November Test Scores: I Am Ready

OK, this is the last result graph before the exam. I’m going there next Saturday (Nov 22nd).

Everything seems fine – I’m just a bit worried about Speaking. The rest, however, looks pretty good, doesn’t it?

September Mock Exam – I’m already there!

With a short delay I sat down to write another Nivel Inicial mock exam. This time I chose a test dating back to April 2005, which had a strange taste of antiquity.

The Listening recordings are of very poor quality. So poor that it definitely impinged on the final result. As for Reading and Spanish In Use, they were really easy and the mistakes I made are only due to my carelessness and too much of self-confidence (I need to beware of that during the big exam in November).

The scores can be read on the new graph below.

Nivel Inicial Escolar

If you take a look at sample DELE Nivel Inicial exams, you will notice that some of them are marked with the word Escolar. Escolar, as basic language intuition suggests, means ‘school‘. Every independent student such as I will ask ‘So they are easier or what?‘.

Well… it turns out to be quite a challenge to judge whether they are. The vocab items used in Escolar tests are not much different than on regular tests. I couldn’t say difficulty is an issue here.

As for my scores, the Escolar ones are on average:
2% better in Reading,
9% better in Listening,
10% worse in Spanish in Use.

So… is there a real difference in level? Probably not. That’s good news because in this way I have three more sample tests to learn from!

August Mock Exam – Some Progress But …

As you might have read in ‘My Method’ posts, in the middle of every month I do my Nivel Inicial mock exam. The August one was fine, yet far from a dream one.

This time as my mock exam I did the official Nivel Inicial test from August 2007. I must admit that it was generally not extremely difficult, yet Listening was a bit tricky. However, Reading and Spanish In Use were quite easy.

So here’s my updated Nivel Inicial graph: