How far will they push the absurdity?

Yesterday, I had dinner with Seema… it was really nice to wind down in a restaurant (with a nice bottle of rouge), especially after such a rough week!… We did try and find a date for the next outing of Le Club français… At this point, it is long due for everyone!… We agreed on a movie and dinner on October 16… Hopefully, this time, there will be no disruption and we will be able to do it. By then, Mark will be settled in Ottawa and, knowing his enthusiasm, he will probably motivate the crowd!

Last week was indeed a roller coaster of emotions for everyone, including myself… when my students go through bad times, I devote lots of time and energy trying to comfort them and lift their spirits. When I look back, I am always amazed by the negative impact the SLE testing process has on people… anywhere else, outside the PSC, three French tests do not create so much turmoil and devastation… and I am pretty sure that anyone who is not familiar with these government’s tests cannot understand why being tested is such an ordeal!… Actually job interviews and tests attached to an application process are apparently a piece of cake compared to the SLE exams…  At least, candidates are given materials to study and they are often provided with the interview questions beforehand so that they can prepare adequately. There is no such thing when it comes to the SLE tests… on the contrary, everything is kept secret and sealed and one really wonders why!

Thursday I got an email from Edna… she missed the B by one question on the written expression test… she got 32! Only one more correct answer and she would have made it… yet would it have made any difference? Would she be more functional in French with 33 good answers than she is now with 32?… Well, it seems the PPC thinks so!…

 Of course, I had told her about Melody and Candice who had taken the written expression test earlier this month and had found it extremely difficult… totally different from the test samples on Campus Direct. She confirmed it in her email: there were only a couple of questions requiring the knowledge of subjunctive, one or two on prepositions… on the other hand, there were more questions requiring conjugation but she thought she did quite well, especially with the ones on conditional… as for the rest, there were lots of long hard questions and she guessed on the ones asking for the best sentence… thinking it would have been a waste of time trying to figure out what was the one they wanted her to choose. Yet, she wrote that she was happy with her progress and decided that it was not worth wasting her energy thinking about those SLE tests (at least, for now!)…

Krystal was devastated when she returned from her tests… she was convinced that she had failed to get her B on the written expression one… On Friday evening, we had an online session and we discussed it… finally, after calculations, it would be very surprising that she did not make it (even if only boarder line)… She said that one third of the test was only long questions in a format that was hard to read: there would be a very long text but, then, one paragraph would be isolated with multiple choice answers following… yet she had to refer to the whole text to get the context, therefore it was quite a waste of time!… she confirmed what everyone had told me: the test samples on Campus Direct no longer reflect what the test is really about… Well… I already knew that since those samples are quite out dated: they are more than 2 years old!

Greg is also starting to lose it… he has been waiting for testing dates for the past four months!… Back then, he had been told he would be called in four or six weeks… this delay, of course, is getting into him and he now knows that the written expression test is harder than it was in June!… He tried to get some answers (by sending emails and leaving voice mail messages) several times but, of course, no one dared to reply… The nonchalance of these people is beyond me!… In the meantime, Greg is now starting to get anxious and nervous which is not good at all!… I wrote him saying that he had to hang on there a bit longer: he cannot quit now since he made through the whole hiring process successfully…

Then, on Friday, Corey wrote me a long message… the reality of the SLE testing process had just sunk in and he was not sure of anything anymore… he was more emotional because he had just quit full time COFI, leaving behind friends and teachers he did like… he thought that maybe he had gotten too excited about this untimely job possibility and disrupted a nice full time course… he was wondering whether it was an impossible objective based upon his whimsical dreams… or a pipe-dream…  or not…

I wrote him back… reassuring him and encouraging him to continue… of course his preparation for the three tests will be anything but fun, yet he has to go through the drill in order to achieve his dream… I think I managed to comfort him (at least, for now!) and we will meet for our next online session tomorrow afternoon… like all the others before him, he will go through ups and downs… but ultimately he will make it too!

Earlier today I met with Melody for two hours… she will be taking her oral interaction exam on Friday, October 2… last week, she has been offered a job position conditional to the obtention of her B… No pressure at all, right? Yet I am confident that she will get it… her background in French is good and, so far, she is calm… I will see her again tomorrow and Wednesday… she should do just fine!…

I am probably angrier and more upset than all of them!… It kills me to be the witness of such incompetence… and being unable to alleviate my trainees’ fears and anxiety… I would love to be able to have them practice with test samples that are more accurate, but such samples do not exist! And when they will finally come out and be published on Campus Direct, they will already be obsolete because the PPC panel of experts will have decided to change the test!

Although the samples do not reflect what the test is now, at least my students know what to expect… imagine candidates who have no clues! Krystal said that it was interesting to observe people around her when she went for her tests… apparently their body language was quite eloquent! If nothing else, my students are well acquainted with the PSC jargon in French and they can understand what they read even if they are not civil servants… but what about those who never came across such texts beforehand?… Whatever their actual level is in French, they cannot tackle and ace such a test without prior knowledge of the vocabulary (which, by the way, is not always accurate and sometimes cannot be found in a dictionary) used within the government… When will those experts wake up to reality and see the necessity of having more generic tests for candidates who do not work in the PSC?… My guess?… Never!… because they really do not show willingness to adapt their tests to their new clientele… I am not surprised a bit though because it seems they have an agenda and they follow it by the book!… The question is: what is their agenda?… Looking at their new tests, I would think that it is to have people fail and then eliminate them from the hiring process… What else could it be?… But… are they clever enough to have an agenda?… Là réside toute la question… In the meanwhile, we must live with those absurd tests and the show must go on!

“Les idéaux ont de curieuses qualités, entre autres celles de se transformer brusquement en absurdité quand on essaie de s’y conformer strictement”

Robert von Musil