The self-corrected announcement at the village hall
A candidate sits the listening section of a basic Inari Sámi exam at the Aanaar adult education centre. The recording is a 50-second announcement for a language evening at the village hall. It is played twice with a 30-second pause. The candidate must complete a four-row table: event, weekday, start time, and what to bring. In the first listening, the speaker names a weekday, pauses, says 'ii' (no), and then names a different weekday. The candidate's notes show both days, with the first one crossed out. They also write '18.00' and a word they believe means 'two', but they cannot identify the unit that follows it. A local bus stops at the hall at 17.40 and 18.40. After the second listening, the candidate has 90 seconds to transfer answers and no dictionary. The candidate is unsure whether the self-repair cancels the first weekday or adds a second meeting day, and whether the unknown word is the item to bring or a duration.
1. How should the candidate treat the self-repair when completing the weekday row? Explain the decision rule and what to write.
Read the worked answer
Treat the sequence 'weekday + pause + ii + different weekday' as a repair, not an addition. In spoken Inari Sámi, as in most conversational speech, 'ii' before a rephrasing cancels the preceding item. If the speaker had intended a second day, they would normally use an additive connector and a plural or a second date, not a negation. Write the second weekday as the answer. Keep the first weekday lightly crossed out in the margin, not in the answer row, so a marker sees only one answer. If the second weekday is itself unclear, write the second form and a question mark rather than reverting to the first; the first is explicitly cancelled. Do not spend the 90 seconds re-deciding: the repair is the strongest signal in the audio.
2. The candidate hears 18.00 and the word they think means 'two'. The table asks for start time, not duration. What should they do, and how can the bus times help?
Read the worked answer
Separate the rows. The start time is 18.00; 'two' belongs to a different row or is extra detail. If the table has no duration row, do not force the word into the start-time cell. The bus times provide a plausibility check, not a replacement for the audio: a 17.40 bus arrives before 18.00, while an 18.40 bus would arrive after the announced start. That supports 18.00 as the start time. If the candidate had heard 18.40, the bus check would flag a possible mishearing and justify using the second listening to confirm the number. The bus timetable should never override a clear audio form, but it is a useful tie-breaker when the number is acoustically ambiguous.
3. The unknown word after 'two' might be the item to bring. How should the candidate decide whether to guess?
Read the worked answer
Use grammatical position first. If the unknown word follows a number and is in the same phrase, it is likely a measure noun (hour, euro, kilometre), not the item to bring. If it follows a verb of bringing and is the object, it is likely the item. The candidate should note the exact form and its neighbours. If the item row remains empty, a safe superordinate such as 'something to share' may earn partial credit only if the task allows gist; otherwise leave it blank and protect the other three rows. Inventing a specific item is riskier than omitting one cell. In a basic exam, three correct rows out of four usually outweighs a speculative fourth.