Preface
This part of my DELE journey, well more specifically, DELE B2 journey has come to an end.
The weekend of Nov. 22, I finally took my DELE B2 exam. Although we have to wait 3-4 months for the results, I think that I failed. If I passed (a big IF), I will be by the skin of my teeth.
Exam Day:
Although I felt weak going into the exam, I felt confident that I would do ok. Then, as I arrived to the examination center, an elementary school in DC, I started to feel the nerves kick in. To make it worse, I stepped in a puddle while getting out of my Uber. Not only was I feeling nervous AF, I always was grumpy AF because my shoes and socks were wet.
Site of DELE Day 1 exam.
Although the listening comprehension was my weakest ability for the exam, I told myself that I would be fine if there wasn't Caribbean, Argentinian, or Chilean Spanish in the audio comp.
I'm not sure why I did this but I decided to visit the DELE subform on Reddit out of borDUMB while waiting to be called into the exam room.
My worst fear for the audio comprehension multiplied by two. At that point, there was nothing that I could do. I was kind of surprised that pretty much all test takers took the same test for their level because I saw these types of messages from folks taking the exam in Asia, African, and Europe who were 6+ hours ahead of us here on the East coast.
General Complaints
-I thought the proctors should have ensured that folks' phones were turned off before entering the examination room. ALSO, the test takers should have had the decency to turn off their devices. Unfortunately, several folks' phones were ringing and beeping throughout the first two parts of the exam.
-I wish the examination room had a clock at the front.
-Checking in seemed to take forever, but it wasn't anything too unreasonable.
-We had to use only pen for the written exam. More on this below.
-There were some administrative hiccups for the speaking portion. More on this below too.
Ok, with the complaints out of the way, let's get into my thoughts for each section
Reading Comprehension (RC)
While this section was a bit difficult, I thought it was fair. For the RC, you have 70 minutes to complete it. My plan were to finish in 40-45 minutes so I could have 25-30 minutes to read and DIGEST the questions from the audio comp (AC) before starting it. Since I saw that the AC was going to have difficult dialects, my mind went blank a few times in the reading section. I was thinking that I needed to move through this section faster so I could have more time for the AC. This actually caused me to spend more time than anticipated on the RC because I had to re-read passages/questions multiple times. I finally got it together and got to a point where I internally said: screw it, I'll be fine bc I'll do ok on the writing section. Remember the RC and the writing sections are graded as one group.
Audio Comprehension (AC)
Besides the exercises with "difficult" Spanish (in one tarea the speaker was Cuban and in the other the speaker was Argentinian), I thought this section was pretty much what I expected. I'm not sure if that's a good thing bc AC always has been my weakest section on my practice exams. That said, I don't think this was anything too unreasonable - except having more than one difficult accents/dialects on the exam.
Written Expression (WE)
Remember, the WE was always my strongest section in my practice exams and was supposed to serve as a buffer for a poor RC score. So, I kind of FAFO on exam day. After returning from my 15 minute break, I was pumped. Then the protector crushed my soul when he said that the WE had to be completed in PEN, not pencil. Quickly, for the WE, you have to write: 1. a formal complaint letter and 2. a brief analysis of a data set. Both exercises are to be around 180 words. I could have sworn that we could do the WE in pencil or pen. Although this might be the official rule for the exam, I think it's completely unfair and a bogus rule for a few reasons.
For my practice exams, I would reserve some time for proofreading. One of the major aspects of my proofreading was to re-write words to make them a bit more legible. For instance, the way I write hallazgos (findings/results) could be interpreted as hallassos. There were several cases, where I could not rewrite a word because I would have to scratch out an entire sentence and re-write the sentence or paragraph.
After completing the data analysis tarea, I realized that I should have added something in between the 2nd or 3rd sentence in the first paragraph which had 5 sentences. Unfortunately, I could not change anything because I would have to re-write the ENTIRE assignment. From my understanding, you only receive ONE official exam response sheet for this exercise.
Unfortunately, I saw a few typos and grammatical mistakes while proofing my work, but there was nothing I could do about it since the shit was in pen.
You know, I could understand forcing test takers to take this section pen IF the written exercises were short, i.e. a 1-2 paragraph assignment. However, these exercises are a bit convoluted. For the complaint letter, we had to:
Write things that you typically see in a letter - sender's address (3-4 lines), recipient's address (5-6 lines), the date, subject, salutation, then the text. Pretty much 3/4ths of the 1st page of the response sheet was administrative stuff. So even, if I had the time to re-write a paragraph, I would not have the space to do so.
