Done any Asset Languages?

It was a really good opportunity, it was just something that I took to boost my qualifications/UCAS as it didn't take long or much effort because I love languages anyway.

I really wish I'd done Japanese, you really need to get back in to it!

Well done on those grades, they're great.
I think that's like the equivalent of Advanced Subsidiary level, no?
Either way, I'd think you're about as fluent in French as I am, I did it at A-level and going on to uni.
Good luck for when the school get back to you!

Has anyone ever done any of the asset languages qualifications?
Which ones - and what grade did you get?

I did Breakthrough Mandarin, I got Level 3 reading/writing/speaking and a level 2 listening.

It was quite good, but I can only remember odd bits here and there.

I think it works out as something like one-third of an A Level at grade B in French and half an AS at C in Spanish or something ... it's a funny system!

I also sat the proficiency level French reading exam this summer, which is quite funny because it's supposedly first year undergraduate level, and I only did French to GCSE
So I'm sure that the degree to which the two sets of qualifications correspond is limited

Oh wow, so you're quite the French person?
Might I ask whether you do any other languages?
Did you find that doing assets actually helped your UCAS, or was just better in a general academic sense?
To be honest, I don't think they helped me get into uni at all, but then again I was applying for things completely unrelated to languages so that might be why!

I thought they were just pretty nice, and I love getting certificates for things because I'm epically sad

That's cool - how much work did you do for breakthrough, might I ask?
For example, did it take 6 months of studying about a couple of hours per week?

I went to evening classes every monday after 6th form from 7-9pm.
I have to say that I did not work as hard as I should/could have, and just crammed for the exams, learning sentences that I could just parrot out. But I think that the reason I crammed was because I thought I could use pinyin, but it turned out I had to do it in characters, so I panicked.

What language are you planning to do?

Oh gosh that is a silly system! So confusing
Urgh no, I'll be sitting that exam soon then. That's odd they gave you that, it must have felt a bit weird reading it
Aha, me, French? I just love languages really, it's the only think I'm any good at so I stuck with it. I only speak French as a foreign language, well and a little Spanish.
In all honesty, I don't think they helped my UCAS. It just showed the universities that I was interested in languages, which should have been pretty obvious anyway. UCAS-wise, it did bob all, because the level wasn't high enough to attain UCAS points...
It would have helped you, it would have shown that you're versatile!

I agree, they're lovely little qualifications that you can just pick up on your way

I was doing AS French in year 11 but our teacher said that seeing as everyone else in our year was being entered for either intermediate or advanced in French or German, we might as well be entered for the advanced to see what happened. Did the mock reading & listening, and got level 12s in both. When it came to the real thing however, I got a level 11 in listening & a U in reading, probably because I guessed most of the answers (the topics were so random and there were words I didn't understand!).

I got a B in my AS so it made up for the disappointment of getting a U in one of my Assets

Anyone here going to study modern languages at university?
Also, this asset course sounds interesting! What is it?

whats an asset languages qualifications sounds interesting!

Is Pinyin a computer system for churning out characters?

Pinyin's the standard system for phonetically transliterating Chinese into the Roman alphabet -- apparently pinyin means "spell-sound" in Chinese. The guy who devised it is 105 years, which I know only because I read that Stephen Fry's going to be interviewing him on a forthcoming series of programmes about language for the BBC.

Tht's the limit of my useless knowledge about such things, I'm afraid.

Oh, that's a pretty neat idea actually!
Guessing can sometimes be the thing to do - well, for the multiple choice questions anyway!

I found the French advanced listening utterly solid, and came out with a 10, the lowest possible grade.
The speed of it was just immense, and I couldn't cipher out what they were saying - I didn't realise that they must talk so much more slowly than usual on the GCSE exams!

Yeah, there are sometimes very random topics ~
On my last one, there was a whole question about CCTV
Yet the only bit of specialist vocab which couldn't be worked out by sight was 'le fichage', which became pretty apparent as the text went on.
I guess that kind of thing is just luck - but I've never sat an asset paper with loads of unfathomable language myself.

We got one paper with a question about seagulls in Belgium, taxi drivers in Niger & bears in Quebec (at least I think it was, anyway). I agree that multiple choice exams are fantastic for that reason, I just think I made the wrong guesses on the day and was a bit unlucky...never mind.

The listening tapes in French can be stupidly fast, and because the French are so nasal it makes it even harder to understand things sometimes. Asset was definitely the hardest listening exam I'd ever done.

Our listening mock was quite hilarious - we didn't have any time to do it in lessons (we had 2 hours a week for our AS as opposed to the usual 4 and a half we would get for an AS subject at our school) so our French assistant recorded the transcript for the questions and gave us all a copy of the tape so we could do it at home. Hearing her say "This is the O C Air Advanced Asset Listening exam in French" and putting on different voices for the different people was really funny, considering she was one of the most humourless people I'd met in a while - she hated anything that wasn't French and refused to speak more slowly even when we asked her.