Category: Estonian Language

Zooks Takes Estonian A2 Exam.

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Tere!

Do you have any motivation when studying or learning something? From my own experience, taking an exam can be a good motivation (at least in my case), relevant to which it is also important to set the goal. I believe people in Japan can easily set goals as there are many qualifications and certificates in a language or accounting, from technology to art.

When learning a foreign language, setting a goal is crucial, and a language exam can be one of the goals.

In Estonia, language exams occur four times a year for non-Estonians who live in Estonia. (This is a language proficiency exam which is different from the one to get citizenship. This seems to happen every month.)

I thought I can’t acquire the language in this slow pace in a good way or lazily in a bad way, so I set the goal which was to pass the Estonian A2 exam.

★How to register for the exam

In order to take an Estonian language proficiency exam, you need to register online, by email or via mail, but of course doing online was faster. It seems you can register from the national portal site, but I felt it was faster and easier to register directly from the exam portal. This exam portal is available only in Estonian and Russian by the way.

On Innove’s web page, there is a PDF file which explains how to register an exam from the exam portal, but

selection of how to receive the exam result

was no longer available as of September 2021. They said once I register the exam online, the result will be automatically sent to the registered email address. (I contacted Innove a lot to ask how to receive the result.)

★Exam consultation

The exam consultation was held at the high school (?) where the exam would also take place. I arrived a bit early, and one staff member asked me

Eksam? (Exam?)

so I answered yes, and then he guided me to one of the classrooms.

After waiting for a while outside the classroom, other staff members checked our ID and the COVID certificates. Then they told me to find my name and sign the paper, but I could not find any. I also found that one elderly lady was in the same situation, and they told us to wait until everyone will be checked. However, suddenly they asked us

“Consultation?”

and the lady and I said yes. Then they explained that the A2 consultation took place in another room, and it seemed that where we were was the exam room.






I thougth it was about only the consultation as I had no idea if the real exam would also take place.




We went to another room and attended the consultation.

In the email that I received, it was written that it would take up to 6 hours, which was unbelievable, but in fact it finished in 90 minutes.

★Exam

Before the exam, I had received some emails about the exam, and they said that it was good to arrive at the venue 10 to 20 minutes before the exam started. I went to the same school, and found several papers on the wall in which there were examinees’ names and the classrooms. I checked mine, and a staff member told me where to go.

I went to the classroom but was not allowed to enter until the examiner would come. This seemed not only because of checking the COVID certificate but also checking the ID. The spot in the classroom was random but we had to sit just behind the front examinee/s. (I guess it was to prevent cheating. It made sense as if we sat behind but diagonally, we could have seen the front people’s answers.)

The brief exam explanation was in Estonian, and as for the speaking part, the schedule was not written on the blackboard so I wondered when, but the exam started without asking.

At the exam we all had the exam numbers, but we did not need to worry because the examiner told us the numbers while we were working on the writing tasks.

The first part was writing. It had two tasks and took up to 30 minutes. After that there was the listening part for 30 minutes as well as the reading part for 50 minutes.When writing the answers, we had to use black or blue pens. No pencils were allowed.

This time the task 1 for the writing was to describe the business card of a kindergarten in more than 25 words, and the task 2 was about the invitation to a friend to a water park (veekeskus) in more than 30 words.

Personally I has slight difficulty in writing in the second task about the water park






as I had never been there for more than four years since I came to Estonia.




Anyway, I had to write so I imagined and wrote “I want to swim in a pool”, “There is a sauna”, etc. (It sounds real, doesn’t it?)

Then we had the listening part. It ended while I was even not sure if I understood or not. (I’m sure the result will be bad.)

However the reading part seemed better although I don’t remember anything anymore.

After writing or answering the reading test, even before the end of the parts, we could submit if we thought it was all fine. I checked twice or three, and thought it would be okay, so I submitted, and finally could go outside of the classroom.

Outside the classroom, there was a list of the examinees in that room beside the door. They divided us into four pairs. In each pair there were two examinees. I was in the third pair, and this pairing was the order of the speaking part.

At the speaking part, the examiner recorded, and before the real tasks (?), she asked me and my speaking partner some basic information such as how old I was, where I was from, and where I worked. I was a bit nervous, and made a mistake that I don’t usually make. (I literally thought “Oh no”, but after that I concentrated on the speaking part so I didn’t care that much.)

The first task was to describe what we could see from a picture. The theme was sweets, and in my picture there were three people and their pieces of cakes on a table.

