On my way to another qualification

I'm now a member of the CCC! So I can go and take more qualifications. Jenny, my Welsh tutor, keeps kicking me in the bum, encouraging me to do more. And it's good! It's fun, it looks good on my CV, and it's another reason to engage with Welsh as I still don't have much every-day practice.

So what is it now? The Tystysgrif Sgiliau Iaith (certificate of language skills); a qualification aimed at people in universities and the NHS. It's not past of the school curriculum; it's really a professional qualification. It's externally examined.

So what do I need to do? It's a two part thing; I have to give a presentation in Welsh about my field of expertise to an audience that then asks questions, and there is an exam. And the exam has three parts; 1) correcting a text in Welsh 2) translating a piece from English to Welsh 3) a free writing exercise. And this time, we do it on computers! And that was a relief; I spent a lot of time in my A level writing exercise counting words so as not to fall outside the word limit. But if you can do it in Word, the counting is done for you! And you can spend all your energy in writing proper Welsh. I had 78% for writing in my A level but here I have to step up! This is not a school exam anymore...

So what do I think? I think the presentation will be fine. I can prepare for that. The finding mistakes will be less fine. It's hard! And then I think the two writing exercises will be good enough. So I think I'll pass! But if I don't, I can try again next year. And if I only fail one (either presentation or exam) I can park the passed bit and only re-do the failed bit the year after. We'll see!