A THOUSAND CROSSINGS X

Dear Diary...
Aloof.
dimanche 3 mai 2009

Continuation of my reflection on my failure to do decently well in the HCL examination. Albeit a mock paper, It's still pretty devastating to see that you merely scraped pass the holy red line known to us students, as the pass/failure mark.

Although I am crossing my fingers and praying hard that my Paper 1 rakes in some decent marks to be happy about (I'm positive I did my paper 1 pretty well this time around. Well, a little gain, a little lost), I am also wracking my brains for a more efficient method for getting the A1.

A little reflection, back to the Express Chinese Days. Just a year ago, although we were known as the 'higher Chinese' class, we were very much gearing up for the Express Chinese O level examinations. Thus, what we were pretty much doing were the Express Chinese papers of the Secondary 4 students, while the Secondary 3 Express Chinese students were doing the Higher Chinese papers of the Secondary 2 students (or vice versa). Hope I am not confusing you all too much.

Our efforts in memorising, hardwiring question spotting and structured and organised formats for essays in our thick heads did pay off and our batch did do very well in the CL O level examinations. I've gotten an A1 and a Distinction myself. Very proud. :)

To a certain extent, after that sudden overwhelming joy, there came a rude shock. Okayy, not exactly rude, but shocking. The style of questions asked in HCL papers were drastically different from the ones we were taught to recognise and answer merely a year ago. (I guess some HCL students will agree with me?) There was a sudden emphasis on inferential questions and well, required more skill to answer.

This examination, I was unprepared to a large extent. Albeit paying attention in Mr Lin's 'interactive' lessons, I was still unable to warm up to the new Higher Chinese subject. Still abode to Yu Lin's golden rule of reading the entire cloze passage before selecting answers, just that this time I also added in the skills I learnt in Mr Lin's class. Analysing every word choice and see if it suits the writer's style and the flow of the passage, and see if the word even means right. All of that done and I still got a miserable 8/20 for the first section of the paper. My bad for my small library of vocabulary of Mandarin.

Fared far worse in the Comprehension section. Like all my English papers, I never ever seem to fail to get a decent mark for Comprehension. It might not be an A, but always a High B. For Chinese, at least I always do fairly well in one of the 2 passages and manage to pass decently. However, this time I failed the comprehension section by half a mark. The reason is simple, I failed to execute what they were trying to test, my comprehension skill. I couldn't comprehend the passage. :/ I only had a rough idea that the first passage was about humans seeking perfection (only human right!). And the second passage was about 自然就是美. :) That's basically what I derived from reading the passages again and again. :/ And I kinda dozed in and out of sleep while reading the first passage.

Mrrghh. All in all, there's so much more effort to put in. Pedal to the metal.

At other times, I hold my aloofness in awe. Now, I think I am too aloof to the fact that I am not doing well. Shouldn't I be feeling motivated or something? I feel too ordinary. And THAT, scares me.

我要 A1, A1 要我!
I'm seeking perfection. :)
Can never forget how godbro's O level cert looked like. And I imagined my name instead of godbro's name there. Dream come true.

next next next...

Was late for Chinese class today. Was busy filing up my yellowed worksheets and notes. :/ We wrote about the H1N1 outbreak today. And Mr Gong shared with us an anecdote.

His Epson printer ran out of ink so he went to get a new cartridge. When he picked one up at the shop, he looked at the print and saw "MADE IN MEXICO", he immediately replaced it on to the shelf and picked up one which was made in Taiwan. All I can say is, no matter how foreign one is to Singapore Culture, stay with us for a year or 2 and you'll catch on with the popular practice of 'Kiasee' and 'Kiasu'. (Afraid of dying and Afraid of losing out).

Au Revoir

yongliang

he closed his diary at {15:59}