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U.S. Foreign Service Officer headed to Wuhan, China

The mission of a U.S. diplomat in the Foreign Service is to promote peace, support prosperity, and protect American citizens while advancing the interests of the U.S. abroad. The work that diplomats do has an impact on the world as they serve at one of any of the more than 270 embassies, consulates and other diplomatic missions in The Americas, Africa, Europe and Eurasia, East Asia and Pacific, Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia.

The duties of a Consular Officer include to provide emergency and non-emergency services to American citizens and protect our borders through the proper adjudication of visas to foreign nationals and passports to American citizens. We adjudicate immigrant and non-immigrant visas, facilitate adoptions, help evacuate Americans, combat fraud, and fight human trafficking. Consular Officers touch people’s lives in important ways, often reassuring families in crisis. They face many situations which require quick thinking under stress and develop and use a wide range of skills, from managing resources and conducting public outreach to assisting Americans in distress.

Tests, tests and more tests

The Chinese education system is heavy into testing. My students not only have to study for exams in their classes, they also have to pass several national tests specific to their major. These big exams cause a lot of anxiety and stress because they have to pass them in order to graduate.

I've been very curious as to what is actually tested on these exams since some worksheets and tests that my students have shown me seem extremely difficult, obscure and absurd. A lot of the questions are about nit-picky grammar, words that are out-of-date or little-known or old-fashioned "culture" facts.

I told Steve that I wanted to take one of the more difficult tests to see how I could do. The best he could do was get me a copy of one of the practice tests. Here is what was included on the exam (185 min.): 1. Take notes on a mini-lecture. The notes are graded and are used to answer some fill in the blank questions. 2. Listening comprehension. Answer questions based on a passage that is heard. 3. News broadcast. Answer questions after listening to the news. 4. Reading comprehension. Answer questions after reading a passage. 5. General Knowledge. 6. Proofreading and error correction. 7. Translation. English to Chinese and Chinese to English. 8. Essay (Topic: "Sowing the seeds, nurturing growth and harvesting the rewards").

I was most intrigued by the "General Knowledge" section because my students always talked about trying to study for it. After seeing the ten questions, I think it could be pretty difficult to study for this section as the test could cover anything. Do you want to give it a try? How would you do on this part of the test?

General Knowledge - 10 minutes

1. The second largest trade port in Britain is ____.
a) London b) Liverpool c) Birmingham d) Glasgow

2. The state of California is on _____.
a) the Atlantic Coast b) the Gulf of Mexico c) the Pacific coast d) Caribbean Sea

3. On April 19th, 1775, "the fire of ____" signed the outbreak of the War of Independence.
a) Concord b) Boston c) Philadelphia c) Lexington

4. It was not until December 7th, 1941 when the base of the American Pacific fleet, ____, was suddenly attacked by the Japanese air force and navy that the U.S. finally participated in WWII.
a) Normandy b) North Africa c) Pearl Harbor d) Sicily

5. The youngest president of the U.S. is _____.
a) John F. Kennedy b) Richard Nixon c) Thomas Jefferson d) Dwight Eisenhower

6. _____ is a typical feature of Swift's writings.
a) Bitter satire b) Elegant style c) Casual narration d) Complicated sentence structure

7. Shakespeare's greatest tragedies are the following works except ______.
a) Hamlet b) King Lear c) Romeo and Juliet d) Othello

8. _____ is the most influential linguistic school in the second half of the 20th century.
a) systematic-functional grammar b) transformational-generative grammar
c) Prague school d) London school

9. Normally, a syllable consists of three parts, that is, the ____, the _____ and the _____.
a) onset, peak, coda b) peak, coda, onset c) peak, onset, coda d) coda, peak, onset

10. According to morphology, "-ful" in the word "colorful" is called a(n) _____ morpheme, while "-es" in "apologies" is called a(n) ______ morpheme.
a) derivational, free b) inflectional, bound c) inflectional, free d) derivational, inflectional


I have to wait to see if they think my answers are right. What did you get? And how many American university students do you think would dominate that section?
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    Sarah Sanderson
    I am currently in Mandarin language training as a new diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service. Sean and I depart for Wuhan, China in November 2019 for my first tour in consular affairs.
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