My first New Zealand Sign Language test.
I didn't know what to expect from a NZSL test. I had never taken one and was wondering how a written test would work with sign language. It was made up of two parts, summative comprehension and summative production. The written part of the test was multi-choice, which was great because I was always good at those. Guess what though, the very first question (in my opinion) was a trick question right from the get go.
Section A of the test required us to watch a clip of a person signing shapes twice per question and deciding whether they were the same or different. I was thinking, "oh this one's easy", then watched as a woman signed almost the same shape. The first shape was two equilateral triangles with the points facing down and the second was two equilateral triangles with one facing down and the other facing up. Try drawing that with your fingers super slowly and tell me you wouldn't get confused.
Luckily, we got to see the clip twice and after checking to see if what I saw was my mind playing a trick on me, I changed my answer to 'b: different. Don't ask me what this has to do with sign language, I was wondering that the whole time. Later, when we were discussing the the test amongst ourselves, like students do, the guy sitting behind me told me he started freaking out after seeing me vigorously crossing out the answer to the first question, so decided to do the same, "just in case".
Click Me
In my defense, it's unlikely for anyone to be able to memorise every suburb in Auckland in a week. I asked the teacher what it was afterwards and she goes, "oh, you weren't here that week." Then I look over to my friend who told me she would teach me what I missed and she shrugs and says, "I don't remember learning that one." That's just great. Well, you live and you learn.
The rest of the test was fine, identify words, identify names, etc. Then we got to the end and that's when I started to stress out. We had to watch a clip of a person signing basic information about 3 students. The first part was identifying which student it was from about 8 of them, then we had to write 5 things about each of them, which didn't include their physical description. I was thinking, "okay, this should be fine. I studied this, I'll get this right." You know when you're studying a language by learning new words instead of a paragraph of full sentences, and everything is slow and basic. Then one part of the test combines everything you learned and speeds it up by 10 and you're just like, what...is...she...saying... Especially when they add that one word you decided not to study because you assume it's not going to be in the test. Like, I don't know, Avondale...
Overall, the test was not as hard as I thought it would be and like every other test I probably overstressed. Lessons I've learned are, never miss another lesson of NZSL because you can't trust learning what you missed from your classmates and trying to learn it online is impossible, in my opinion anyway. Secondly, learn every single suburb in Auckland because you never know which one is going to be on the test. Lastly, don't stress too much, you don't need to get 100% on your mid-semester NZSL test. That's what the final is for.
The second part of the test was what I imagined it would be. Sit in front of a computer and record yourself signing for three minutes. She told us we could only retake our video once. Of course, no one listened and everyone did about 20 retakes. Suprisingly, she didn't notice. She did, she just didn't say anything about it.