My German placement test experience at Goethe-Institut Kuala Lumpur

Einstufungsprüfung @Goethe-Institut Kuala Lumpur:
Reading comprehension & grammar: Borderline A2-B1
Speaking: A2
Test date: Thursday, 30 June 2016

So I signed up for the Goethe-Institut placement test for A2 level during the last week of June 2016. I had studied German on my own, alone, without a speaking partner since January this year. I wanted to know where I stood and how much I've achieved.

I'm glad. The examiner, Tim was impressed. He said that very few people reach this stage studying on their own alone.

I was nervous. I stumbled and made mistakes in speaking. Sometimes I couldn't find the right word in time, sometimes I used the wrong tense, but when it was pointed out I could rephrase it in the correct tense form.

So speaking is definitely at A2 level. On par with students who have taken four months of intensive, full-time group classes. What I did on my own in five months gave me the results I expected. If I had someone to practice speaking with, I'd have gone even further. The results could have been better.

That means what I did was right. All the Goldlisting for vocabulary, reading authentic texts, building up from the basic blocks, isolated pronunciation practice followed by reciting sentences, hand-copying out 10,000 sentences, active, intensive listening to content I'm interested in, paying attention to words, all those stuff ... :)

Tim told me that my reading comprehension and grammar is somewhere between A2 and B1. But from the test results alone it's not clear exactly which area I didn't do so well. In my opinion it's most probably conditionals, complex sentences and adjective declination with definite and indefinite articles. He said it would be good if I were to strengthen up those weak spots in A2.2 grammar before starting B1.

Before I left, he gave me the URLs of websites I can use, such as the Goethe-Institut's online library and learner community where I could find people with the same interest in learning German. Very helpful :)

I'm just a language learner, not polyglot or multilingual

If I say "polyglot", most likely people in Malaysia will think it's a Korean pop song, the latest K-pop hit. They'd understand "multilingual" better but I'd avoid this term too. I'd just say "I'm a language learner" or "I'm learning [name(s) of language(s)]" and leave it at that. Otherwise people will have all sorts of high-level expectations as if I'm able to function flawlessly in many languages like an expert. As if I can speak like a native with no accent, no mistakes, on any topic using all the technical terms and idiomatic expressions. Come on, even a native speaker would not be able to speak smoothly on unfamiliar topics, right?

Neither do I like using the word "fluent" because it's so loaded with subjective meanings. Many equate it to high proficiency in everything. I personally think it means being able to speak without pausing too much, that's it. So in my opinion one can be fluent at beginner, elementary, intermediate, advanced levels. But to avoid confusion and subjective definitions, I'd stick to proficiency as a measurement tool. Proficiency is what you can do. A beginner can do less, an expert can do much more.

For me, I'm comfortable claiming English, Bahasa Malaysia, Cantonese and Mandarin as languages I'd put on my CV or résumé. That's because I can maintain conversations in these languages at an intermediate to advanced level. Two of these I can read and write at a high level of proficiency.

English is my main spoken and written language. I've used it in an academic setting up to university level and lived in an English-speaking country for four and a half years. With Bahasa Malaysia I have full working proficiency, having learnt it in eleven years of national school (Sekolah Kebangsaan + Sekolah Menengah) where it's the medium of instruction. For Cantonese, my heritage language, I can hold conversations comfortably on a variety of topics, including abstract and less common ones. However, in Mandarin my range of spoken expression is limited to concrete, straightforward matters.

I prefer the term "main language" because that's what it means. "Mother tongue" or "first language" can be misleading especially in my case. People look at me, see that I'm Chinese and assume my main language must be Mandarin and that I'm able to speak it like a native. No, no, no. Take it easy, man. Assumptions, ass-ump-tions can kill. I'm lost if you speak rapid-fire Mandarin and use all those idioms and alliterations that a high-level speaker would know. I'm just intermediate, for goodness sake. Keep it simple and straightforward.

I've also learnt some other languages to varying extents, such as Hakka, Penang Hokkien, Vietnamese, Thai, Tamil, Japanese, Portugese, Russian and French, but can't maintain a conversation so I wouldn't say I speak them. My mileage varies though, as I'm able to read French and Portuguese to some extent and speak enough Hakka to surprise people for a couple of minutes.

Other languages that I can speak at an elementary level (CEFR A2) are Spanish and German. For German I took a placement test (Einstufungsprüfung) for A2 at the Goethe-Institut Kuala Lumpur, so it validated my estimation of my speaking ability (although I'm sure my reading comprehension is better than A2). I wouldn't put them on my resume until I can speak them at the same level as my Mandarin which I reckon to be at intermediate level (B1 on the CEFR for those who know what the heck it is).

