The First Eiken Grade 1 Try 英検1級初挑戦
Hey guys!
I took the first exam of the Eiken Grade 1 (an English proficiency test) last Sunday.
The exam consists of the reading section (100 minutes) and the listening section (approx 35 minutes). I knew it'd be really challenging because I hadn't been studying much, but it was much harder than my expectations.
In the reading, you have to write a 200-word essay regarding a social issue: global warming, aging society, global food shortage and the like. In order to spare 40 minutes for the writing, I had to skip 4 questions, but still I didn't have enough time to finish up the essay. I didn't get to write the conclusion. (T_T)
Thankfully, I've been practicing speaking English with my friends regularly over the past six months, and I thought the listening section would be easy, but I couldn't have been more wrong. I found my friends spoke much faster than the narrators did, but since you can't ask for repeating in the test and it goes on whether you keep up or not (of course), it didn't go in a way I expected. And it's easy to focus on listening for what my friends talking about because I want to know what comes next, but listening to narrators droning on about something I'm not at all interested in is nothing but agony... (I know! It's a test!)
This is how it went in my first attempt for the Eiken Grade 1. I will study harder and definitely do better enough to pass next time.