Responding to Erin's email

hi dear Teacher Audrey Wiles: my name is Erin. i come from China and study in ukm. i read ur blog http://muetmyway.blogspot.com/ ,it is really good and helps me a lot. my muet will be on 16 Apr. this is 1st time i paticipate in muet. i got ilets 6.0 last year n very worried about whether i can get band 3 of muet. now i m working on it. may i ask you some questions plz? 1. i ve finish my speaking part on 11st Apr. my topci is that when we should seek advice from parents? a.to find a life partener; b.to live by your own; c.to go abroad; d. to by a car. i got c. in group discussion part our group ran out of time n didnt make a decision.may i ask is this situation bad? are we going to be cut a lot of marks? There is nothing wrong with not coming to a decision. The examiners will not mark down because even in real life conversation sometimes we end a discussion without coming to any real decisions. 2. i bought 2 books 'effective text for muet by koh soo ling' n 'muet model tests by koh soo ling'. i ve almost finish these two books about the listening n reading part. but i dont know how to count marks for the model tests so i still dont know which band im in now. there are 20 questions in listening but totally 45 marks. n there are 45 questions but totally 120 marks in reading part. so could u tell me how to count points for each question plz? Check out my older posts, I have already blogged about the calculations twice. I've also included the slides with all the tips. Those who asked for the slides, I will not email, just hv a look here. If you can't see it it is probably because of your firewall settings so please adjust them, 3. about the listening process: in the cds that given by two books. every passage is speaking for just once. so i m not sure the exactly timing for each question n how long time do i get to look at the questions before the speaker starts. The commercial books don't waste money recording twice so you have to physically press playback in order to hear the passage again. beside,how long time do i get to copy all answers from scratch paper to exam paper plz? (is it 5 min?) There is no exam paper or answer paper. You are required to write all your answers and circle the objective answers on the question paper itself. There is no OMR to fill in. After you listen to each passage you will have 1 min to choose/check your answers. is the whole listening process like this: 1min to read all questions. speak reads 1st passage. 1 min to answer question 1-8. speaker reads 1st passage again. 1 min to answer n check question 1-8. speaker reads 2nd passage. 1 min to answer question 9-14. speaker reads 2nd passage again. 1 min to answer n check question 9-14. speaker reads 3rd passage. 1 min to answer question 15-16. speaker reads 4th passage. 1 min to answer question 17-18. speaker reads 5th passage. 1 min to answer question 19-20. speaker reads 3rd passage again. 1 min to answer n check question 15-16. speaker reads 4th passage again. 1 min to answer n check question 17-18. speaker reads 5th passage again. 1 min to answer n check question 19-20. listening test ends. YUP 4. about listening part III: when i do the book of 'muet model tests', it is much easier in this part because there are original sentences in the listening passage. eg.1. corrective maintenace is usually done to restore the____________________. in the listening passage,the speaker says,"corrective maintenance,on the other hand, refers to maintenance done to correct a problem when something has failed, or is failing. this is usually done to restore the facility to an acceptable standard, for example,..." the answer is "the facility to an acceptable". but in book "effective text for muet",model test 1 part III, there are 3 out of 6 answers cannot originally found from the passage but the answer should be summerised by the meaning of text as a whole. eg.2. looking great on the outside is simple. on the contrary,_______________. the answer is "it is difficult to achieve". but the whole passage in cd script doesnt show any sentence contains the words"it is difficult to achieve". my question is:does this kind of questions will accour in muet?because when the answer is by summarising, there going to be plenty of different correct answers. besides, the two books are both model test which means more or less same like real muet paper?but questions from these two books are quite different,so im confused. The answers in model tests books vary in quality because they are commercial. I have researched the actual exam papers and found that for section III, quite often the students have to PARAPHRASE meaning to say, they have to listen for the answers, understand the gist then write a maximum of FIVE words in their own 'phrasing' in order to get it right. There are no half marks allocated, so this section is the hardest to score in because any error (grammatical, logical, punctuation etc) is considered wrong. This section is designed to be super difficult in order to discern the band 5s from the band 6s. So don't be surprised if you cannot answer directly from the passage. 5. is there any previous muet paper from 2008 to 2010 plz? where can i find it? i m thinking maybe i can test myself for identifying which band i m in. The papers are online in www.scribd.com I think.. but I'm not sure. Oxford publishers are the official printers for the collection of actual MUET exam papers and the new format starts from end of 2008 till now. the collection includes mid 2009 and end of 2009 so there are 3 sets. dear teacher, im very nervers about this muet.because lots of my seniors say it is very difficult, some of them even attend it for 4 times.may also because we are from china, english to us is like foreign language,but here it is as 2nd langage to local students. so could u plz give me some advice plz? thank you sooooooooooooooo much for your time!!!!! My final bit of advice is that you research my blog thoroughly.. read all the samples and memorise any nice phrases that you can use in your writing. Good luck! & thanks for writing in, I'm sure our sharing will be useful to everyone out there... 16th April.. haha bet it's like doomsday to most MUET candidates. The good news (is it?) is that you can take the exam 3 times starting next year (March, May and Oct) LOL... but I hope you guys won't need to cos you'll pass with flying colours with my help. :P