On Friday we took our Final Exam in our Chinese class and it was worth 25% of our final class grade. To pass the class and move onto Chinese 3, you need an average of 70% or higher (these classes are not graded on a curve - sink or swim). Going into the Final Exam I had an average of 85%, anything higher than a 24% score on the the final, and I would pass the class.
The Final Exam was quite a bit more difficult than the Midterm Exam (which was extremely hard to begin with). To keep the story short, we got the test back today and I scored a Final Exam grade of 70%, which brought my final grade for the course to a 77 average. It's nothing I'm proud of, but two out of the ten people in our class did not score high enough, failed the course and can't move on to Chinese 3. I did the best I could, and with Chinese 2, a 77% was the best I could achieve. I don't think there was anyone in our class who scored a final grade higher than 90%, but that's just a rough guess, not everyone shared their grades.
After taking the Final Exam, I got a phone call from the school later that day and they told me that the Chinese speaking class that I had signed up for, and was going to start on Tuesday, had been cancelled. There were originally 4 of us who signed up, and one person decided to drop the class, so with only 3 people, the school cancelled the class. I was hoping to use that class as some kind of guide to get me speaking more Chinese, but now I've got to figure something else out over the next 6 weeks before we leave for Paris.
I trying to volunteer at some places in Taipei, but with only 6 weeks time, it's not the easiest thing to work out. I've also got an interesting idea on an art project that I want to work on and hopefully complete in the next 6 weeks. I've got a day or two to figure out a plan, but not much more time than that. We'll see what I can come up with.
