Probably the worst French oral exam ever.

Picture this : you have two subjects, and you choose one. For each subject, there are two texts. The candidate has to read the texts, and draw out the important points which he/she feels is worth talking about. All that to be prepared within one hour, and to be discussed in front of a jury of two. This is C1, baby !

And imagine, within just five minutes, I made thirty-four errors. And here are some of the errors of note - for which the Alliance Française would penalise me dearly.

0:03 Y'a eu ! (Oh please, never again, that's colloquial and degrading the image of the candidate at all costs. There's a more formalised way of saying "There were.")
0:10 Too many "ça" and "c'est" - too simplistic.
2:44 Est-ce que ça sera assez ? (A question like "Will that be enough ?" is detrimental to the full results.)
3:10 Conjugation problem - États-Unis n’obéissent pas (it's like the subject and verb don't agree. Other people have this fault when it comes to literature class, not me ; but when it comes to French - all the faults start coming in.)
3:35 Pronunciation of "gaz" is wrong, insufficient explanation of points.
3:50 "L'attitude des gens" insufficiently explained. The whole paragraph is affected.
4:36 "Ayant dit tout ça" again. Ending is quite short.

That too, partly owing to the fact that I have very simplistic, student-like vocabulary, which will not suffice for the C1 (they are looking for professionalism here), and good structure complemented with bad explanations. Major disaster.

But as strictly as DK marked me, he gave me a pass. Just because the main points were there and I picked myself up thrice where there were faults - I immediately corrected them.
Imagine, I was not even in the state of mind to do so. I have the wave file and the .mp3 with me, but I wonder if I should even put it up. Perhaps I should. But I am shy.

I am just lucky the C1 is about a week after the Cambridge AS exams are over. I can sit down and prepare. Hope by then things would not be that bad !