I had to speak for some seconds, but I could only said

  • They are eating cakes
  • They seem to be in a cafe
  • This woman/man wears a XX coloured shirt/jumper

However, my speaking partner had a better picture in which there was a woman and her kid in a park, eating sweets. He could talk about the weather, clothes, a place, and what kind of sweets they ate.

He had much more information.

The second task was the same theme, and the examiner asked us several questions.

She asked me how often I eat sweets, which I like to buy sweets or make sweets and so on. My fault was to have used the same grammatical sentences, but I could understand her questions. On the other hand, my speaking partner seemed to have difficulty.

I don’t remember if it was the final task or not anymore, but it was about nine pictures, so we had to ask questions to each other. I was not sure how to conduct that task, but after understanding it was alright.

My questions theme was clothes to wear in winter, and the questions from my speaking partner was about activities.

After the speaking session, I could go home.

The result will come in about one month.

★Result

On the 13th of December 2021, exactly one month after the exam, I received an email with the result.

  • Writing – very good (91~100%)
  • Listening – satisfactory (60~75%)
  • Reading – very good (91~100%)
  • Speaking – good (76~90%)

The total score was 86%, and I passed!

I will take a B1 exam next summer. (But I’m not sure if I will write about it here.)

Aitäh! 🙂

Zooks Completes Keeletee in 6 Months.

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Tere!

Pretty long time ago, I talked about an Estonian language learning platform called Keeleklikk which I completed in two months. In fact there is a next-level platform called Keeletee. This time I spent six months completing it.

★Course Structure

The course structure of Keeletee is almost the same as Keeleklikk. However, the videos were not tacky animation where kid characters have a fully grown man voice but authentic interviews with real people. There are a couple of animations but the quality is better than the ones in Keeleklikk.

One chapter consists of interviews or animation videos, phrase quizzes, grammar tutorials and word quizzes. 

★Grammar

In terms of the Estonian language grammar, you complete the basics by the A2 level, so when I started Keeletee I was wondering about what I would learn as a grammar.

In fact, I felt there were more like how to use some particular verbs. This is probably because in Estonian some verbs need objectives in the second form but others require the third form. Other than that, I learnt the form of verbs to say “it is reported” or idioms. (Actually I quite forget what I learnt in the beginning as I spent six months this time…)

While learning on Keeletee, I took notes on Evernote because the data will not possibly disappear by saving online, and each note can be compiled as a notebook. (More strictly speaking, I took notes on paper while watching the grammar tutorials or finding new words, and after learning I summarised them on Evernote. It’s good for me because I can think about the layout of the learning results later.) 

★Certificate

On Keeleklikk, after completing all the chapters you can take a final exam, and if you passed, you can get a digital certificate. However, Keeletee doesn’t have such a system. (There are tests after each chapter though. Personally I set the minimum score which was eight out of ten.)

This is my guess, but the reason why Keeletee doesn’t have such a certificate is that even the certificate from Keeleklikk is not official. (Some people might try to use it as an official certificate which is not accepted, so they may have assumed the questions regarding that and wanted to avoid immigrants’ confusion.) If you want to get an official language certificate, you need to take an official exam by the government.

It seems this exam is held every month and the fee is free. Since I graduated from the postgraduate school in Estonia, I’m not required to acquire the language, but the regular people may need it on the B2 level or something within five years. 

However, I completely have no idea as it doesn’t matter to me.

★From Now

As the COVID-19 situation has gotten better, the bars and shopping centres are open, and it’s not mandatory to wear masks for the face-to-face meeting, I assume that the Estonian language courses will open in autumn again. If I’m not too busy at work, I want to register for it. 

But still I have a few months by then, so I will learn it again at my own pace. (On the contrary, I want to focus on learning CSS now, personally.)

Thus, learn the Estonian language at your own pace and enjoy your Estonian/foreign language learning life!

Aitäh! 🙂

Zooks Completes Estonian B1 Class.

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Tere!

Do you remember that I was going to publish blog articles about my Estonian language course? Due to hospitalisation, I couldn’t actually continue. (Sorry to those who were looking forward to it.) Ergo, I’m summarising how my Estonian B1 course was this time.

After getting back to the Estonian language course, I went to the language school, but since the 25th of November we started learning online. This is because the Estonian government announced that hobby classes can be held in class only if the number of participants is below 10 or 15 or something like that. (I can’t remember that much.) 

In summer I also had an Estonina language course online, but my teacher wasn’t used to the IT gadgets. This time my teacher is an expert of Zoom (she looked like that), so the quality of the class was way better. (I thought if the online class was like this, it could be an option.)

