입학 시험을 봤어

This evening I was at the Singapore Korean School. Yes, I have decided to make the switch. I was there to take my placement test for my Korean language course which is starting tomorrow. My intention is to start my learning at Intermediate Level 2, which according to the SKS website, is equivalent to Kyunghee Intermediate Level 1. To be precise, SKS has split the syllabus of Kyunghee Intermediate Level 1 into 2 courses of 10 weeks each and it termed them Intermediate 1 (I1) and Intermediate 2 (I2).

When I entered the room where the placement test was conducted, there were already two students present. Between them, there was an old man whom I was told was formerly from NUS Extension (NEX). I can take solace in not being the only "defector". Hehe... Anyway I have informed my NEX teacher about my intention to switch to SKS. She felt sorry that she was not able to start intermediate-level courses at the moment. But I am definitely going back to NEX to attend any post-advance courses if they do start afterall. I am missing all the fun that I had in my previous classes.

Back to the placement test. I was told by the teacher invigilating the test, Ms Min, that I need to score 100% in order to go directly to I2. If I commit any mistake I should consider starting at I1. Good grief, how am I going to achieve that? There's bound to be silly mistakes and words that I have not come across. True enough, I only managed to score 40 out of 43 and was advised by Ms Min to go to I1. Her rationale was that the test paper took questions from the first 4 chapters of the Kyunghee Elementary Level 2 workbook. If I cannot get all the answers right, it shows that there is gap and I need to fix it by attending lower-level course.

Right now, I can still remember vividly the mistakes which I made.

First mistake: I did not notice that the sentence "안경을 써서 책을 봅니다" was wrong. The question actually required me to pick the wrong statement. 안경을 쓰다 is grammatically correct because 써 and 서 are "forbidden" to go together as both words sound very similar. I was previously taught this rule but it did not stick in my mind. After this, it will probably stick forever.

Second mistake: This statement "책이 많이 넣으니까 가방이 무겁워요" is wrong but I did not pick it out. I should have known that 무겁워요 is wrongly written but I wasn't prepared for trick question like this. It was a silly mistake. 무겁다 changes to 무거워요 is actually very simple grammar.

Third mistake: Actually, this is not a mistake or an error at all. I simply do not know the meaning to three of the four choices given, so I was prepared to get it wrong. The question is: fill in the blank for the sentence, . . . 오후 날씨가 밝게 ____. The right answer is 개겠습니다. I do not know the right answer so I have no excuse.

Anyway, Ms Min eventually agreed for me to attend I2 as my result was still considered good enough. However, I was in for a surprise when she told me that SKS's I2 course would cover the first four chapters of Kyunghee Intermediate Level 1 textbook. That isn't what I am expecting when I read the SKS website. By attending I2 course at SKS, it would mean that I will have to repeat about 70% of the things which I have already learnt in KHU just weeks ago. But to take one step back, perhaps I should not be too quick to judge that repeating lesson is a waste of time. It maybe better for me to treat it as a revision and to take one step at a time.