Spanish I haven't spoken for years so it's quite rusty, but can be revived quickly with some practice. I do have problems understanding Spain Spanish because my exposure has been primarily to American Spanish. I'm surprised that I remember so much vocabulary, so I must have done something right when learning the language thirteen years ago.

Yet I can read German and Spanish much better than Mandarin. I understand books and newspapers in German and Spanish, and can speed-read in both. But I read very slowly and struggle with deciphering the language of Chinese newspapers. Any book written in Chinese makes me fall asleep. Give me anything in the Roman alphabet and I'll digest it fast. Give me a non-alphabetic or complex writing system and I'll dump it into the slow cooker.

At the moment I'm learning German at full speed. That's what I'm focusing on now for language learning. Somehow German appeals to me because of the things I can read in it. Their open attitude towards certain matters, their variety of topics, their cultural advancement, and a rich library of content available on the Internet provide strong motivating factors for me to dive into it. The only difficulty I have now is finding real people to talk to, but in the meantime I'm doing intensive listening and transcribing to get used to the spoken language.

I'd like to learn more languages, but there are only 24 hours in a day and I have other things to do as well. So I'm just concentrating on one to bring it up to at least an upper intermediate level. Once I reach that point, I'll start learning another one. The rest are on maintenance or storage mode.

Malaysian Street Names: What do all those strange words mean?

Usually we see Jalan (Road) and Lorong (Lane). But what about Changkat, Solok, Pesara, Gat Lebuh, Regat, or Selasar?

Answers below. 

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In Penang you find the greatest variety of street names other than Jalan and Lorong. Here's a primer from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_streets_in_George_Town,_Penang



[Extract begins here] 

In translating the English words for street, road, lane, etc., the city authorities follow a fairly regular system to avoid confusion between many streets of similar names. There are exceptions to this rule where the historic Malay usage is different and there is no chance of confusion, e.g. Hutton Lane has always been known as Jalan Hutton (see e.g. the Mesjid Jalan Hatin (mosque) there) rather than *Lorong Hutton.

Avenue - Lebuhraya (e.g. Peel Avenue/Lebuhraya Peel; context usually prevents confusion with the normal meaning of lebuhraya, viz. highway/expressway)
Circus - Lilitan (e.g. Hargreaves Circus/Lilitan Hargreaves)
Close - Solok (e.g. Scott Close/Solok Scott)
Court - Halaman (e.g. Cantonment Court/Halaman Cantonment)
Crescent - Lengkok (e.g. Jesselton Crescent/Lengkok Jesselton)
Cross - Lintang (e.g. Burmah Cross/Lintang Burma)
Drive - Persiaran (e.g. Gurney Drive/Pesiaran Gurney)
Gardens - Taman (e.g. Western Gardens/Taman Western)
Lane - Lorong (e.g. Prangin Lane/Lorong Perangin)
Place - Pesara (e.g. Claimant Place/Pesara Claimant)
Quay - Pengkalan (e.g. Weld Quay/Pengkalan Weld)
Road - Jalan (e.g. Perak Road/Jalan Perak)
Square - Medan (e.g. College Square/Medan Maktab; also used for some new square-shaped roads that are not open squares, e.g. York Square/Medan York)
Street - Lebuh (e.g. Campbell Street/Lebuh Campbell)
Street Ghaut - Gat Lebuh (e.g. China Street Ghaut/Gat Lebuh China)
Terrace - Tingkat (e.g. Erskine Terrace/Tingkat Erskine)

The word "Ghaut" at the end of some street names reflects the fact that they are extensions of the original streets beyond the original waterfront at Beach St with the reclamation of the Ghauts and the construction of Weld Quay, ghat being a Hindi and Bengali word meaning a flight of steps leading down to a body of water.




[Extract ends here]
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In Ipoh you can find Hala, Regat, and Selasar.

Crossing - Regat (e.g. Canton Crossing/Regat Canton, Maxwell Crossing/Regat Maxwell)
Extension - Selasar (e.g. Chateau Extension/Selasar Chateau, Rokam Extension/Selasar Rokam)
Way - Hala (e.g. Pari Garden Way/Hala Taman Pari, Wah Keong Way/Hala Wah Keong)

In Kuala Lumpur you can find Changkat.

Heights - Changkat (e.g. Bukit Bintang Heights/Changkat Bukit Bintang, Semantan Heights/Changkat Semantan)

Meanings sourced from Pusat Rujukan Persuratan Melayu @DBP
http://prpm.dbp.gov.my/Search.aspx?
(Meanings of those "rare" words given in Malay only. I translated them based on what I know of the language.)