could have done better

Yes, I could have done better at Thursday's Spanish exam. Obviously. 

I was prepared to answer on Tuesday but after oral part was delayed till Thursday and I didn't have time to make extra preparation and I went to face the reality without any additional help for my nervous system. Thus, after making a presentation on Italian variety of English at 8:30 I packed my things and went straight to oral exam. Having prepared all the topics a few days before I was more than sure I knew everything and once I open the book and skim through the texts, my visual memory will recall everything. Of course for my audio memory, I uploaded some Bien Querida's songs to my player and was listening to them on my way to exam's destination. 

For pronunciation I was speaking silently to myself, playing just small nonsense dialogues in my mind. But can you imagine how shocked I was when I finally came to the place, opened the book (having the notion of 10 minutes' time), looked at the texts with the descriptions of appearances: alto-bajo, delgado-gordo,  los ojos marrones, azules.. stared at the letters for 3 minutes AND realized I COULDN'T MAKE ANY SENSE OF WHAT I WAS LOOKING AT?

that was a strange feeling, but poquito a poco (step by step) I managed to regain control of language and passed the exam with flying colours. Of course  it was not perfect and definitely not the way I am used to deal with oral exams because I think live speech is much more important than written since it's a more crucial skill once you're in the target country. So usually I prepare more diligently for oral exams. But this time it turned out quite impossible. 

Naturally, I thought what could be my problem of 'staring stupidly' at the students' book and I understood that it was just a problem of 'switching' from one language to another (English-Italian, Spanish). Just the same as on your keyboard; to change language you should use a combination of buttons. But when you're about to speak your brain has to use its own 'combination', which might take some time and make you feel 'out of control' for a couple of minutes.

Once an exam was over for one guy in my group, he said that it was obvious we should have to practise such things more and it should be even done on a weekly basis because this way we'll become used to this language in our heads/brains.What can I say? I totally agree. He's damn right.

My French this week was quite fine and I was even surprised to have opened my mouth and hear myself speaking with quite a rapid tempo and not peeping into notebook with the pre-written text. Why surprised? I wasn't up to practice for a long time - just passive listener and didn't even get to numerous hometasks. In addition, you didn't hear my groupmates speak their French, because you'd be definitely embarrassed to open your mouth afterwards and would have even quit the course  after the first two lessons. But I didn't, I preferred to torture myself but not give the French up because even passive listening makes your brain alert in the language. Apparently, this was the result. For Thursday, I was tired and I couldn't make two words sound together in a natural way. Indeed, this was funny because I said that in circus I'd prefer the profession of conférencier because I could make perfect presentations but once I had to speak in group I lost my thoughts and it was je voudrais travailler comme une conférenciere parce que... eeee. je suis... eee. trés creative.. et je parle...eee... trés rapidement. 

This was so funny. I'm smiling at me. Will have to study more and rest too, which is quite impossible to mix. Ok. one of the things will suffer. rest or work? we'll see. :)