DLAB Advice/Help Tips Inside

[rosary9mm]

I came upon this website that I saw might be helpful for anyone taking the DLAB test in the future.


DLAB: What it is and how to score better on it

Time: 80 Minutes for Listening. 25 Minutes for the written portion.
LISTENING SECTION
Listening section is done with headphones and either a single double-sided tape or two single-sided tapes that are flipped at the end of the tape side.
- Question answers read only once. Lists of English (words, phrases, sentences) given for reference to answer question starts simple moves to difficult
- Vocabulary
- Phrases
- Sentences
Notes regarding this section. When I took this test one of the glaring items I noticed upon hearing the foreign speaker saying these items was the fact this seemed like a hold over from the Cold War days since the "foreign" speaker who was pronouncing the words would pronounce them with a "Russian " pronunciation pattern. You do not have an American English speaker reading anything off to you other than the directions for the test. So, what did this tell me? It tells methat I may want to practice pronouncing English words as if I were a Russian trying to say them. Vowels are very constant (aeiou), like Spanish, and Rs are rolled like Spanish . You don't hear the American English Diphthongs (ai, ei) so you have to train your ear to hear what is being said. When the individual starts putting the words together on the tape he starts using a Noun system of cases which are basically the following:


1. Nominative: Subject Case
2. Accusative : Direct Object Case
3. Dative : Indirect Object Case
4. Genitive: Possessive case


Here's a reference site that can give you an inkling of how it works for Russian:


http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/case.html


These are very similar to how a Russian would put a word together in a sentence. Basically, the word order is not really governed by position like a Subj-Verb-Obj construction as in English. The nouns in the sentence are already "encoded" with their semantic value of Subject, Direct Object, Indirect Object, Possessive. The notional language that the person on the tape reads off to you adheres to this format. Here's an example of some "sample" rules following a similar format of what you might face on the DLAB :


1) A Noun ends with a -y when they are the subject of the sentence. Example: Thing becomes Thingy, Tom becomes Tomy


2) The "language" doesn't use articles (a, an, the).


3) All modifiers for nouns(adjectives) come after the noun they are modifying and have the same ending to show agreement. Example: Red Thing becomes Thingy Redy


4) Possessive Nouns have a - da as their ending to show possession and always follow the "possessed " noun. Example Tom 's Red Thing becomes Thingy Redy Tomda


5) Direct Objects have a - ga as their ending. Example: Tom touches the red thing. à Tomy touch thinga reda.


Once you get beyond the phrases you get into sentence structure rules that the person will tell you about. You will get a list of rules that would include the above and also some syntax (grammatical) structure rules. Since this notional language is similar to a case language's grammar you really don't have to follow a strict Subj-Verb-Obj construction because the Case System already "encodes" those values into the word. So, you would have a rule that goes like the following:


6) Sentences do not have a strict word order that must be followed.
Example: Jill touches Tom's red thing. (Any one of the following mean the exact same thing)


- Jilly touch thinga reda Tomda .
- Thinga reda Tomda touch Jilly.
- Thinga red Tomda a Jilly touch.
- Jilly thinga reda Tomda touch.
- Touch Jilly thinga reda Tomda.
- Touch thinga reda Tomda Jill y


Similar notional rules to these will be what you have to apply to the words as you listen to the tape read off the selections of what should be the correct option. The bottom line for this is being able to take those rules and translate them into the correct vocabulary so you can answer the question since you will only be listening to the tape and won 't be able to read any of the testing options given. One other note about this section, the reader only reads the A-D options once so you will not get a repeat of the selections, so it pays to make the " translation" beforehand by looking at the sentence or phrase and making a mental approximation of what the answer should be. This is especially so since the person reading the options will be giving all of the English words in the list a "Russian" pronunciation along with the appropriate pronunciation/grammatical rule applied or misapplied so that you will have to choose the appropriate selection out of the four options. This section is especially important to use the rule of putting a dot by the answer you surmise to be the most correct.



READING SECTION
Reading and Vocabulary" section is accomplished with your #2 pencil and actually only deals with phrases and how well you can recognize patterns. You will have 25 minutes to complete this section. The concepts that you are working with are pictures with meanings under them in a notional foreign language that you must abstract out the meaning of a similar picture and apply it to the respective test item options correctly. Basically, the pictures above give you a verbal paradigm of something like counters for long cylindrical items (Hiki for instance). You are then presented with a similar picture and have to select the one answer that best matches the vocabulary pattern above.


For Example (Draw in you mind: Picture one: Two Pencils = Ni-hiki; Picture Two: 3 Books = San-satsu).


You are then presented with a picture of One Drinking Straw with the following answers:


1) Sanbiki
2) Nisatsu
3) Ippiki
4) Issatsu



The correct answer would be number 3. They would continue on with similar items getting gradually more difficult as they go, like the auditory portion, vocabulary to phrase to sentence . You are expected to recognize the patterns and apply them to a similar pattern in order to answer the question for the particular picture.
Tom's Notes and Hints to prepare for the DLAB:
The above basically gives you an idea of what the test will be like. For you to be able to study for it here are a few suggestions. For the listening section, try and build yourself up a few sections of about 10 items starting with words, then simple phrases, and then simple sentences. Then take the above notional rules and practice memorizing them so that you can get an idea on how to apply them quickly and answer the questions. You might even take your list and have a friend read them to you as if s/he were a "Russian" or foreigner taking your English words and pronouncing them in the "target" language. This will prep you for the listening section. For the Reading Section, you really need to familiarize yourself with grammatical concepts from a couple of different languages and be able to recognize the patterns presented to you. Plus, this section really puts you under the gun with a time limit of 25 minutes. Trust me on this, that time goes by much quicker than you think, so keep track of it while you are working on this section. One other thing, go with your gut-feeling on what you suspect is right. One last suggestion I can leave you with is that you familiarize yourself with languages like Russian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Tagalog, Arabic, and maybe Vietnamese or similar languages. The areas to familiarize yourself with are basically how they put vocabulary, phrases, and sentences together.

http://linguiphile.org/index.php?q=node/3

That's the url to the actual site.

[CplGiraffe]

I have two things to say as someone who took (and passed) the DLAB.

1) The test is taken completely on a computer now. You can not listen to anything twice, it does not repeat. Also, the whole "russian" accent thing in here is outdated. The accent of the reader changes in each question with each accent repeated a few times throughout, but not always being the same one.

2) The point of the DLAB is to test whether you are built to learn languages, or are not. I think the premise of studying so much for a test that is built to test natual ability makes the test lose integrity on the part of the person who wrote this guide. I think the only studying anyone should do is brushing up on basic English grammar skills. Everything else will be told to you in the test. If it comes to you, then good you should do this job for the Marine Corps because you are less likely to fail. However, if it does not, maybe you should rethink because it just may not be for you.

Now I'm not saying that if it doesn't come natural you don't have the ability to learn it, however it may take you more work.

Either way, good luck on taking the test anyone.

P.S. Don't rely on the rules in this guide to get you through the test because the maker of this guide also made up these rules as only an example.

[locoplata]

Agreed, there is no longer a Russian accent for the fake language. It's distinctly Arabic sounding.

The computerized nature of the current test will both help and hurt test takers. I definitely liked the fact that that I could pause for a second when necessary, but the time limit is really still based on the fast paced cassette version of the test. If you take time to think about one question, you will easily run out of time. Remember, you can't hurry up much since you MUST listen to the whole recording for each question before moving on.

I got a 136 and left very confused. There are many questions that I really wonder if there might have been 2 correct answers that are just there to make people become indecisive.