October 2019

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Ich kann nicht so einfach meine Deutsch bewerten. Eine Methode ist Prüfungen machen. Ich will Goethe-Institut Deutsch Zertifikat Prüfung machen, deshalb ihre Prüfungen wären gut. Allerdings gibt es nur ein wenige Modellprüfungen online.

I can’t easily evaluate my progress in German. One method (of evaluating progress) is to do exams. I want to take the Goethe Institute German exam. Thus their past papers would be good practice. However, there are only a few practice papers available online.

A part of life growing up in Singapore for me was, unfortunately, to find ways to maximise performance on exams, especially given limited understanding of the underlying subject matter. Some of these techniques might be classified as “common sense”, such as knowing the format of exams, what one was being assessed on, and making sure to spend enough time on each question or part, as marks within each question tend to get progressively harder to score. There were others that tended to be a little more subject-specific; for example, final answers in mathematics exams tended to be reasonably simple forms.

The Common European Framework for Reference of Languages (CEFR) outlines six levels of language proficiency – these are, in order from lowest to highest, A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2. Typically, each language level is associated with a set of competencies that speakers at that level would generally be able to perform; these have been outlined in a table published by the European Council.

Looking at that table, I’d rate my English skills at probably C2 across the board, though I’d be a little hesitant to claim that for spoken interaction. For Chinese, I’m probably a rough B2 for listening/reading, and somewhere between B1 and B2 for speaking/writing. On the other hand, for German I’m probably somewhere between A1 and A2 for listening and reading, and closer to (or possibly even below) A1 for speaking and writing.

Another way to assess one’s skills is to look at language certification examinations. These are often used as part of work permit requirements. For example, the UK Tier 2 (General) visa typically requires applicants to pass an approved English language test at a B1 level. Chinese work visas operate on a point-based system, and additional points are successively offered with each level of the HSK completed. It seems one doesn’t even need to speak any German to get a German work visa; however, reaching a B1 level allows for quicker permanent residency.

I haven’t actually formally taken any of these exams, though I have looked at the test material and even done a few of them under exam conditions. I was generally able to navigate the CPE (English C2) exam quite comfortably. For Chinese, I haven’t had too much trouble with the HSK 5 (claimed to be between B1 and B2); the HSK 6 (claimed to be between B2 and C1) is somewhat trickier mainly because its writing section looks nasty, though I’ve been able to do the reading and listening sections. Similarly, on the Taiwanese TOCFL I cleared level 4 (B2) quite easily, and scraped a pass from inferring kernels of truth on level 5 (C1), though I would say my listening/reading are definitely not at C1 level (“appreciating distinctions of style” is certainly generous, to put it mildly),

For German, I’ve steered clear of the Goethe-Institut past papers for now as there are very few practice papers available online, and I’ll want to do them when I’m preparing for the actual examination. I found a slightly different source of practice material that seemed to be at an appropriate level – the UK General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). These exams are typically taken by students in England at the end of secondary school. Generally, a good GCSE seems to map to around an A2 (e.g. based on Oxford’s language program a “good but rusty GCSE” would be in line with A2, and a “recent” one with a high grade would be closer to B1; Sussex similarly places it in the A2-B1 range, though Imperial is a bit stricter and lines it up with A1+).

German is offered as one of the modern language GCSEs – others include French, Italian, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. Interestingly, some of these GCSEs are tiered; that is, students must be entered for either the foundation tier or higher tier. Questions in the foundation tier are easier, but the highest grade one can obtain there is a 5 (passing grades run from 9 to 1 in the UK, 9 being the highest). The higher tier features more material and questions requiring more advanced problem-solving – as its name suggests, it is intended for more capable students. Higher tier exams are graded from 9 to 4; in particular, candidates that fail to obtain a 4 receive a U (with the caveat of a ‘safety net’ grade 3 that only goes down to the midpoint of 3). Typically, some of the questions overlap – these are the questions aimed at a grade 4 or 5 skill level.

I can see why tiering could be advantageous – it allows finer resolution when looking at students’ performance. It may also lead to a better student experience, in that candidates generally won’t find the exam completely intractable (or, conversely, find it trivial). That said, deciding which tier students should be entered at seems a tough problem, and making the wrong choice could lead to results that wouldn’t be representative of a student’s ability (a student who would reasonably score a 3 could get a U if entered on higher; a student who could score a 6 or higher would be limited to 5 on foundation tier). Furthermore, these decisions need to be made in advance, which could lead to issues if a student who would be capable, with effort/studying, perform well on higher tier have his/her motivation and/or progress curtailed because he/she was entered at foundation tier.

