Svenska B, Conquering Mordor.

Well, it only took 2 years and 11 months. Only, he says. But I am now officially a graduate of the Swedish language programme. Svenska B is the final stage of the official language programme offered by the government for immigrants into Sweden. Supposedly it's at the same level as a graduating Swedish high school student. Must be some pretty dumb kids in Swedish high schools if their language skill is at the same level as mine. But, hey, I passed.

It was a real crash course this time. I completed Svenska A one week before the summer holidays and was given all the written assignment information for Svenska B prior to the holidays. The course had 6 written assignments to complete, 3 oral presentations, and one final written essay exam. The plan was that we would see how much work was able to be completed before the course shut down 3 weeks into the new term due to the teacher heading back to university. Then I could pick up the remaining work when the course started back up again in the new year.

The written assignments were pretty tough, I have to say. It was the same format as for Svenska A, but the marking criteria was much tougher, and I was forced to re-write every assignment after marking. I spent my holiday break doing all the research, reading frantically, and writing like the wind. Then I spent the first week back at school correcting all my mistakes. Luckily I had a wonderful teacher who was very proactive in marking work and getting them back to students.

The second week consisted of the oral exams. These involved 2 interview style discussions of around 15 minutes each about Swedish language history and about the development of language in people during various stages of their lives. Which was really interesting, but a lot to remember. Then there was a formal oral presentation to the class on a language topic which had to be submitted and approved in advance. That took quite a lot of time to sort out and rehearse.

The third and final week, with all my written assignments finally ticked off as being correct (or as good as they were likely to get), I sat the final external exam. Like SFI, there is one exam for all students throughout Sweden. For some reason it's not a requirement for students at adult schools, but my school had decided that they wanted all students to complete the same tasks as regular Swedish kids. Damn them and their mis-guided principles.

For the written exam we (there were 2 of us) were each given a reference book containing about 30 short articles on various language and cultural topics. There was more than one article covering a common theme, but they were from different angles. Then we were given a question booklet where we could choose from one of about 6 or 8 assignments. Each assignment gave a specific situation, such as writing for a teenage magazine, and a topic to be addressed. We had 5 hours to complete the assignment using the classromm computers.

As well as showing language skills (obviously), the main point of the exercise was to use language which was appropriate to the audience and the subject. That's a huge portion of the Svenska B content, learning alternative phrases and styles to describe the same things. Probably 50% of the marks went to having the appropriate approach to the situation.

With a lot of sweat I got through the formalities. It's then been a bit of a nervous wait to hear the final verdict on the combination of the assignments, vocal assessments, and written exam. But yesterday I got the call to say that I had officially passed with a VG grade. I think they were just as relieved to see the back of me as I was.

So that's that. Am I suddenly a native speaking Swede ? I wish. I guess that now the work starts. But it's kind of cool to know that I did achieve something Swedish. That doesn't happen very often for me.