My experience taking TOPIK I yesterday
Yesterday I had my first TOPIK exam ever, I went to do TOPIK 1 because I haven't been constantly studying for over a year since I changed jobs. The exam place was a church in São Paulo, Brazil.
The process was very intuitive, all instructions were in my native language and we were not required to speak any other language, even our room proctor was having sure everyone speaked Portuguese, since some people from neighbor countries come here to take the exam.
The first part was 듣기 and the audio was played on a common CD player, the proctor opened the exam question book and the audio CD in front of us as part of the exam protocol.
The questions were fairly simple and I would even dare to say they were easier than the last 5 or 6 mock tests you do on TOPIK Guide website. The hardest ones were of course the last 6, since you have to deal with more context to answer two questions about the same dialogue. In the first 20 questions, where the quotes were smaller and more monotonous, I even felt sleepy
The same goes for the 읽기! But the process of answering it is way more comfortable because you can manage your own time and not depend on the CD playback to answer questions. At some point I had 30 minutes to finish and I started reviewing questions I found more tricky and marked with a star beforehand. Thanks to this I was able to answer a couple of questions more confidently after a second check.
Although you are not allowed to leave the exam room before the application ends, it's still a very reasonable time to do it.
Unfortunately you cannot take the question book home, which is quite sad as I really wished I could take it bake home :( But they let you bring home the pen you use, a two-sided sharp/common pencil which is cool as a souvenir.
I hope I can take this experience as an boost to come back to studies and to take TOPIK II next year!