我名字叫 Bond, James Bond

[geraldc]

The UK's Secret Intelligence Service is currently recruiting (and they're looking for Chinese linguists), they have a quick test to see if your Chinese skills are up to the mark.

http://www.sis.gov.uk/output/Page525.html

If for one reason or another you can't get access, I've pasted the test below

Questions

1. What issues related to language learning are covered by the survey?

2. Who are the subjects of the survey and how many of them are there?

3. How many years in age stand between the youngest and oldest members of the age group which make up the largest majority of those surveyed?

4. Is there one particular motive shared by all those surveyed for learning Chinese?

5. Compared to ten years ago, by how much has the number of people learning Mandarin increased?

Answers below in white text, highlight to reveal (no cheating!) It's just like a HSK exam for spies

1. Students' ages, interest in the language, opinions of their text books, means of payment of motivation.

2. Thirty plus evening class students learning Chinese.

3. 15 years: the youngest being 25 and the oldest being 40.

4. No, there are many different reasons why these students are learning Chinese.

5. At least tenfold.

[sui.generis]

I got the chinese, I just didn't read the english for question 3 very closely: explanation whited out:

I answered that the youngest and oldest in the survey were 16 and 58 respectively with 42 years between them. (I was actually arguing with the answer for some time before I reread the question and realized my mistake).

I may just have to live vicariously through the movies. The prequel is coming out, what, next year?

[skylee]

我的名字叫邦，占士邦。

[CoffeeRider]

^^haha

Wonder what the pay grade is? My Chinese is crap but for the most part I can understand that passage... I hope they give a more strenoius test than that. Although... maybe this explains why intelligence is always so AWFUL.