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Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / August 2005CPE
I've been studying for CPE (Cambridge Proficiency) for an year and a half in a row, I don't think I'm prepare, I've done lots of mocks and just got Cs and Ds... I was wondering if you could give some tips... On the other hand, is it that important? Sometimes I wonder what it really proves... I'm from Brasil and I don't have access to english speaking people, of course, just through internet... Thks... Get a private teacher! Barring that fantastic tip, what do you really need help in? I bet the following are a problem: Writing - because you have no input on your correction issues. Speaking - same reason Use of English, Gapped Sentences and (horrors!) Summary Reading, Gapped Text Listening, Part 4 (He Said, She Said) Have I missed anything? > I've been studying for CPE (Cambridge Proficiency) for an year and a > half in a row, I don't think I'm prepare, I've done lots of mocks and [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > Thks... Definitely: Reading, Gapped Text and Use of English, Gapped Sentences... The other topics I do fine... but on these ones I can't get even the half of them... On Reading, (Gaped text) very often the words I'm supposed to choose are completelly unknown to me, and when I know the words they seem too familiar and I don't know which one to choose... We'll take this in order, Gapped Text, and then Gapped Sentences. This will be a rather long post. We'll do this in parts, because if I write the whole thing in one night, I'll get bored, toss it, and you'll never see it. Here goes. Gapped Text, as many experts freely admit, is difficult for anyone, even a native speaker. There is a bit of controversy on the best way to have students approach this part of the test, but after working it for years, this is what I have come up with. We need to teach students WHAT TO LOOK FOR (that is to say, to find the kinds of clues that Cambridge leaves behind). We need to teach students HOW TO LOOK FOR THEM (that is to say, a standard strategy to use over and over again when we do Gapped Text. With practice, the strategy becomes second nature and the student's accuracy soars. --- There are three different basic sets of principles that you need to keep in mind as you do Gapped Text. 1 SENTENCE LEVEL/DISCOURSE LEVEL CLUES Whenever you do Gapped Text, you ought to have a pencil in your hand. That pencil should be used to circle clues you find in the text. Cambridge leaves many of them in the text in order to make your life easier. What are they? Well, obvious ones are pronouns that must be linked to antecedents mentioned earlier. Conjunctions are used to suggest contrast, add emphasis, provide more proof...and then there are clues that just have to do with common sense. Here's an excellent example, taken from Cambridge ESOL 3 Past Papers (C.U.P.). You probably own this book and if you don't, you should but it. The fourth one has come out, but I haven't looked at it yet. I'm looking at pages 10 and 11 29 (the gap) I had little to impress him with in return, other than instant praside for his music... STOP!!! Who is "him"? "In return" for WHAT??? These ar obvious textual clues. Circle these statements and make notes in the gaps between the paragraphs. Those notes are to aid your memory as you go through the text. Let's try this with another gap... 31 But in the meantime, I felt I had nothing to lose by seeing Andrew again. WHOA!!! In the meantime...of what??? What was happening? 33 I set to work with enormous enthusiasm... SET TO WORK ON WHAT??? This question should be written on the box above. You can also find such clues in gapped paragraphs (A-H). A And even if the two of us failed to challenge the top musical composers successfully... (This implies that, in one way or another, they would challenge SOME composers, at least.) G On the other hand... (What's the contrast.?) Occasionally, a clue like this comes at the ends of the gapped text and the gapped paragraphs. 28 Gap, paragraph ...I could tell that he was good. Very good. (Usually, after something like this, a general statement, we have an example.) 2 TEXTUAL ORGANIZATION There are three, count them, three ways that written texts on CPE are structured. More than one way may appear in each gapped text. The first is NARRATI VE, which is by far the most common. The structure of narrative has been set in stone since at least Aristotle, who identified that stories typically begin with a problem, which develops into a series of complications, which crescendos to a climax, and finally, we have some sort of aftermath, where the writer lets us down. Look for this structure. If you have to deal with an extract of a novel, and one of the gapped paragraphs mentions something like "she screamed" then that will normally go in somewhere around Gap 31, 32...that sort of thing...not the immediate beginning and end. The