Today, I found out that I passed my Language Proficiency Interview (but I'm not posting my exact score here), and on the way home (in passing) I "played" soccer with some neighborhood kids. By "played," I mean that as one kid happened to dribble towards me, I acted like I was challenging him, so he tried to get around me, which turned into my actually challenging him, successfully stealing the ball from him, Şükür Allahah (Thank God), and heel passing it back to another kid, who was one of the first kids I taught the fist bump + explosion.
Goal 2? Check. My work here is done.
Language Proficiency Interview Information
On Saturday, we had our Language Proficiency Interviews, in which we are evaluated on a scale from novice, intermediate, advanced, to superior. Novice, intermediate, and advanced each have three subdivisions: low, mid, and high. (Superior is just superior.) CEDs and YDs are ideally supposed to reach Intermediate-Mid by the end of PST, and TEFLs, Intermediate-Low. (This is not because a lower level of proficiency is required for TEFL work, but rather because TEFLs spend a significant amount of time practice teaching. This gives them less time to learn Azərbaycani, so they're not expected to cover the same amount of ground.) For a full description of every level of the scale, go here.
Intermediate-Mid is defined like this:
"Speakers at the Intermediate-Mid level are able to handle successfully a variety of uncomplicated communicative tasks in straightforward social situations.
"Conversation is generally limited to those predictable and concrete exchanges necessary for survival in the target culture; these include personal information covering self, family, home, daily activities, interests and personal preferences, as well as physical and social needs, such as food, shopping, travel and lodging. Intermediate-Mid speakers tend to function reactively, for example, by responding to direct questions or requests for information. However, they are capable of asking a variety of questions when necessary to obtain simple information to satisfy basic needs, such as directions, prices and services. When called on to perform functions or handle topics at the Advanced level, they provide some information but have difficulty linking ideas, manipulating time and aspect, and using communicative strategies, such as circumlocution.
"Intermediate-Mid speakers are able to express personal meaning by creating with the language, in part by combining and recombining known elements and conversational input to make utterances of sentence length and some strings of sentences. Their speech may contain pauses, reformulations and self-corrections as they search for adequate vocabulary and appropriate language forms to express themselves. Because of inaccuracies in their vocabulary and/or pronunciation and/or grammar and/or syntax, misunderstandings can occur, but Intermediate-Mid speakers are generally understood by sympathetic interlocutors accustomed to dealing with non-natives."
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