This year on my two-year anniversary of starting work, I was stuck inside, which is nothing unusual, especially on a nice sunny day. The only difference this year was that I was actually in an exam centre with about twenty other people.
We were sitting the NT2 Staatsexamen, which is the local equivalent of the IELTS or TOEFL exam. My experience of the latter exams is non-existent, as I have 13 years of school and a few higher degrees undertaken in English-speaking institutions as proof of my English language skills. (Surprisingly, none of the above tests is a requirement for doing a PhD at TU/e — you are not officially required to show any proficiency in Dutch or English as far as I’m aware.) In any case, I have no reason to show proof of my Dutch language skills, but I thought it might look good on my CV.
The level 2 Staatsexamen (NT2-II) is really only needed if you want to undertake a higher degree which is taught in Dutch. Some employers may also request it. Level 1 is slightly easier and can be used to obtain a Dutch passport. The other participants I talked to wanted to go to uni — they weren’t there for work reasons. So I had to explain that I was just there for fun. No, really. They had also been living in the Netherlands for a lot longer than I, and had Dutch partners (which helps with learning the language), so I felt really out of my depth. I don’t know if it’s the same elsewhere, but at the Eindhoven exam centre there are often a large number of German students sitting the exam, who will spend the breaks talking in German, unlike everyone else who communicated in Dutch.
I was quite curious what hoops I’d be made to jump through. The whole exam takes two days, however you can elect to sit the different parts in different weeks — one woman at my trial exam had booked four separate days so she would have only one exam per day. I decided to do it all in one go, which was tiring. The first day is reading, followed by speaking, and then the second day is listening and writing.
What I found interesting is how they isolate the different skills. You are only required to write during the writing exam: reading and listening are multiple choice, and speaking is clearly assessed on your vocal output only, however you are allowed to make notes, which are not assessed.
Listening consists of answering multiple choice questions about different interviews between two or more people — there’s no visual aspect to help with context, so watching TV is not the best preparation. You will also never hear the possible answers being directly spoken, so you need to be able to process the spoken information, rather than just listen for certain words.
Speaking is also a difficult exam to study for. You are given several situations, one-by-one, and you are asked to put yourself in that situation and provide an answer in 20-30 seconds. It really requires you to have a good and quick vocabulary. Sometimes it can take me up to a day to remember a particular word, so suffice to say, I was not looking forward to it.
Somehow, my idea of fun paid off, and I am now the proud owner of a Dutch as a second language diploma (after a brief saga in which the post office returned it to sender because I hadn’t picked it up after only two days). Each exam has a 60-75% first attempt pass rate, so I suppose I did well to pass all four for someone who’s only been here for a short time. The certificate is strangely pretty, and a nice memento of the half-way point of my contract. I could improve my Dutch further, however for now I’m happy with Dutch maintenance and working on my German instead.
2 Comments
July 18, 2009 at 7:15 am
well done!!
July 19, 2009 at 9:36 am
Thanks!