second is ARGUMENT, by far the most difficult text type. Arguements depend on two things, linking words/discourse markers (On the other hand, If this were really true, However,) and contrasting logic. You must become sensitive to these, as Cambridge absolutely loves to stick an argument halfway through a narrative. The last kind of writing you will have to deal with in a Cambridge Gapped Text is NEWS. When information is provided to you, the reader. Typically speaking, when a writers wants to give you information, they go from the more general items in that information to more specific. In journalistic writing, the structure of a news article looks like an inverted pyramid...there is a lot of information in the first sentence, and that gradually tapers off into more specific bits. Here's an example from the front page of the EL Gazette, March 2005. Title: Greek police to take exam paper trail The Public prosecutor in Greece is investigating a security breach doring the December session of the Cambridge Esol [sic] examinations in the country. (That's you first paragraph, and it tell you everything. Now, the story segues into a brief narrative.) At 9.20 a.m. on 5 December Antenna [sic], a major national Greek television channel, broadcast that it has been faxed pages from the CPE question papers. The questions were receuved 14 minutes after the candidates had entered the exam room that morning. Photocopies of the same pages had been posted by express delivery to several news sources on 3 December. (That gives you the explanation of what the security breach was. And now, the official response from Cambridge ESOL.) According to a press statement from University of Cambridge Esol [sic] Examinations, 'There is no reason to believe that the theft of this material a consequence of the expanstion of the network of authorised centres in Greece.' (That was rather important information. The article goes on from there...I'll quote more of it in my next series of clues.) The main thing to remember is that information goes from GENERAL to SPECIFIC when it is provided in newspaper in order to inform you. News texts are not structured like this example: (Paragraph 1) Farmer Tom had this to say about the missing pigs, "It ain't right. Them darned rascals done took all the pigs. Sweet Jesus, couldn't they have left me just one?" His neighbor and minority shareholder of their common sty, Farmer Doug, was standing right next to the victim as he said this and grunted in agreement. This reporter watched as the two men, shattered under the economic burden of coping with the loss of their livestock, walked heavily to the coop to take stock of their chickens. (Paragraph 2) An increase in incidents of livestock-snatching has been reported in Chemung County during the last financial quarter. Small farmers on Old Ithaca Road have been reporting wholesale thefts of their barnyard animals in increasing numbers during the last three months. Authorities suspect that a professional gang is operating in the area and urges all concerned citizens with information on the group, which has been , this reporter has learned, dubbed the "Meat-Grabbers" by the police. Paragraph 2 MUST come before Paragraph 1 in such a gapped text. 3 BACKGROUND VERSUS NARRATIVE Let's go back to our EL Gazette example: Greek police to take exam paper trail The Public prosecutor in Greece is investigating a security breach doring the December session of the Cambridge Esol [sic] examinations in the country. At 9.20 a.m. on 5 December Antenna [sic], a major national Greek television channel, broadcast that it has been faxed pages from the CPE question papers. The questions were receuved 14 minutes after the candidates had entered the exam room that morning. Photocopies of the same pages had been posted by express delivery to several news sources on 3 December. According to a press statement from University of Cambridge Esol [sic] Examinations, 'There is no reason to believe that the theft of this material a consequence of the expanstion of the network of authorised centres in Greece.' (And now, here's the next paragraph.) Cambridge Esol [sic] have been operating in Greece for over half a century, and play a significant role in both private and public ELT sectors. The British Council previously acted as the sole examination administrator, but last June Cambridge piloted a new internal examination centre. In December fourteen internal centres plus an additional open centre tested students across the country. Additional checks will take place during the CPE marking process, including additional statistical analysis across the exam papers to study the performance of candidates from individual schools. (This last paragraph has nothing, really, to do with the story. It is there to give you BACKGROUND information to the narrative.) The way I always teach this is to turn off the lights and say, in a low voice: "The lion crept in the darkness that overlay the floor