General Thoughts: Italian Continuers (1 Viewer)

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did anyone else here do this exam? how did you find it, difficult, easy, somewhere in the middle? how much did you write?

i didn't like the listening, but then again i've always hated that section. the other parts were pretty straightforward. i had time left over to check everything over, and i got a full booklet for every section.

one of the guys in my class only left 60 minutes to do the reading and responding, and both the writing questions. he only got half a page on the 9-marker... ouch. anyone else find difficulties finishing?

thoughts here.
 

Poad

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Re: Italian Continuers Exam

I was kinda surprised at how long it took for me to finish the paper - I only finished with around 5 minutes to go.

Listening was meh, I didn't find understanding the information hard, just answering the questions was sorta difficult (like the 'who presents their argument better' bullshit).

Comprehension was fair easy, again just those dodgy questions like 'is her argument justified?' were silly.

Writing wasn't too bad. I found the 6 marker to be quite easily (I had written one about a holiday before) but the 9 marker I was so confused abount verb tenses ("If you were here with me we could have had a lot of fun" - had no idea how to say that :\).

Was hoping for a 90+, not so sure about that though.
 
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Re: Italian Continuers Exam

ooh yay, a reply! lol.

yeah, for our trials we had listening separately so it was a new thing having to do it along with writing.

one of the listening questions i found hard. i think it was 'what is the purpose of this speech' or something, it was a 4 marker at any rate. i got the general gist, but not completely so i rambled lol.

i write about holidays quite a lot, i went to Italy a couple of years ago so i always talk about that, i found it alright. i see what you mean with the verb tenses thing, but i basically just used the conditional i.e. 'ti piacerebbe la cultura' a bit.

my teacher is expecting a band 6 from me, hopefully i don't disappoint her! worst case scenario for me, i think, would be low 80's. best case, mid to high 90's. we'll see, i guess. good thing about continuers, though, is that not heaps of people do it compared with other courses (only 345 people, 56 in extension). should be fairly easy to get to or surpass the average, which will hopefully help my UAI!
 
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Poad

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For that listening speech one, I think the girl was talking about Italians food/drinking habits, where they just enjoy each others company having a good meal and eating well etc. and something about no emphasis on having alcohol to have a good time.

and wow, only 345 people doing the course? thats really... small. o_o
 
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Poad said:
For that listening speech one, I think the girl was talking about Italians food/drinking habits, where they just enjoy each others company having a good meal and eating well etc. and something about no emphasis on having alcohol to have a good time.
yeah, i got the general gist of it and that she learned all that stuff from her stay in italy. but i didn't get the purpose exactly, i thought i heard something about organising a meeting on the weekend, so i slipped that in there... did they say that or am i just dreaming lol?

yeah, it's tiny, i thought italian would be one of the popular languages but the most popular are japanese, french and chinese. lol, one of the languages, i think it was malay background speakers, has only one student. hello first in the state.
 
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Poad

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Hehe, I'm not exactly sure what you're on about this 'meeting' thing, lol, but... at the end I think she said something about "keep this in mind when you organise something on the weekend"... implying how we enjoy ourselves on a weekend (like... getting smashed and stuff?) is different to how the italians enjoy themselves (like just being in each others company.. eating.. well)

Ohgod the more I think about it the more crazy it sounds. BUT IT MADE SENSE IN THE EXAM! >_>
 
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Poad said:
Hehe, I'm not exactly sure what you're on about this 'meeting' thing, lol, but... at the end I think she said something about "keep this in mind when you organise something on the weekend"... implying how we enjoy ourselves on a weekend (like... getting smashed and stuff?) is different to how the italians enjoy themselves (like just being in each others company.. eating.. well)

Ohgod the more I think about it the more crazy it sounds. BUT IT MADE SENSE IN THE EXAM! >_>
you don't sound crazy, lol. but damn, i definitely screwed up that question then. hopefully i can get a couple of marks for the other stuff i wrote, the answer and candidates notes show i understood everything else...
 