Introduce ourselves (as a president of a neighborhood association), explain the situation (an increase of tourists in the area), discuss how this increase has negatively affected the neighborhood, propose some suggestions to improve the situation, and elaborate on a conclusion.
I dunno, but I think it's crazy for folks to do this type of exercise using pen. Ok, I would not have too many issues with this IF we were allowed to have a few extra response sheets. As I mentioned, we only received one official sheet.
Although I already knew about this prior to going into the exam, I think it's a little unfair that there is a listening component to the WE. It's kind of double Jeopardy if your AC skills are not really good because you will miss details from the audio that you have to include in the letter.
End of Day 1
As soon as I finished, I ran out of the exam room like someone owed me money and sought "refuge" in the nearest gay bar that I could find.
Kwame having a cocktail at Little Gay Pub
Here I am at Little Gay Pub having a Unicorn Tears cocktail.
Oral Expression (OE)
Generally speaking, there were not too many surprises here. However, there was a couple of hiccups. Briefly, we had to do three exercises in 20 minutes, but you have about 20 minutes to prepare for the first to exercises - 1. discussing the pros and cons of at least four proposals to solve a problem (mine was about noise in a big city) and 2. give a description of a picture (mine was a picture about a retirement party).
During the 20 minutes prep stage, an admin brought someone else to the prep room (a small 3-4 person conference room) and started to explain the instructions. Fortunately, the admin took the hint after seeing that I was annoyed and finish explaining the instructions to the candidate in the hallway.
The OE/interview felt really rushed.
It was evident that the interviewer wasn't really listening to my monologue for the 1st exercise.
Me: En resumen, me gustan las propuestas de X, Y y Z, pero la primera propuesta es mi favorita. (In summary, I like proposals X, Y and Z, but the 1st proposal is my favorite)
Interviewer a few minutes later: Cual es la mejor solución? (Which is the best solution?).
Ok, so I guess technically I could have different answers for my favorite proposal and the one I thought would be the best solution.
The interviewer started asking me questions about the second exercise before I could finish my conclusion. Fortunately, she stopped her questioning to allow me to draw my conclusions about the picture.
For the 3rd exercise, you have an impromptu discussion were you describe the results for a two-part survey. We didn't even get to discuss the second part.
So a couple of things. One, maybe I was taking too long with my monologues. However, it didn't feel like I was talking excessively based on my practice exams. Two, maybe the interviewer was just trying to speed things up because the center started the exam in general kind of late. For instance, I was supposed to start at 9 am, but I wasn't called in until about 9:45 am.
I just really hope the graders will not see my performance as Oh, well we are going to deduct XYZ points because he did not form a proper conclusion for Exercise 2, and he did not discuss the second part of the survey for Exercise 3.
What's Next?
To soak my tears, the hubby, Limón the dog, and I had brunch at a local Creole restaurant.
Bruch cocktails at Miss Toya Creole Cuisine in Silver Spring, MD.
I was so ready to have a post-exam cocktail that I could not wait for the waitress to bring my champagne flute for my mimosas. In my defense, it did take her a good 10 minutes to return to the table with the champagne flutes AND silverware.
Awww, isn't Limón the dog cute? Also, he was perfect gentlepuppy while watching us have brunch.
Bruch cocktails at Miss Toya Creole Cuisine in Silver Spring, MD.
Since this "review" is long AF, I think I'll make another entry about regarding my post-DELE Spanish plans. Long story short, I need to OD on Spanish content especially with audio input. Also, I have to take any opportunity to have conversations in Spanish with native speakers...fortunately, I am married to a native speaker. ;)
I'm in a bit of a limbo because I will not receive these results until February/March. In a perfect world, the plan was to take a 1-2 week break and start preparing for C1. Since C1 is an advanced level, I want to give myself a full year to prepare and take the C1 exam in Oct or Nov 2026. While C1 is a harder level, I think prepping for C1 will be "easier" than prepping for B2. For B2, I essentially had to learn Spanish AND the exam. Going forward, I think that I would need to focus on the language and not the exam. From what I have read, logistically there are not too many significant differences between the B2 and C1 exam sections. In fact, ChatGPT often said that my writing was pretty much at a high B2/low C1 level.
If I fail B2, I think that I would register for the earliest B2 exam date in 2026. Now, that I've gone though the process once, I think if I spend the next few month boning up on my speaking and listening skills (which I was planning to do anyway for C1 prep) that I should have no problem passing B2 (if I need to retake it). Also, I definitely will need to expand my vocabulary, which will come from reading. For this aspect, I'm gonna to start reading more books in Spanish and even find the Spanish version of English books that I have read. Technically, I reading The Great Gatsby (or El Gran Gatsby) in Spanish.