To give a sample of the difference in difficulty of the tasks involved, I had a brief look at the AQA German specimen papers:

A Foundation-only task involved parsing an SMS from a friend who was running late; key-words in the text included 7 Uhr (meaning 7 o’clock), U-Bahn (subway) and Theaterkasse (ticket office) or Karte (can refer to a ticket) to identify that they planned to go to the cinema.
An overlapping task involved identifying words like Ausland (overseas) and wichtiger (more important) to distinguish different friends in a text.
A Higher-only task involved reading an interview of a student who enjoys travelling. Questions involved engaging/reasoning with the text, and seemed less reliant on directly identifying keywords. For example, the first question there asked why she needed a holiday every year for ten years (the answer being that she went on holiday after her exams, and she studied hard for a month for these exams).

This system isn’t explicitly used in Singapore for the O Levels which students take at the end of secondary school (perhaps apart from Elementary and Additional Mathematics, and Higher Mother Tongue options – but even then, these are considered distinct subjects). I’m not sure I’ve actually seen this system used before.

Work has been fine, though I’ve noticed my hours have been growing longer. I guess some of this has been me trying to adapt to and work well in areas that I’m not sure are historically in my wheelhouse (mainly around prioritisation; most of my other work concerns decomp-ing larger features, which I think is something I can do reasonably well especially in the context of AtlasDB). I do appreciate the challenge here though. The theme I’m going for, as it remains, is superlinear growth; which involves enabling others to work more effectively and guiding them as needed. My interactions with the AtlasDB team thus far and comparing notes with others trying to guide teams suggest that I have a tendency to be relatively hands-off with design but strict with reviews, perhaps in both cases more than I should be.

I had two major trips this quarter (Palo Alto for work, and then Singapore with a stopover in Zürich), which feels slightly above average. There wasn’t much in the way of short trips. I think I enjoyed the change of routine each of these trips provided; work has kept me pretty busy, perhaps because I’m pushing for overly tight quality controls, as I’ve been advised.

I’m unlikely to re-qualify for KrisFlyer Elite Gold this year. I’ve been travelling quite a lot, but I’m in this position for two reasons. Firstly, my flights to the US are mostly done on Virgin Atlantic, which when credited to KrisFlyer earns redeemable miles but not the elite miles that count for status credit. I’ve actually flown close to 20,000 miles in this way. Secondly, I’ve been flying Economy with an extra legroom seat instead of Premium Economy, which tends to earn fewer miles. A cheap economy ticket usually only counts for 50% of the distance flown (while Premium Economy almost always counts for at least 100%), and extra legroom seats don’t actually give you any more miles. I did think about doing a mileage run to top off the 50,000 miles, but the gap is probably too large; I anticipate finishing the year on around 37,000. The 13,000 gap is around one round trip to Singapore (!) on a ticket class that earns 100% miles.

Following on from the Q2 review, I have indeed been less interested in the gyrations of the market. I actually wouldn’t be able to give a confident answer as to how my portfolio was doing without looking it up.

That’s actually somewhat better than I expected, especially viewed in the context of the Q1 and Q2 results. The LS80’s performance seems a little weak as I thought the bonds (which performed well) would help, but it seems that the UK home bias worked against it. I guess the pound falling by just over 6 percent over the last 6 months against the dollar does make the numbers look nicer than they should be. To be fair, I should have seen this coming; my portfolio has increased by more than the take-home income I’ve made from work, which is obviously untenable without market gains.

Spending has been higher than normal this quarter; about 60% above Q2, and 25% above Q3 last year. I think some of this is connected to stress at work, and some with no longer chasing pristine balance sheets in general. I don’t ordinarily think of Q3 as particularly spendy (typically Q4 is the most expensive, but there isn’t a consistent ordering between the first three quarters).

In terms of logic puzzles, the last few contests for the Sudoku and Puzzle GPs for this year are done. In Sudoku, I had a pretty weak-ish round 7 (score 325; rank 98/414) and a rather solid round 8 (score 435; rank 60/420). For Puzzles, I had two fairly normal rounds (7: score 341; rank 82/344, 8: score 312; rank 93/315).

Overall rankings are computed based on adding up the top 6 raw scores across rounds. There are a total of 8 rounds, so participation in an additional round (no matter how poor) will never harm one’s overall raw score. I guess getting an accurate measurement does require some balancing between rounds (e.g. two participants of roughly equal skill may have very different scores, if one has an off day on an easy round while the other has an off day on an excessively difficult one, since everyone might discard the difficult round anyway), but I’m not sure how to do that. The other obvious mechanism (normalising scores, so that the first-place scorer scores 1 contest-point, say, and everyone’s score is scaled to that) is probably too sensitive to the people at the top of the leaderboard having an off day. Maybe some kind of mechanism where the median scorer scores 1 contest-point, instead, could work.

