English + Japanese Speaking Exams - Writing Wednesday

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, 

Firstly, I would just like to say, I hope that you're doing well during this incredibly difficult time period. I know that the situation in Ukraine and Russia is incredibly unstable right now and the general feeling of despair seems to be ricocheting across Europe and the rest of the world. But we must remember to take the time out of our day to be kind to one another. This war began because one incredibly narcissistic man chose to get a bit too big for his boots, and now some people are turning on one another. All I can say is, don't let it be you. You may not be able to control society but you do have autonomy over yourself and your decisions. Choose peace and love wherever possible and ask others if they are okay. Let me know how you're coping in the comments below. I would love to open up this line of conversation. 💜💜 

Anyway, onto the real reason that you clicked onto this post, which was to find out how I faired with my oral exams. Well, the truth is, they weren't as scary as I thought they would be. My English oral exam went pretty well, despite the fact that I had to arrive in school for 8:00am and was the first student to be examined that day. I was a bit unsure with how the process all worked at first. My teacher turned on the recorder on her laptop and I just began speaking as usual, unaware that I had to say my name, examination, and candidate number first, before I began my speech. But thankfully I was able to start over and I remembered and communicated my description of my literary and non-literary extracts fairly well and I stuck to the timings very rigidly. My teacher then asked me some questions about my speech afterwards which were on topics that were fairly familiar to me but I didn't answer them as well as I thought. Nevertheless it was a fairly smooth performance and both my English teachers who had sat and listened to me said that they found it very interesting, expecially my analysis of Banksy, which was a positive. My Japanese oral exam went fairly smoothly too, although I was slightly more nervous during the exam than I was for English. I chose an image about the environment topic, which portrayed four children throwing rubbish into a bin. I could quite easily label the people and items in the picture so that's why I chose it. I would have perhaps liked to have chosen a picture with a family eating some food but there strangely wasn't an image like that to choose from so I attempted to go for another easy option. I prepared my description for 15 minutes, then I gave the presentation. I may have made some slight errors in my speech but I was able to add some more sophisticated grammatical structures which my teacher happily picked up on. I thought I would struggle to answer the conversation questions but surprisingly I understood all the questions my teacher had asked me. There was some verbal hesitancy in my speech which my teacher did recognise but I expressed a certain level of understanding, which was a positive. I would have liked to have asked my teacher a question during the exam but I ran out of time amidst my concentration. My teacher didn't seem to pick up on it though as I had responded to the questions with some fairly extended answers. And it all went by rather quickly, which was a huge relief.

I had put so much stress on these oral exams but they turned out to be not as bad as I thought they were going to be. At times during the exams, I even enjoyed the moment. This just highlights how your brain manifests and perceives certain situations. Some of your perceptions are true but the majority is just constructed from fear of the doing the action. In reality, it isn't as scary as that which shows that more confidence needs to be hand in one's abilities. Nevertheless, I'm glad that it's done and I won't have to sit in front of a teacher to speak again for rest of this course. I wouldn't choose to repeat it again if I had to do so. 😂💜

Let me know how you're coping during this time in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!

Be sure to click the follow button below to keep up to date with my posts!

If you support my blog and love posts like this, then also please do not forget to subscribe through the form below this post as you'll be able to receive notifications via email every time I post. I promise that you won't regret it! 😀💜

See you next time, 

Bye,

XOX, Juliette

My social media handles:

My Instagram

My Facebook 

My YouTube channel 

My second blog:

The Book Hub

Previous post:

The stress is only temporary - Lifestyle Monday