The English-Learning and Languages Review Æ Homepage |
Contents: Make as many copies of these CPE web pages as you like, but see the
conditions at the end
Paper 4: Listening Comprehension
(in preparation –see preliminary advice at Advice
on language examinations (Multiple choice) |
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Paper 1:
Reading Comprehension As a result of changes in the form of the
CPE exam this page has become partly out of date. However, much of the advice
is still valid. |
Paper 3: Use
of English As a result of changes in the form of the CPE exam this
page became out of date. It has been partly revised, but it should now be
regarded more as general advice, rather than an exact guide. |
Paper 5: Interview (in
preparation) |
These CPE web pages are a greatly expanded extract from The Art and Science of
Learning Languages, by Amorey Gethin and Erik V. Gunnemark, published by Intellect (http://www.intellectbooks.com)
"This book is very interesting...could be a great help to students
of foreign languages, but also to tutors. ...The best section of all, however,
in my opinion, is the chapter on how to pass language examinations, which
includes all those techniques which are likely to help the student..." From the review in The Lecturer July 1996.
The tyranny of examinations and the need for realism
Exams
are hateful things. No truly civilized community would ever subject anybody to
such ordeals. There are not only the emotional effects of fear of failure, and
of failure itself - a collapse of self-confidence and a miserable anxiety about
one's ability to cope with the future. Countless millions of people's whole
lives are decisively affected by how they do in exams. Because exams play such
a big part in modern society I want to suggest some ways in which people could
do better in them.
I
have been helping candidates to prepare for the Certificate of Proficiency
examination for over four decades, including 14 years as the Director of
Studies at a
What
has particularly gladdened me is that in my classes my advice has helped many
candidates who have been on the 'borderline' between passing and failing. It is
such students who need help most.
There
is nothing special, difficult or complicated about the way of working I
suggest. It is based on nothing more than common sense and being systematic.
The key to success is to be realistic. One
of the most common reasons for people failing their Proficiency examination is
that they aim too high. They aim for perfection, and instead just make a
terrible mess of everything. Unfortunately it is often teachers who are
responsible for this situation. They try to get their students to achieve
perfect or near-perfect answers, and as often as not undermine the students'
morale as well as failing to show them the essential thing: a practical way of
dealing with the problems.
This
in a way contradicts what I believe should be a basic principle for most people
when they learn a foreign language: one should aim for perfection. But exam
candidates face an immediate practical problem, and preparing for an exam and
finding good enough answers to the questions one finds in the exam papers
themselves are in many important ways not the same as learning a language.
There
are many thousands of candidates with a good enough knowledge of English to
pass who have failed because they have not prepared in the right way and because
they have used the wrong technique, or no technique at
all, in the examination itself. But there are also many students with less
knowledge of the language who have passed, through good preparation and good
examination technique.
You
may feel that what I am saying is that the best way to pass is by using tricks.
But that is not really so. What I am saying is that you can do best by being
systematic and self-disciplined. Below I first offer some general advice. I
then discuss in detail how to deal with the various types of test.
General principles
This web page has not been
written for those who, without much difficulty, will get a top grade in their
Proficiency examination. They have little or no need of the advice in it. All that such lucky people need do is make sure they know exactly
what sort of tests they are going to meet in the exam papers and what the
examiners expect of them.
Most
candidates are in a very different situation. They know they will not get the
highest marks. The important question for them is simply, "Can I
pass?" If you are such a candidate, there are a number of simple practical
things you can do to get many more marks than you might otherwise get.
Above
everything else, though, there is a principle about language examinations you
should never forget:
You must show the examiner only what you know, never what you do not
know.
For
instance, in the composition paper it is foolish for most candidates to try to
write something that meets perfectly all the demands the examiners make. They
will probably meet with catastrophe if they do. It is much better for you if
you can be realistic and use practical methods to write good language, even if
that language is not up to the ideal standard the examiners are asking for from
candidates they would give the top grade.
