SATII: Unfair Timing

Test Preparation
1

<p>Hi Everyone,</p>

<p>I am a student who took the SAT II Chinese test with listening today I feel as if I was given a disadvantage.</p>

<p>I know for the SATII, Chinese is easy, but because most of the students there had chinese as their first language, they cruised on by and so the very FEW of us were intimidated, now that I think back.</p>

<p>I was wondering if this applies to any concern regarding the SAT, but since our proctor did not give us full instructions during the test, I think it is valid to be considered as a problem.</p>

<p>I wasn’t able to notify the sat coordinator after the test, but after telling this issue to my parents and friends and reading about notifying the school immediately on some of the sat preparation books, I am sure that I must notify the school immediately for this problem.</p>

<p>Since my proctor was not fluent in English, there was a lot of confusion over the directions of the test. She was hesitant and she had to ask another proctor for help. It seemed as if she did not know what to do. We asked questions before we started the test because she wasn’t clear. </p>

<p>When we took the listening test, the proctor told everyone that we cannot go ahead sections UNLESS she tells us to do so. She kept saying this so we were sure that we had to listen to her. Of course, all of us knew this already, but now that she told us this we were more aware of her directions only. </p>

<p>After the listening section, we were stopped to begin the second and third section. The directions on the booklet were clear but since she said to follow her directions, we didn’t move on.</p>

<p>However, she said nothing when we finished the second section. Most of the test takers were waiting for her to tell us to move on, so we all waited. We knew that she was going to stop us when we finished section 2 which was 15 minutes, and then start the time again to move on to section three. </p>

<p>When she finally noticed what we were supposed to do she told us that we still had the rest of the time to do the last section. But she did not stop the time and instead let us use the rest of the time to finish section 3.</p>

<p>Thus, our test times were wasted away because we waited for her to give us further directions which she kept emphasizing for us to do.</p>

<p>I understand that this may seem like a minor problem, and that we should have read the directions on the test booklet, but because the proctor has the authority, we were more obligated to do what she wanted. </p>

<p>I feel stupid for not reporting her quickly…it just didn’t occur to me at that moment :(</p>

<p>What should I do now? Is this reasonable to argue over? Would they give us a second chance to take it over again?
I feel embarrassed to report a teacher on this.</p>

2

<p>I say if you feel that your score was affected by it at all, then report it. If you would not have done any better with the timing correct then i would just leave it.</p>

3

<p>if you report her to CB and ask for a free re-test, they’ll probably give it to you but the problem is language tests are only administered once a year, so you have to work something out</p>

4

<p>This is absolutely NOT a minor problem.</p>

<p>Timing is everything, and if your proctor followed incorrect procedures, you should definitely report it.</p>

<p>You were at a disadvantage, since you had less time that nearly everyone in the nation who took the test today.</p>

<p>You might even get a retake.</p>

5

<p>I do feel like it did affect my score. I rushed through the rest of the section</p>

<p>However</p>

<p>I don’t want everyone to retake the test just cuz of that. I know some native speakers would be angry!</p>

6

<p>Has anyone who has taken a listening test ever had similar problems on the test day (some kind of problem that interfered with testing) and had any success by complaining to the CB? If so, did they just offer to cancel your scores and refund your testing fee, or did they give you the opportunity to retake? Since they only give the test once a year, is there any chance to retake (like will they allow you to do a listening test in January)?</p>

7

<p>I want to cancel it if it doesn’t work out with Cb</p>

<p>but then I also heard that the Chinese test was going to be more difficult next year because of the amount of high scores…my teacher said collegeboard is adding on a writing section…</p>

<p>Did anyone hear of that?</p>

8

<p>Oh dude that sucks
I cant write jack in korean ( i know wer talkigna bout chiense but still)</p>

9

<p>Just report it. Some proctors don’t even know what they are doing. They just go there and expect to get paid.</p>

<p>Report to the school and to College Board immediately.</p>

<p>BTW do u remember this:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-act-tests-test-preparation/413000-nov-3rd-sat-ii-mandarin.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-act-tests-test-preparation/413000-nov-3rd-sat-ii-mandarin.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

10

<p>“I know for the SATII, Chinese is easy, but because most of the students there had chinese as their first language, they cruised on by and so the very FEW of us were intimidated, now that I think back.” </p>

<p>I can fully understand how you feel because I agree on this 100%. Although I am of CHINESE descent, English is my first language and Chinese is my second language… the people taking Chinese SAT II were obviously native speakers who have speaking the Chinese language their whole lives (a.k.a the new immigrants from China) This is obviously an unfair advantage because they simply breezed through the whole paper while I was slowly trying to finish it and this really gave me unecessary stress/pressure… and intimidation.</p>

11

<p>Yeah! It’s totally biased</p>

<p>I was referring to intimidation from the proctor, because she was trying to be so strict and mean. Unnecessary input of negative feelings.</p>

<p>But I can also relate to the intimidation from other takers that generated self-doubt…Ah.</p>

12

<p>i dunno, if you aren’t going to take it again, u might as well not report it. it wont help you.</p>

13

<p>If nothing else, you’d be doing future students a favor by reporting the proctor. If you don’t say anything, she’s may keep doing the same things year after year. </p>

<p>It’s not your responsibility to solve this problem, of course, but I think it would be a very helpful and considerate thing (for future students) if you brought it up. </p>

<p>Any chance your parents would go bust some heads for you? :slight_smile: I’ve seen parents get involved in the past in similar situations, and I think that’s best.</p>

<p>If nothing else, even if you don’t retake, you don’t want an artificially low score being sent to your schools.</p>

14

<p>I don’t understand why so many students are taking Forein Language Tests of their native languages. I remember having read somewhere that native speakers aren’t allowed to take Language Tests of their own language. There’s really no point in doing so. I don’t think admissions officers will take their scores into consideration.</p>

15

<p>@6Y6Y6Y </p>

<p>Maybe to prove that you’re not a liar? If you get an 800, it’ll affirm that you’re good at your language, plus it’ll be another high test score on the list. However, I’d imagine that it doesn’t look impressive unless it’s above and beyond the normally required SAT IIs.</p>

<p>To the original poster:</p>

<p>Definitely call the College Board, they’ll be very likely to offer a retake with the test date of the original and nothing negative at all- your original score wouldn’t even show (or a cancellation) if they agreed to do that. They wouldn’t charge you either.</p>

16

<p>if they cancel the OPs score, they’ll cancel the scores of everyone in the room who did well also.</p>

17

<p>@tyler09:</p>

<p>That would be the case if there was too much time, but the case of the OP seems to be lost time- they’d probably just offer (offer being the key word) retakes or allowing the scores to stand.</p>