of the jungle, a coiled spring of power and grace in the shadows. Suddenly, it tensed, then silently sprang at the object hanging from the tree. A flashbulb exploded, causing the lion to look up and hiss its hatred! (Turn the light on.) The photo safari had been organized in Cambridge three weeks previously by Dr. Hector E. Bananaman, noted South African anthropologist. In taking pictures of lions springing after prey, Dr. Banaman hopes to uncover in human psychology exactly what, in early human history, caused us to learn to think of the lion as the "king of beasts." His theory is that we learned to mimic lions in their instinctively organized hunting patterns, and thus, as organization is the primary source of our claim to being the most developed species on the planet, our attitude toward the lion reflects in us a very basic understanding that the species, in truth, taught us to be human. (Turn the light off.) Little of this mattered to Leo. As soon as the flashbulb's glare died away, he turned back to the joint of meat lying on the ground. Once, twice, thee times he ripped into it, the jaws chewing and salivating as they sampled the fresh beef on offer. Then, in a whirl of fur and with a savage hiss, he disappeared into the gloom, taking the savaged meat with him to feed his hungry mate and cubs. The second paragraph is filled with BACKGROUND information, interspersed in the narrative. Generally speaking, if you see a gap in a part of the text that you have identified as narrative and you can read the text from one paragraph to the next with a minimal break of cohesion, you can expect to find background information filling that hap. I'll pick up next time where I left off here. Once again, this was WHAT TO LOOK FOR. Next time, I'll give you the strategy I teach all my students. > Definitely: Reading, Gapped Text and Use of English, Gapped > Sentences... [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > are completelly unknown to me, and when I know the words they seem too > familiar and I don't know which one to choose... > Definitely: Reading, Gapped Text and Use of English, Gapped > Sentences... [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > are completelly unknown to me, and when I know the words they seem too > familiar and I don't know which one to choose... Thanks a million!! I'm looking forward to seeing the next part of your teaching... > Thanks a million!! > > I'm looking forward to seeing the next part of your teaching... Gapped Text, Part 2 - HOW TO DO IT! So now that we know what to look for to link paragraphs together, we have our strategy for gapped text. Before we get into it, we need to look at some of the basic problems that have to do with this part of the test. Students, according to Cambridge ESOL, tend to get either all or none of the marks available in this section. Consequently, the candidate needs to avoid, at all costs, an all-or-nothing mentality. What exactly does this mean? All-or-nothing-thinking, as the term implies, leads YOU, the test-taker to believing that it is indeed possible to get ALL of the answers right. The two main symptoms of this kind of thinking are: changing your answers once you choose them, and spending too much time on this part of Reading. Think about it! There are four parts to Reading that have to get done in exactly 90 minutes. Pt1, 18 marks, Pt2, 16 marks (2 for each question), Pt3, 14 marks, and Pt4, 14 marks. 14 marks out of 76 means that Part 3 is worth about 18% of the marks available on the Reading Paper. That means that logically, Part 3 is worth 18% of your time, which is about 16 minutes. Because Pt1 (Lexical Close) finishes quickly, Pt2 (Short Texts) looks deceptively simple, and most students learn how to do Pt4 (Long Text) in one pass, many students do not understand that they cannot afford to spend upwards of sixty minutes on Pt3! Consistently, in doing Past Papers, I have seen my weaker students desperately strive to get all they can out of Gapped Text because the vocabulary is supposed to be pitched at a lower level, which gives weaker students a false sense of confidence in their ability to grasp the meaning of the text in a fuller way than what they can do on the other Parts. My logic goes like this: you WILL finish Pt1 faster than you will the other parts of the test, so you CAN take time away from that Part and give it to Part 3 without losing marks. You can also, if you're careful, take time away from Part 2 without losing marks. You should not, not, not take away time from Part 4. All in all, however, if you have done your work, you need a strategy that will get you through Gapped Text in about 30 minutes. Second, a very stupid mistake that students make when studying along for the test is to time themselves immediately from the start. With Gapped Text, technique comes first, and then speed. Allow yourself as much time as necessary the first few times you do this following the right technique, and