Anyways, I’m gonna introduce what we learnt from week 9 that I got back from the hospitalisation. 


★Week 9★

It was the first language class since I was discharged from the hospital. There was nothing new for me. We learnt how to use “kuhu” (to where), but I already learnt in the A1 course last year, so there was no difficulty.


★Week 10★

I learnt two things this day — how to use “kuhu” and “kus” as well as the conditionals.

Regarding “kuhu” and “kus”, I write down for those who are not familiar with them below. “Kuhu” uses the verb “minema”, and “kus” uses “käima”, both of which mean “to go”. They use the former one when expressing going somewhere (one direction), and use the latter one when stating going somewhere regularly. Also, according to the interrogative, the form of the noun of the destination also changes.

For example,

  • Ma lähen koju
  • Ma käin kodus

Both mean “I go home” but the former one indicates “I’m going home (returning home)”. The third word of each sentence means “home”, but the case changes based on “kuhu” or “kus”.

In terms of the conditionals, the Estonians use -ks-. For instance, “tahtma” (which means “to want”) will be

Ma tahaksin 

to be more polite. (In English it means “I would like”.) There is another example. They have a verb “saama” (which means “can”), and they say “I could” by inserting -ks- and making it “Saaksin”.

We learnt such things that day.

Also, I got a small glossary book, which seems very useful.


★Week 11★

This week we shifted learning from offline to online. On Monday we learnt how to express time. I learnt time at A1 level, but this time it was “from what time to what time”.

As a grammar, the form is “kellast (from what time)” “kellani (to what time)”, and you need to insert the second case of numbers. For example, if it’s “from 8 to 5”, it wil be

kaheksast viieni.

We also learnt how to express “8.15” or (8.30).

From this Wednesday, we had an online class. We kept learning “time”, but this online class was splendid.

When learning or acquiring a language, speaking is a tricky part because it is hard to practise on our own. However, my teacher knew Zoom so well, so she created pairs or groups in three, and we could practise speaking by using breakout rooms.

In such a situation I do agree to learning a language online.


★Week 12★

We continued “time”, but this time we learnt “at what time”. To express such, they use “-ks”. For instance, if you want to say “at 8”, it will be

kaheksaks.

Like the previous section, it also uses the second case of the numbers.

Plus, we learnt half of the time (e.g. “8.30) or 15/45 (e.g. 8.45) as well.

On Wednesday the class was about verbs. In Estonian there are the -ma infinitive and -da infinitive. Which form we use is depending on the first verb. Here “verbs” includes auxiliary verbs in English too. I had a pair practice with an Russian student, who advised me

  • They use the -ma infinitive when the first verb is some sort of action (in many cases);
  • They use the -da infinitive when the first verb is some sort of emotion or ability (in many cases).

For example,  “I have to read a newspaper” will be

Ma pean ajaleht lugema

We didn’t deepen into the -da infinitive this time, and finished with the -ma infinitive.


★Week 13★

We learnt the -ma and -da infinitives, and a different case of numbers.

I’m gonna explain how to use the -da infinitive as I did for the -ma infinitive above. If a sentence is like “I can find a solution”, the Estonian sentence will be:

Ma saan lahenduse leida

You don’t have to pay attention to the position of the objective.

In terms of the numbers, we learnt the second and third case. (It means the way to use numbers differs depending on the context. It’s a bit complicated so it may be time-taking to get used to it, but I believe that practice makes perfect!)

When they use such weird forms of numbers is when saying “from when to when” or “before” and “after”.

The below is how to say “from when to when” in Estonian. Here “from when until when” is in Estonian is ”Mis kuupäevast mis kuupäevani”.

I exemplify from the 14th of March (Märts) to the 18th of April (Aprill), it will be 

neljateistkümnendast märtsist kaheksateistkümnenda aprillini.

Fucking long.

Grammatically the second case of the numbers and months have “-st” or “-ni”.

Another explanation is about enne, pärast — “before” and “after” (in Estonian). They use the third case here. For instance, “What don’t you do before the 1st of January?” will be

Mida te ei tee enne esimest jaanuari?

We use the same logic to “pärast”.

These were quite hard exercises.


★Week 14★

We had a class on Monday and a test on Wednesday.

We learnt the third case of plurals of nouns and adjectives. Oh, these are harder to acquire!

Some nouns and adjectives require us to add a few alphabets to the second case of their singular form. Others need to change the third cases of their singular forms. It’s so hard to remember. By the way, the Estonian language is like Spanish, so the adjectives get influenced by the nouns that attach those adjectives. In short, if a noun is a plural, its adjective is also a plural, and the noun is a third case, the adjective also becomes the third case.

