Princeton Evaluation

The name of the test alone was enough to scare me - "The Princeton Evaluation." This is a standardized test that is used to evaluate progress made in learning Bahasa Indonesia. It consists of a one hour verbal question and answer session, as well as a small reading and understanding session. After 3 units, which is the equivalent of 3 months study, I scored a 2+ on a scale of 1-5 (5 being "An Educated Native Speaker). That sounded pretty good until I read the description of "2+." Under the category "Pronunciation and Accent" the comments said, "Foreign accent requires concentrated listening and mispronunciations lead to occasional misunderstanding and apparent errors in grammar or vocabulary." Even more discouraging was the comment under the category "Grammar." It said, "Frequent errors showing some major patterns uncontrolled and causing occasional irritation and misunderstanding."

So my speech is "uncontrolled" and causes irritation to those who listen? That wasn't quite the effect I was going for. Oh well, there's a language learning principle that says, "To speak a language well you must first speak it poorly." I guess I'm right on track! My Grandpa once told me a story that his first day of school his teacher told him in English to sit at a desk and instead he stood on top of it because he only knew German! Grandpa speaks fine English now, so there's hope for me too.