<p>Bonjour-</p>
<p>Did anyone happen to take the French SATII today (December 4th)? I remember very few questions... but, don't you think it was relatively difficult?</p>
<p>A Plus Tard</p>
<p>Salut RoKlein :) I took it too today and it was a loooooot more difficult than I though it would be. The grammar section wan't that hard but the vocalulary part and the reading was a killer. :o)</p>
<p>i agree that the test was relatively difficult; personally, i used the PR for review, and although i was somewhat fresh off the ib exams, i found the french sat to be more than a handful</p>
<p>Yeah, I took the PR and the Rea sample tests, and today's test seemed a lot harder! Did anyone else notice that one of the advertisements was exactly the same as a sample question in the SAT II packet (and the PDF from the website)?</p>
<p>I took the French SAT II today, along with a friend of mine. She said she noticed the advertisement for the Suiss School on the practice stuff too.
I thought the test was kind of hard also. I remember the passage about the guy who was robbed - he was a writer, right? </p>
<p>Then there was the ad thing for a position with a veterinary office, or something like that. I didn't really know what was going on, but I may have guessed well. :-P</p>
<p>There were also two or three words that kept showing up that I just didn't know. That kinda sucked. But whatever, the first 20 or so were pretty easy. What were the other passages, again? I'm beginning to forget.</p>
<p>Yeah, the guy was definitely a writer.</p>
<p>I thought the vet. advertisement was for people with university diplomas wanting to help sell dog food, but I could be totally off.</p>
<p>Then there was that passage about the 40 year old guy, man that confused me. One of the questions seemed to be referring to him as "elle" and I got so confused, but it must have been referring to some femenine object.</p>
<p>Then there was an advertisement about some city or country, and it had a Jardin des Fleurs and a computer industry. I had no idea what all that congress was about.</p>
<p>I can't remember the rest now, but there weren't too many.</p>
<p>Sorry, I meant dog medicine, not dog food.</p>
<p>I'm a french canadian that went to french school all my life. Some questions (notably # 85) were so ambiguous that even though I understood the text, i didn't know what the hell to answer.
Interestingly, the test had words that don't even exist in french (like "attractive") and the sentence structure was etremely poor. Clearly this was to confuse the test takers. All in all, even for a french person the test was weird.</p>
<p>Is it possible that some of the problems were because you speak "Canadian" French and the test was aimed at "France" French? I guess they're probably not too different, but they must have different colloquialisms.</p>
<p>Let's pray that they screwed up making this particular test, so everyone will do badly, and you can miss 50 questions and get an 800! :-D Although, my friends who took the French SATs on two other sittings also said it was quite hard.</p>
<p>I remember there being a reading passage about a boy who talked about his father's goldsmithing workshop. I believe that was a more challenging reading passage. The others seemed fairly straightforward. </p>
<p>I also did notice the Swiss school advertisement on this test, and knew the answers before I even read the thing. I don't understand how that was fair. Virtually everybody who takes the SAT II subject tests has looked at the practice questions, so it was just easy points. </p>
<p>I found the vocabulary/grammar multiple choice section to be quite generous. I've been in French immersion in Canada since seventh grade and was only unfamiliar with one word, but guessed it because all the other choices were bogus. I remeber it was "semelle" which means sole of a shoe or sandal. </p>
<p>I remember on the October 9th SAT II French test, there was only one word I didn't know. It was "charcutier" which means porkbutcher. I also guessed that correctly. I think half the skill on the French tests is knowing the words and grammar, and the other half is eliminating obviously incorrect answers. </p>
<p>I found I finished 60 questions on 20 minutes, took 25 minutes for the reading and advertisements, and the last 15 reviewing. Questions 84 and 85 about the advertisement about the French city were insanely difficult. I said the predominant characteristic was the youth of its inhabitants. But that was probably wrong. Last time I took the test, I got a 760. That's pretty good considering I'm not a native speaker. </p>
<p>And also, remember that the guessing penalty on the French test is 1/3 of a point, not 1/4 of a point like most tests, so it's fairly nasty. I wish they'd give 5 answer choices, cause most of the time I could pick the answer out of 50 choices. </p>
<p>There is also some evidence of commonly accepted French standards in the test that are not completely grammatically correct, but follow idiom, so you must watch out for that, and I think that is fair. I know there were a few fill-in-the-blank questions that had 2 or 3 correct answers, but you had to have a knowledge of which answer is more commonly spoken and most efficient in speech. I know in many American schools, French is taught in an English setting and emphasis is put on grammar and vocabulary rather than oral fluency. This puts students at a severe disadvantage. You can read and write the language, but if you cannot express yourself orally effectively, you're lost. That is why I am thankful for the French Immersion program that is offered in virtually every Canadian high school. </p>
<p>I also spent 5 weeks studying in Quebec City this summer on scholarship, and I know that helped me a lot on the test. The best way to prepare for this test is to immerse yourself as much as you can in a French environment that goes beyond the classroom as much as possible. </p>
<p>I recommend taking the French test as the first subject tests. Never take a math or science test before a language. You definitely will be able to concentrate more, without all that scientific mumble-jumble in your head, whereas if you take a math or science afterwards, it's not too hard to wash a language out of your mind for an hour or two.</p>