English Test

Today Catherine and I took eight of our students to the British Council in Seoul for an English proficiency test. We met five of them at the subway station in our town, and the other three met us at the British Council office. The kids were really excited on the subway ride. We managed to get an entire row of seats for our group, an almost unheard of feat for the crowded Seoul subway system. Here are four of my third graders.Neither Catherine nor I was really sure where we were going, and Catherine didn't trust my map-reading skills. I tried to tell her that I'm a foreigner here. The ONLY way I get around is by reading maps, so TRUST ME! Even though we had an hour to walk about a mile and a half, she insisted on stopping every other person on the street to ask for directions and make sure we were going the right way. We passed by a convenience store, and the kids wanted to go inside and get some ice cream. I was supervising them in the store, and when I stepped outside again, Catherine wasn't there. I peeked around the corner, and this is what I saw:Catherine getting directions from not one but eight (very young!) police officers. I took one look at the scene and started to laugh. The police officer talking to her here gave her really bad directions. We would have ended up in an entirely different part of the city if we had followed them. Fortunately, she stopped three or four other people who contradicted the police officers and confirmed my own map-reading assessment. The moral of this story is that the clueless foreigner sometimes knows what she's talking about.

We made it to the British Council office with plenty of time to spare, so we sat down on the benches outside and had a picnic. The other three kids from our school joined us. We reviewed some things with the kids and practiced the speaking part of the exam with them. They were a little nervous but mostly excited.

Catherine, the two moms who met us at the British Council office, and I waited in the lobby for two and a half hours while the kids took the test, which consisted of listening, reading, writing, and speaking components. The kids were really cute. When they moved from one room to the next for the different components of the test, they'd wave and smile and say "HI MS ELLEN!" When the test was finally over, one of my little girls ran right up to me and gave me a hug. Several of the kids told me the test was easy. The Young Learners English Test has three different levels--starters, movers, and flyers. We had four movers and four flyers. The flyers want to know what comes next. I suggested "astronauts." Here we are at the British Council, post-test.We took the kids to a Korean-style fast food restaurant to celebrate the completion of the test and let them order whatever they wanted. The unanimous choice was ra-bokki--rice cakes, noodles, processed fish, and hard-boiled eggs in a spicy red sauce. YUM! Here they are, having fun.I'm proud of my kids for their hard work and achievement. I'm eagerly--if not a little anxiously--awaiting their scores, which should arrive in a couple weeks.