I believe all I can do is just practise.

On wednesday, we checked the homework, and spent the rest of the time for the test. I felt the test was easy.


★Week 15★

We checked the points at the test, and then talked about how the Estonian language course was in a pair in Estonian. After that we presented our partner’s difficult points and good or interesting points regarding the class.

As for the test, I do have no idea where I made mistakes, but my point was so few.

Since I don’t know my mistakes, I cannot do anything for that.

However, although I don’t have much vocabulary yet, indeed I gained a few, and could speak more freely than before.

In terms of the afterwards, since I’ll start a new job in January, and I think I should get used to it first,I decided not to take any Estonian language course for this semester. Instead, I will do self-study by using my spare time.

Aitäh! 🙂

Estonian Language Course B1 – Week 1

ZooksLeave a comment

Tere!

I have mentioned that I completed Keelekilkk long time ago, but haven’t said that I took an A2 course in summer, have I?

There’s an opportunity to take a free Estonian language course. I took the A2 course online by using this opportunity in summer. This time I knew this “hack” so I used it again and got the opportunity to attend the B1 course.

The class is taken place twice a week, Monday and Wednesday evenings. Each session lasts three hours including a 15-minute break.

I published my school report when I was a student in Tallinn University (in Japanese). Since the coronavirus has prevented me from going to somewhere out of Estonia, I decided to resume this “project”. Ergo I’ll write a post about the Estonian B1 classes.


★Monday

This was the first class. There were around 15 to 20 people in the class and most of them are Russian speakers. Otherwise there’s one Japanese (me!), Korean (maybe, guessed from her name), Spanish, Indian or somewhere from South East Asia. Our teacher is an Estonian middle age old woman.

In the first class, we revised something from the precision level such as ordinal numbers, and some adjectives. We had some group work for ordinal numbers by using UNO cards and introduced ourselves with adjectives that started the same alphabet as our names. (For example, my teacher’s name is Kaja, and the adjective is Kuldne = gold in English.)

I knew that I didn’t have many vocabularies but the class made me realise that I literally didn’t have.


★Wednesday

On Wednesday, we did some activity while using numerical numbers and adjectives. It was like this: we made a big circle in the classroom, started saying number from one (1) and if someone had the magnification of five (5), they had to say some adjectives. That was actually fun.

In addition, we tried some quizzes in the A2 level online in the whole class. I wasn’t confident to answer the questions but it was quite easy.

On the other hand, when it came to speaking, I really couldn’t speak at all because of my weak vocabulary. We made a pair and each one of us had a partner who is a mentor for the other. So it’s like a peer system. I got one Russian speaking guy who can speak Estonian quite fluently in my opinion, which made me wonder why he was in the B1 class. His vocabulary is succinct but mine isn’t. Therefore I though I needed to increase my vocabularies again.

Overall, it seems the class is fine though my mentor is annoying (because he doesn’t speak clearly but speaks murmuring). Well, it’s the beginning of the class so let’s see.

Aitäh! 🙂

Zooks Completes Keeleklikk in 2 Months.

ZooksLeave a comment

Tere!

One day in 2020 there was a conversation before the general meeting in the office:

Me: Mine…
CTO: Mine?
Me: Toasse! Toasse? Tubasse?
CEO: I don’t think we say “tubasse” (but she could understand what I meant)
Me: How do you say (“to the room” in Estonian)?
CTO: Tuppa

I dashed to the developers room and said:






Mine tuppa!!!








One developer: We heard. lol




It’s a very good circumstance to learn a language, isn’t it?

As you might have guessed, it’s Estonian. I couldn’t register a public language course in January because too many people accessed, which led a server error. Then I (re)started learning Estonian online by myself and I tried to use what I learnt in the office as a practical lesson.

This time the article is about the online Estonian language learning. I completed the Estonian language learning platform called Keeleklikk, so I summarise here how it was. (If you read this article you will figure out but just in case you won’t misunderstand – it does not mean that I acquire the Estonian language in two months.)


What is Keeleklikk?

Keeleklikk is an online Estonian language learning platform. It’s easy to register by using facebook, Google or simply email address. As of the 24th of February 2020, Keeleklikk has two versions: the older version and the newer one. It totally depends on you which one you want to use. Here are my viewpoints on both versions for those who have slightly difficulties to choose:

The older Keeleklikk

  • Advantage
    • No system error (as far as I experienced).
  • Disadvantages
    • Tacky design.
    • Since it uses Flash, Google Chrome users (probably) get automatically blocked so whenever they log in, they need to “permit” the Flash.