To
pass the examination you need:
1 the
right preparation before the examination
2 the
right technique during the examination itself
Before anything else you must obviously know in
outline what is going to be in the papers set for the examination. This is only
the beginning. It is essential to know too, in detail, exactly what type of
language the examiners will ask you to show you understand, what sort of
subjects they will probably ask you to write about, and what sort of
grammatical or vocabulary points they are likely to test you on.
Clearly you must be prepared for the sort of
questions you will get and clearly you must practise
answering some of the same sort of questions.
Some teachers may have fine intellectual or
practical ambitions on behalf of their students and may resent the distractions
of examinations. They should always remember what a terrifying responsibility
they have. If you have teachers, you must insist that they do not give you
things to do that you do not have to do in the exam; that's a luxury you
cannot afford, and can be dangerous for candidates' confidence. Teachers and
candidates have to be thoroughly systematic, and make sure they are really
ready for all the problems they are liable to get.
But do not make the mistake that, unfortunately,
so many students make. Do not believe that doing hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of test questions, and discovering the answers, is the right way to prepare. Do
not believe that if you do 600 questions and answers you will be twice as well
prepared, will have learned twice as much, as if you do only 300. Very often
this sort of preparation just means going through automatic, mechanical motions
without thought; don't just say to yourself "Ah! So that's the
answer, is it! Next question please!"
Ten thousand test questions will be useless to
you unless you study the method needed to answer, and the method needed
to prepare. If you doubt this, remind yourself of the fact that you will almost
certainly never get exactly the same question again. You should spend the time
studying how to be ready for questions you have never seen before. It is much
better to spend an hour thinking carefully about how
to do five questions, than to spend an hour doing fifty questions and answers
without thinking about them. The question a candidate should constantly ask is "How?"
In this way you can build up confidence that you can deal with almost any
problem. If you decide to use the services of teachers to help you prepare for
your exam, make sure that they too concentrate on answering the question
"How?"
This point about dealing with problems leads on
to what is probably the most important piece of advice I have to offer.
You must learn about yourself. You must discover
what your own special needs are in the language concerned. There is no need to
'learn' the whole of the foreign language 'equally', so to speak - spending
equal time and effort on each part. This is a waste. You should pick out what
makes English different from your own and concentrate on those parts. And then,
above all, you should discover your own personal weak points in the language,
become aware of your own special problems, find out what mistakes you most
often make.
Make a list of them.
You should practise
doing the various sorts of work you will be asked to do in the examination;
in particular you should practise writing
compositions. You should then make a careful note of any mistakes you make more
than once. Count up how many times you make each mistake, and the mistake you
make most often should be at the top of your list, the next most common one in
second place, and so on. If your own language is
Japanese or Persian, you may find that the problem of articles (a, the)
comes at the top of your list. If you speak German, you may find if is your biggest problem. If your mother tongue is French you
may find you are always having trouble with since. And if Spanish or
Italian is your language, you may constantly forget to use it when you
should.
But these are only examples of mistakes typical
of speakers of certain languages. They may or may not be your particular
personal mistakes. Those personal ones are the ones you must discover. It is
surprising that so few students organize their studies and exam
preparations in this way, for the logic of the method is so clear and
simple:
Find out your problems and deal with them.
This principle is connected with another
important truth that can be expressed in the slogan:
The problem is not remembering the answer;
the problem is remembering the problem.
An example of what I mean is given by the many thousands, perhaps millions, of German-speaking students of English who repeatedly make the mistake of using would with if: "If I would do that, I would miss my flight" etc. Most of them, if you asked them how one uses if in English, would probably give a correct answer. They know how if should be used. But they constantly forget the problem when unreminded by someone else, and so, unthinking, fall into the same trap again and again.note 1
I shall not discuss here all the features of a good grammar book, only
emphasize two points.
Examination technique - Timing
Examination technique - Checking
Examination technique - Summary
The three things to remember each time you go into the examination room are:
1 the list of your personal or 'favourite' mistakes
The Certificate of Proficiency examination
is set and administered by the:
You can get information about the Syndicate's
examinations in English as a Foreign Language at:
and at their web site www.cambridge-efl.org.uk
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