make it on time. When I finally got back on another bus, I realised that we were back at the Fortune hotel! Then I was worried again, but we still made good time and I got there at about 8:30.
I quickly visited 7-11 to buy some breakfast, which I scarfed down (I had expected to have had lots of time to eat since I had left so early.) I checked in for the test at 8:45, where the first thing that they asked me for was my passport. I had left my passport at home. Upon reflection, I’m pretty sure that my Thai teacher had told me that I needed to bring it, but she told me months ago and I had forgotten. What had stuck in my mind of what she had told me was that I needed to bring a bunch of papers that I had gotten when I first registered for the test, which included a photocopy of my passport with my signature and the bank teller’s signature. (I thought that was enough, but apparently not.) I was a little flustered when I got to the testing room because of the passport fiasco. Then I had some difficulty finding where the test room was (I was one floor too low). Somehow I had also gotten the impression from one of the staff members that I was late (even though by my watch I still had 10 minutes.) When I got to the room a man was up front talking and I thought they had already started on me. But the staff in the room assured me that they hadn’t yet. I got to my assigned spot and relaxed.
The first section of the test was the reading section. We had 50 minutes for this section. This section was really tough. Not because I didn’t understand what I was reading, but because there was so much reading to be done, followed by just one question and then there was another long paragraph followed by just one question. There wasn’t enough time to read through it all. I only made it through half of the questions. At the five minute warning I went through my answer card and just randomly filled in circles without even reading the questions (it was a multiple choice where you colour in a, b, c or d with a pencil.) I was feeling worried, but after we were done, I could see that the others around me only made it half way through too, so that made me feel better, that at least I was average (even if the average was bad)
The next section was the listening section. This was also really hard, though perhaps not as bad as the reading. We were given another answer card with circles to shade in and that was all. We were not given the questions in written form. So we listened to the piece first, then we had to listen to the question and the four options for the answers. So, for example, they read an article then they asked the question what would be the best title for this article and listed off four options. But by the time they had gotten to the fourth option, I had a hard time remembering what the first and second options were. It was hard that way, and then it was also hard in that in several of the selections they used vocabulary that I didn’t understand. I have to confess that even after all of this time, I still feel like I am a far cry away from being fluent. I understand only about half of all that goes on around me. It’s a problem of just not having a broad enough vocabulary yet, but that will right itself as I continue to live here.
The writing section came next. This was the section that I was the most worried about going into the test, but as it turns out, I feel better about this section than the reading or the listening. There were two things we had to write. The first section was statistics. We had to look at a graph and write 10 lines explaining what it said. This was dead easy and I was able to finish it. The second assignment was we were given a statement and we had to write 20 lines on whether or not we agreed with the statement. I was concerned about the time limit as I have never been able to write out the full 20 lines in the time that they allot (the best I had ever done was 12 lines). Well the question they gave us was about the effect that adults have on the self esteem of the children that they raise. There were one or two keys words that I didn’t understand (I’m not positive that it was self esteem), but I grasped the question enough to be able to write 13 lines (a new record for me.)
We broke for lunch at this point. I walked to a stand on the street. While I was sitting, waiting for my food to arrive, I saw one of my old Thai teachers walking with a student that she tutored. She used to teach at my school, but she had left the school over a year ago. They joined me for lunch and we had a nice time talking. The student told me that she had only made it halfway through the reading questions too.
After lunch we all met back in the testing room to wait for our turn to have our ten minute oral interview. We had been assigned numbers based on when we had registered for the test. I was number 39 out of approximately 130-150 students. So I only had to wait about 30 minutes for my interview. While we were waiting, the staff members passed out a survey on what we though about the test. There were one or two keys words on it that I didn’t understand, it was just like another test. But since this was optional, I opted not to fill it in.
When my number was called, I was surprised to see that there were two interviewers. I had one lady and one man. When I first sat down the lady asked me to tell them about myself. That was easy. I told them my name, that I was from Canada and that I was a missionary in Thailand. The man asked me where in Canada I was from. I told him that I was from St. Catharines, which is close to Niagara Falls. There are a fair number of Thais that have never heard of the Falls, so I always ask if they have heard of them. This man had not only heard of them, he said that he had visited them and gone to Toronto too. They asked me how I came to be a missionary in Thailand and then they asked me where I lived in Thailand and how I had come to the test. They were surprised when I told them that I had come by bus. Then I told them the story of how I had been on the wrong bus. Then they asked me if I rode the buses often and I told them I rode them every day. The final question they had for me was how buses were different in Thailand from buses in Canada. These were all subjects that I had spoken about before and I did great on this section. The man in particular seemed to really like me. He even said two or three times that I was fun to talk to.
They used to mark the tests on a percentage basis and you passed or failed grade 6, but starting last year, they have changed the format of the test. Students aren’t given a percentage grade anymore, but are rather told what grade level they are at. So, for example, I might be told that I am at a grade 3 level in reading and a grade 7 level in speaking. But if I were to give my opinion of how I feel I did using percentages, I would say that I feel like I’m hovering around a 50% for both reading and listening (with listening being slightly better), about 75% for writing and 90% for speaking. So hopefully the two strong sections will balance out the two weaker sections and I’ll average out somewhere in the middle.
I have one more cool experience to share with you. On the bus ride home, I pulled out my cell phone to call a friend here to try to set up a trip to Swenson’s for ice cream sundaes to celebrate that I was done my test. I saw when I pulled out my phone that I had missed a call (I had the phone on silent during the test). It was my Thai teacher. She had called to see how it had gone and to see if how she taught me had prepared me for the test or not. We were speaking Thai to each other and I talked to her for about 5 minutes. I could see the lady in the seat in front of me turned around to look at me a couple of times. I wondered if I was speaking too loudly. When I was done, she looked back one more time then she addressed me, commenting that I could speak Thai. I told her I could and then she shifted to the seat beside me and asked me if I would mind answering a few questions about the new Metro bus line. I said that would be fine, figuring she would take a survey on paper. (She did have a lot of official looking papers in her lap). She pulled out her cell phone and I assumed she was talking to her supervisor sharing the news that she had found a foreigner who could speak Thai. She kept talking to someone one her cell phone off and on, in-between asking me questions about where I was from, where I had gotten on the bus and where I was going to get off. I was beginning to wonder why she wasn’t writing anything down, or asking me about my thoughts on the new bus line, when all of a sudden she started speaking into her cell phone and I could tell she was introducing me on a radio station. She then asked me about where I had gotten on the bus and put the phone up to my mouth. I answered and then she asked me about where I would be getting off, why I had chosen the metro bus that day, and how I enjoyed riding on the bus. Originally, when I thought it was going to be a paper survey, I had planned to say that I didn’t choose this bus very often because it was so expensive. But given that I was live on Thai radio, I figured it wouldn’t go over well for me to say that I thought it was a rip off. So I said complimentary things, but I did say that the reason why I was on the bus that day was because it was the only line that would take me to my destination, way across the city. Then she asked me about how Thai buses were different from Canadian buses too. I thought to myself, I just answered this question less than an hour ago. After she had hung up I told her that I had misunderstood what she meant and that I was surprised to be put on the radio. She told me that it was an all news radio station and that we had indeed been live.
I then made the call to my friend to set up the ice cream date. Seven of us went and it was delicious!