The newer version

  • Advantage
    • Stylish and minimalistic trendy design.
    • Since it doesn’t use Flash it’s easier and smoother to start lessons
    • It keeps you logging in.
  • Disadvantages
    • There are frequent system errors.
    • Even after the final exam, it doesn’t completely show the result, which means it doesn’t produce the result in PDF (but I’ve been asking so if there are any progress on it I will add it).
    • The animation videos sometimes (deliberately?) doesn’t have subtitles.

However, personally I preferred the newer version so when the animation video didn’t have subtitles, I just had one more tab on the browser and read the English translation of the script in the following lesson, listening to the dialogs. To sum up, it is possible to make up for the disadvantage in the newer version!

If you want to continue to learn Estonian on Keeleklikk, according to your progress you may decide which version is more suitable for you.

Keeleklikk itself has advantages!

I’m not sure how people learn foreign languages in your countries but in Japan they tend to buy some text books when they want to learn English, for instance. If it’s going to be their skill, I think it’s good to “invest” money on themselves. However, there is nothing better than something free with fine quality.

Keeleklikk is an online Estonian language learning platform as mentioned, everything there is free of charge. There are around 16 chapters and each chapter consists of three to five lessons.

One lesson usually includes: animation videos with English subtitles, the transcripts of the videos (which provides the English subtitles as additional options), quizzes, grammar tutorials (which usually lasts one to four minutes), grammar quizzes, speaking practices with the computer by translating English sentences and email writing to the teacher about the lesson topic.

When it came to the grammar tutorials, I just had notes on thephysical memo pad and summarised and organised what I learnt on Evernote where I created a “notebook” for Keeleklikk after each lesson.

The reason why I had notes on only the right side is because it was faster to take notes on the single side on this notebook. No worries, I’ll use the other side later. No waste.

I personally think that any language learning platforms (especially available in Japan) should “mimic” one of the styles of Keeleklikk, which is the speaking practice with the laptop and email writing. It is difficult to practice these skills but it’s more difficult to improve those skills by using textbooks. Also, usually a lot of similar online language learning platforms like Keeleklikk are liable not to reply or correct learners’ texts by email even though they say “Let’s write an email!”. 

However, Keeleklikk does.

In addition the teacher usually replies with corrections within 20 – 30 minutes.

I don’t have much vocabulary so it was really exhausting and I didn’t write for the last three chapters but I did when I had energy to do. It’s always important to continue.




Keeleklikk aims A1 to A2 (for beginners)

In Japan we don’t have clear levels for language learning unlike Europe. Normally the range is beginner-intermediate-expert. However Europe has CEFR (even though it seems some schools have similar systems of level cetegorisation).

Reference: http://www.wecanteach.co.uk/ita-certificazioni

As repeated Keeleklikk is an online Estonian language learning platform for beginners, that is, until the A2 level. (There seems to be another platform for Estonian language learning from B1 but let’s just keep it in mind and talk about it sometime in the future.)


After finishing all the lessons you may take an exam there. (Oh, it doesn’t mean that you must complete every lesson one by one. You may skip some if you wish and may take the exam right after the registration but you need learning first of all, don’t you?)










I actually took the exam twice but still haven’t got the certificate.





Keeleklikk provides you with the certificate after the exam!

Maybe because I took the exam in the newer version but not sure. Anyway I couldn’t download my result in PDF even after the exam and clicked everywhere but it always just went to the first blank page of the exam.









(Sigh.)




Moreover, the newer version of Keeleklikk had a contact form but the “I’m not a robot” button was broken so I couldn’t send the message. I went to the older version and found the email address in a tiny font below the webpage and finally emailed.

As of the 24th of February 2020 I still haven’t got any reply but probably because I sent the email on Saturday. If there’s any progress I will renew the article. 

Since we don’t have good Estonian language learning books or equivalents in Japan(ese), learning it in English is the (only) way and yet I personally believe that it may be easier to learn it from Japanese. Anyway, you can access Keeleklikk no matter where you are as long as you have the internet. If you are enough fluent at English, why don’t you try to learn Estonian?

★Addition on 29th March 2020

Since I sent an email to Keeleklikk, we had communicated approximately once a week and three times in total. On the 29th of March I finally could get the diploma on Keeleklikk.

I took the exam around five times in total.

Yeah I didn’t expect that I would take the same exam five times due to the errors… Now you can get the diploma on the new version of Keeleklikk and I also reported them some errors so you may not see any errors while learning the language.

Aitäh! 🙂