Screwed for Mandarin B...

[william4]

I recently received my mock exam back and have gotten a 2. Although I feel that I shouldn't be doing B in the first place as many of my peers with the same amount of language experience as I in other schools have been put into abinitio, I can't help but fear afraid for the actual exams.

Mandarin is quite a hard language to master, and even with intense work from now on its a bit too late as the exams are approaching. Thoughts?

Edited February 14, 2014 by william14

[bluedino]

It sounds like you've got no options to change from doing Mandarin B now, so my advice to you would just be to work as hard as you can in the time that you have left to try and bring your grade up. Your final exams are approaching, but you've still got 2 and a half months - and I think you can really make a difference during this time. Try and make a set time to study Mandarin every day - even 15 minutes would be better than none, but ideally an hour could be good. Work on learning/expanding your vocabulary/reading/writing the characters. I'm not really that familiar with Mandarin, but work on sentence structure, tenses.. if that's relevant/whatever you need to. Around late March (or early April) you could start doing one past paper every day to build up some practice and familiarity with what to expect. The only other suggestion I'd have is to make use of your teacher/peers doing Mandarin B - if you get stuck, need help or don't understand why you're losing marks on Paper 2 for example, make sure you ask.

I think that if you establish a daily habit to revise Mandarin you can really improve a lot in the run up to your exams. I hope you don't feel too afraid when the time comes - try to relax and just do your best. You've still got some time to change things around - good luck