Så kan jag talar svenska eller inte? Jag vet faktisk inte...*

It´s the end of term now. And end of term means end of term exams! Not having taken any real classes this term, all I had to worry about was my Swedish exam. Worry, I did. Of all the classes scheduled this term, I think I attended less than half of them. No doubt I was hovering somewhere around the bottom of the class. I may or may not have been the poorest student in the class, but if I was not I would have made the other person fight for the spot! Actually, I do not think I was the poorest because there were a couple of girls in the class who spend most of the 3 hours chatting about something or other, and seemed to be even more clueless than me. That does not change the fact that I was actually also pretty clueless. I had not really made that much progress with Swedish. So with the test looming ahead, I had my doubts about whether there was any point to actually sit for the tests. (Tests, plural, because the test was divided into two parts, the written and the oral.)

It serves no purpose, I rationalised. I was convinced that there was no way in hell I would pass. It would only cause me unnecessary stress as I attempted to prepare for the it. And I really did not need to be taking on any extra stress. Preparing for a test which I was bound to fail (convinced as aforementioned that there was no way in hell I would pass) would also serve no purpose other than to rob me of precious time. Time, which I could utilize much more meaningfully by working on my dissertation, I argued. The fact that I was the only person involved in this debate did not stop me from coming up with more arguments. Another one was that I did not actually need the Swedish language certificate. I mean, of course it would have been good to have had such a certificate when applying for jobs in Sweden. Note: the intentional use of the third conditional in this argument, underlying once again my complete and overwhelming conviction that, at the risk of repeating myself, there was no way in hell I would pass. So, it would have been good, but I did not actually need it. Besides, I further argued, I would probably not find a job immediately upon arriving in Sweden anyway. Which means I would have time to take lessons there, so I can get my certificate then.

Despite all these very good points, I did not manage to convince the only person I needed to convince: me. If I had skipped the test, it would have been nothing short of a cop-out. Besides, I had nothing to lose. I did not have to pay for the test and there would be absolutely no consequences whatsoever if I did in fact fail. And maybe, just maybe, if I put in a bit of effort in the weeks leading up to the tests, I might just scape through. Guess the complete and overwhelming conviction was not so complete and overwhelming after all.

I did not actually have much time to prepare for the written test. The reason I did not have more time was a combination of having something else legitimate to do (like working on my dissertation) and practicing the art of procrastination (like deciding to make Kohlrouladen, photograph the process and blog about it two days before the test!).

The written test was divided into three parts: firstly, reading comprehension, which really, was the least problematic. Knowing English and German was sufficient to make sense of at least one third of the text. Another one third I could figure out from the little bit of Swedish I did manage to pick up along the way. As for the rest, .... well who ever reads every word in an article anyway? So I think I did alright in the reading comprehension bit. Somewhat more problematic was the listening comprehension. Despite being written very much like English or German, it sure does not sound anything like English or German when spoken!! There were a few questions which I could no more than guess at the answer. I thought I could just as well pack up and leave at that point. We have to pass all parts to pass the test.

The third part, which was writing, made me feel much better about the listening comprehension! Among other things, we had to write a text of about 100 words about food in our home country. The text was supposed to be in response to a survey of foreign students a university in Sweden where we were foreign exchange students. We were to explain what students in our home country generally eat. What people in general eat, what they don´t eat. Whether we like it. And what we think of Swedish food. Let me just say upfront that I missed the lesson on food. So, I wanted to say "students generally eat out because it is cheap to eat out back home", whether or not that be true. I did not know the word for "out" and I did not know the word for "cheap", so let´s forget about that sentence. Then I thought I would say "back home we eat a lot of meat, and seafood because fresh seafood is relatively cheap - in comparison to Germany." We have already established that I did not know the word for "cheap". I also did not know the word for "meat" and "seafood". Forget about words like "comparison"! In the end, the only thing I could come up with which I could say, was that we get a lot of Chinese food, Indian food and Thai food. But we also get a lot of European food, like Italian food and German food. I have no idea how I managed to stretch that to 100 words, but somehow I did. I might get a few points for effort on that one, but whether it will be enough to pass? That remains to be seen. All in all though, it did not go that badly.

After that, I had a week before the oral test. This time, I learned all the words for all the types of food. Meat, fish, fresh fish, seafood, cuttlefish, pork, beef, chicken, turkey. This, surprise, surprise, was not the topic I got for the oral test. See, there were 6 topics which we knew in advance. So we had the chance to prepare to some extent. So we knew it could be about food. What people eat, what we like to eat, or discussing a grocery list. The other topics were about ourselves (what we are studying, why, and if we like it, etc.), about our family (who they are, what they do, how they are, etc.) planing a holiday (where to go, how to get there, what to do when we are there, etc.) ... I can´t remember the other topics. We got the holiday thing. But we did not just have to plan a holiday, we also had to tell the other person about a holiday we went for in the past. That was to make us use the different tenses for the past. Thankfully, me and my partner had talked about this and asked each other some questions just before the test, so we were not completely lost. At the end of the test, we were told that we passed the oral bit. Now we have just got to wait about a week for the rest of the results.

So, it seems like there is a chance that I could pass after all. So it was probably a good thing that I lost that argument with myself (or won that argument, depending on which way you look at it) and took the test. Even if I do not pass, I learnt a lot more Swedish in those last two weeks than I did in the rest of the semester, I think. But how much of this last minute learning would actually stick, I wonder. And even if I pass the test, do I really know enough Swedish now to be able to say that I can speak Swedish? I really don´t know.

I suppose I do know more than the average non-Swedish speaking person, so let´s call that a yes! Well, I will be in Sweden again at the end of the week. So let´s see if I manage to put some of my new found Swedish knowledge to use.

*So can I speak Swedish or not? I really don´t know.