My overall rank in Sudoku was 66/886, and for Puzzles 92/656. I set a target at the beginning of the year to have a top-100 finish in both, though I was more confident in the Sudoku contest. I missed one round of puzzles and had some pretty poor rounds, so I wasn’t sure if I would clear that mark. I finished 428 points over the bar for Sudoku (which is probably just over what I would score in one round on a good day), but just 61 for Puzzles (I’ve solved single puzzles worth more than 61 points). That should be it until next year; people are preparing for the World Sudoku and Puzzle Championships now. I’m sadly not good enough for those (yet!).

German lessons continue; my teacher went on holiday for 5 weeks but lessons have resumed since. I’m making some progress, though the range of things I’m able to discuss still largely lie in the realm of the concrete (like Ich war in Singapur für eine Woche or Ich muss etwas essen and so on, which mean I was in Singapore for a week and I must eat something). I’ve been reading through the Dino lernt Deutsch series – I’m mid-way through Karneval in Köln, the third book. I also worked on some grammar and writing exercises in both the official textbook we’re using (Begegnungen A1) and another book suggested by the teacher (studio [21] A1).

I’m still enjoying learning as well, though there are some concepts that sometimes seem rather arbitrary. One I’ve run into recently is that of separable verbs. For example, waking up is referred to by the verb aufstehen (literally “up” + “standing”; not too different from “get up” in English, to be fair). However, this verb is separable and thus instead of writing or saying something like Ich aufstehe jeden Morgen um 7.30 Uhr (wrong), I would have to write/say Ich stehe jeden Morgen um 7.30 Uhr auf. However, not all verbs that are compounds have this property (e.g. besuchen, to visit, has be- as a prefix of suchen, to search), so something like Ich suche Singapur be would be wrong; determining whether something is separable or not seems to involve memorizing a bunch of seemingly arbitrary prefixes. I think the grammatical rules once one has identified a verb as separable or inseparable (similar to noun genders) make sense, at least.

Grgur introduced me to Spirit Island, a somewhat heavier cooperative board game. Players play as spirits which aim to protect an island from colonial invaders. The invaders explore the island, build larger settlements and then ravage the land (reflecting pollution/damage brought about by their construction); spirits play powers to directly destroy invaders, move them around, or enhance the strength of the indigenous people to fight them off.

The game takes place in turns, and each turn has two phases for powers (one, for fast powers, happens before invaders take actions; the other happens after). Powers are resolved one at a time, but can take place in any order that the players agree on. This often allows for synergistic plays (e.g. gathering invaders into a land and then hitting that land with a powerful power). Interestingly, finding the best powers makes me think about finding the most advantageous serialization of a bunch of database transactions. Some powers have conditions (e.g. invaders must be present/absent, the land must suffer from Blight or not, etc.) but don’t actually change these states of the land, so they are effectively performing a read of that state of that land; others might affect these traits and would thus be writing to such a key.

I do enjoy the game quite a bit. I’ve played a few times in a group and maybe around ten solo games (though usually playing two-handed), and have won games up to a 9 out of 10 on the difficulty scale. I think a good challenge level for me is probably around 7-8; below that, it seemed like winning was never really in doubt, while the level 9 game was a nail-biter and I won on the very last possible turn.

I usually conclude each quarter’s review with some insight into the music that I’ve been listening to, though this quarter has seemed a bit dry. I think finding new music can be hard; flights on Singapore Airlines are usually a good opportunity for me to discover things, as the IFE usually has a good selection – however this seems to be less true on Virgin Atlantic and on Swiss. My more conventional pick here would probably be Jonah Baker’s cover of Ariana Grande’s thank u, next (this was published in November last year, but I admittedly don’t frequently actively seek out new music). The second and third verses in the original worked well and I would say I’m supportive of the general messages there (take care of oneself, have self-confidence). These were mostly retained in the cover (swapping genders and the name self-insert, as reasonably expected). I would say that the main issues I had with the original were some possibly gratuitous swearing and the first verse being too specific – it’s relevant to her circumstances but naturally limits the extent to which listeners can identify with the song. These were addressed here, and the execution was pleasant and enjoyable.

Separately, I’ve been listening to a fair bit of video-game music to power me through long implementation sessions; songs with lyrics tend to be too distracting, and I tend to reserve the classical music or solo piano pieces to times when I need deep focus. I’ve posted about the Touhou 2D shooter game series before, and one aspect of that that I enjoy is the music. These tracks tend to be upbeat and have strong, catchy melodic patterns, which I enjoy; two I’ve been listening to quite a lot have been Golden Hymn ~ Ibis Trismegistus and Tracks of the Snow Rabbit ~ Nowhere but Everywhere. The shooting games often have bullet patterns designed to partly follow the music, but I find that they still work well without context. That said, having played the boss battles where the music was sourced from, I’m not sure how much of the context I can strip from each of these tracks.

Learning German 3: Prüfungen

Above the Inclined Bar (Q3 2019 Review)