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Also, there was that other question that annoyed me in listening... it was so simple.. but I really think I got it wrong. The one about what clothes is the girl packing? She was like "I want to pack these" and the guy was like "No, pack these instead".. so in the end I HAD NO IDEA WHAT SHE WAS GOING TO PACK. >_>

What did you put? I did evening dress, t-shirts, and comfy shoes (swapped that from the sandal thingys at the last minute :\)
 
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Poad said:
Also, there was that other question that annoyed me in listening... it was so simple.. but I really think I got it wrong. The one about what clothes is the girl packing? She was like "I want to pack these" and the guy was like "No, pack these instead".. so in the end I HAD NO IDEA WHAT SHE WAS GOING TO PACK. >_>

What did you put? I did evening dress, t-shirts, and comfy shoes (swapped that from the sandal thingys at the last minute :\)
yeah, that was a stupid question... she said what she wanted to pack and he said what she should pack, but she never really said what she was going to pack. horribly worded, imo.

i picked t-shirts, shorts and comfy shoes. because at the start i thought i heard him tell her to pack 'magliette' 'pantaloncini' and then later said not to pack the high-heeled sandals, but comfy shoes instead... one of the girls in my class didn't agree with me though, so i'm not sure.
 

nerney

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ahhh well i guess it went ok i really do hate the listening
but i was used to doing listening with the whole exam
we do that all the time so pretty simple
i didnt write much for my last two questions
my first writing was easier to write
jus ramble with the same stuff i always did
hopefully didn't do too bad in it there is only
4 ppl in my class and im 2nd not saying much there tho
ha ha ha yerr i heard something about a meeting on the
weekend too so maybe it was in there!!!
 
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i agree with you on hating the listening. i think ours was harder than past papers, i did quite a few and found them a lot less difficult.

glad i'm not the only one that heard something about the weekend, lol.
 

BloodyClown

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yeh i rekon it was a pretty good exm all upfairly standard stufffor the listening the general consensus at my school is that the answer to the multiple choices were shirt, tshirt, comfy shoes and disappointedthe writings were all kinda lame but easy enough
 
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BloodyClown said:
yeh i rekon it was a pretty good exm all upfairly standard stufffor the listening the general consensus at my school is that the answer to the multiple choices were shirt, tshirt, comfy shoes and disappointedthe writings were all kinda lame but easy enough
did you do the exam or talk to the year 12s (just curious cause your finish date says 2012)? yeah, those were the answers i got, though one of the others swore evening dress was there.

a bit off topic, but lol, cool username.
 

BloodyClown

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lol yeh long story as to my username/detailsbut im in yr12 and yeh i just did the examim pretty sure wat we put was right, because the guy was being sarcastic wen he was like "yeh u should bring som sandals too"but one of my friends pu that too cause it was a bit ambiguous
 
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BloodyClown said:
lol yeh long story as to my username/detailsbut im in yr12 and yeh i just did the examim pretty sure wat we put was right, because the guy was being sarcastic wen he was like "yeh u should bring som sandals too"but one of my friends pu that too cause it was a bit ambiguous
i thought that might have been the case lol (about the HSC date, that is). yeah, i interpreted it the same way as you. but i understand the people who didn't put that, i found it badly worded.
 

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BloodyClown said:
yeh i rekon it was a pretty good exm all upfairly standard stufffor the listening the general consensus at my school is that the answer to the multiple choices were shirt, tshirt, comfy shoes and disappointedthe writings were all kinda lame but easy enough
Wait, I'm still confused. Did you mean '*shorts*, t-shirt, comfy shoes'?

And I definately heard her saying she wanted to bring an evening dress (una vestita di notte), its just a matter of whether he 'convinced' her not to, or whatever, y'know.
 
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as far as i heard, she said that she wanted to bring an evening dress, he says something like 'i'm sure you'd like to bring your high-heeled sandals, too, but you need comfortable shoes'. i took that as him saying no to evening dress, yes to comfortable shoes.
 

Freakin600

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I didn't think the listening was too bad - it's always my worst section but my whole class thought it was much better than the trial listening we did!

Also, what writing tasks did you guys do?
I did 12a and 13b

How'd you guys find them?
lol the first time i skimmed over the questions and saw them i was just like o_O but then when i actually started writing it was pretty good
 
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Freakin600 said:
Also, what writing tasks did you guys do?
I did 12a and 13b

How'd you guys find them?
lol the first time i skimmed over the questions and saw them i was just like o_O but then when i actually started writing it was pretty good
i did the same ones as you. as did my entire class (of 4 people lol). compared to past HSC questions they were a cinch, when i looked at them i was like YESS...

how many pages did you guys do? my friends looked at me like i was crazy when i told them i filled the booklet for all the questions... i think they were under the impression the booklets were 8 pages, when they were actually only 4 (i also have big writing).
 

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haha yeah
oh and also - did all of you guys make the same joke about that 'looking for kangaroos' thing??
Everyone in my class made some joke or another about it! =P

wait do you only have 4 people in your class, or your whole year that do italian???
 

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