Clarification

This post written by Nathan believe it or not.

I suppose I should clarify Amanda’s last post a little by explaining a little more about the DLPT (My final test). It measures ability in Listening, Reading, and Speaking. Each ability is measured on a number scale that ranges from 0 to 3+ with everything in between (0+, 1, 1+, 2, etc). In order to pass the test and qualify as a linguist you have to score a 2 on listening, 2 on reading, and a 1+ on speaking. For some perspective, a 0+ level would be “Hi how are you? I am good.”, a 1 level could string together a simple narrative, a 2 level could listen to and understand the news and discus current events, and a 3 could have an intellectual conversation about “A Farewell to Arms”.

For the speaking test, they had everyone participate in an Oral Proficiency Interview (or OPI). They have about 30 minutes to talk to the student and probe them with questions to measure speaking ability. They ask a question, and if the student demonstrates enough knowledge they move on to the next level of questions. If the student struggles, they go back down to the previous level. It’s generally fairly difficult to get much beyond the required 1+ on the OPI because of the time constraints, but two of our 15 in the class were able to get a 2. Myself and the rest achieved the required 1+.

Listening has always been my favorite and best ability. I scored a 2+ on Iraqi listening on our practice DLPT 20 weeks ago, and scored 2+ again on the real DLPT at the end of the course. No real surprise. I was kinda hoping for a 3, but I’ll definitely settle.

Reading has always been a struggle for me. Iraqis don’t read or write things in Iraqi dialect. All their books, news, and newspapers are in Modern Standard Arabic, which believe it or not is significantly different from the dialect. I scored a 1 on the practice DLPT, but managed somehow to score a 2 on the real DLPT. I suppose the bad score on the practice woke me up and I was more focused on reading instead of listening for the latter part of the course.

Taking the MSA listening test was a nice thing for the teachers to organize for us. I suppose it only made sense, since we had taken half of it anyway with our MSA reading. It was pretty challenging. I really don’t like listening to MSA at all. I consider it very bouncy sounding, almost like they’re trying to sing to you. Anyway, three of us, myself included, were able to score 2 or higher on the MSA listening. I got a 2 along with a navy guy, and another navy guy got a 2+.

Overall I’m very pleased with the results of the test. It’s enough to move on to my duty station, and that’s really the main thing.