Ok, I promised I’d occasionally write something in English and I think this story is worth telling in English. Here goes…
Have you ever taken a test or exam which asked questions that were so simple (and I mean really simple) that you almost felt like it was an insult to your intelligence? Well, today it happened to me for the first (and hopefully last) time.
Before I go on, I have to leave something perfectly clear: I speak/read/write English as good as I speak/read/write Spanish (my native language). Please don’t flame me on this issue, I’m not saying it in a conceited or pretentious way. It’s a fact, and it’s essential to the story.
A week after taking the GRE, I’m back in Madrid. This morning I took the TOEFL (Test Of English as a Foreign Language). In case you’re not familiar with the TOEFL, it’s an English test you have to take if you want to go study to an English-speaking country. The TOEFL is used to measure the candidate’s level of English. Ok, sounds reasonable.
So, what happened? Why am I so ticked off? Well, because the exam is intended for people for whom English is a foreign language (hey, that’s the name of the test). For someone who’s been studying English since he was 2 years old, this exam is stupid stupid stupid. I really mean that, the questions are almost offensive. Some of the questions were very similar to this: (I can’t write a real question…I had to sign a non-disclosure thingy)
Find the wrong word in the following sentence (you’re given three choices): The similarities between dolphins and sharks are astoundings.
If you’re a native speaker, you’ll agree with me that this question is dumb dumb dumb. Well, all the questions are like that, including those in the Listening and Reading sections of the test. And the test was about three hours long. Oh, joy.
I guess someone might ask the following perfectly reasonable question: If your English is so good, how come you weren’t exempt from taking the exam? Well, as always, our dear friend bureaucracy gives a perfectly unreasonable answer. Although I’ve got a couple of perfectly valid English certificates, technically I don’t meet the requirements for exemption from the TOEFL. Strictly speaking, I’m not a “native English speaker”, because I grew up in a Spanish-speaking country, and my native language is Spanish. Furthermore, although I studied 13 years in an American School, I spent the last 7 years in Spanish institutions. For these two reasons, I had to take the TOEFL, like it or not. I’ll say it again: Oh, joy.
Uhm…maybe I should’ve counted to ten before writing this article… :-)
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