gradually, you will find yourself picking up speed automatically. Only at the end of your preparation should you actually begin pushing for 30 minutes. Next, fake tests, when it comes to examinations assembled in as complex a way as the Cambridge examinations, are usually worthless. Tests prepared by experts who have participated in the revision process are likewise garbage, however, which many students don't realize. Cambridge 3 and 4 are the only two books of Past Papers that have come out of CUP that reflect what has really been on the test, because they ARE what was really on the test, If you need more materials, you can buy Past Paper Packs at www.cambridgesol.com. Do not trust your preparations to poorly written fake tests. You can give yourself a running start! The CAE also incorporates a gapped text, and while many of the topics on the CAE and CPE are not the same, many of the same kinds of texts appear in both tests. Refine your technique on the CAE gapped texts before you go hunting for big game. What seems to be the most obvious strategy to get through Gapped Text is one which, on examination, ranks among the worst. Students read the text on the left and then read the first answer choice. Then, they ask themselves where it goes. After making their choice, on they go to answer choice 2, and so on. Some books written by people who have no business writing test-prep books actually encourage students to do this. Most native-speaker teachers without significant experience in test prep also advocate this approach in Part 3. If you ever have a teacher who tells you that this is how to do Gapped Text and that he has significant experience helping students pass the test, well, YOUR TEACHER IS A LIAR AND A FOOL, as are, unfortunately, most ELTs. This approach is STUPID, it is RIDICULOUS, and you should NOT DO THIS. Gapped Text takes more out of you than any other part: students universally find this to be the most stressful part of Reading and many feel it is more difficult than Summary (which I feel is more difficult than Gapped Text). I think it is because you have to work without a net, as it were, through seven gaps and fourteen marks, knowing that one answer depends on all the others. This kind of mental exercise tires you out more than when you know the probability that you will get each question right...25% in a four-option multiple choice question, for example. And finally, the biggest problem that faces students who do the test is an inability to take clear notes. From what I understand, no country in the world systematically attempts to teach its students to be good note-takers, but Greeks are notoriously poor at the exercise, and so lose even more parks needlessly in the section of the test. I cannot count the Gapped Texts I've looked at that had not a word circled on them or a penciled remark written in. You can lead a horse to water, as it is said, but you can't make him drink. You have been warned. ------------------------------------------------ The strategy I force my students to use is remarkably effective. It goes like this. STEP 1: READ AND TAKE NOTES! Read the instruction! Read the title! Then, read the left page of the gapped text, the part with the gaps in it. Stop there! As you read the page CAREFULLY, circle clues in the text and take notes in the margins and in the gaps. For instance, if you see that the first word of a new paragraph after a blank is "He," you should circle that word and write "Who is HE?" in the gap above. The notes may seem simple but they work remarkably well in directing your eyes toward the more important information in the text as the clock winds down. When you don't circle, when you don't write, you lose valuable time rereading for clues that you know are there but were too stupid to highlight or otherwise mark the first time you went through the text. You will pay for your stupidity on CPE day. STEP 2: Let's play...BET YOUR PROFICIENCY!!! Having carefully read the text on the left, PICK THE GAP THAT YOU BELIEVE IS EASIET. Perhaps you feel that one is easy because there are a number of clues in the paragraph immediately after it, or there is an particularly easy clue, like a result clause with a pronoun in it. For instance... (Gap) "So he said that we should not do that..." "So..." indicates a reason was stated earlier. Who is "he?" What is "that?" That's a strong series of clues. Example 2: (Gap) "An action more fraught with peril was difficult to imagine! James shivered at the thought." Clearly, what was discussed in the previous paragraph was "an action fraught with peril." Either way, pick the easiest gap and then GO AFTER YOUR ANSWER!!! Start reading the eight paragraphs (A-H). As you read each paragraph, ask yourself if it is what you are looking for. If the answer is NO, move on to the next one. If the answer is YES, finish reading all of them. By using this strategy, you'll read all the answer choices in an active manner, which will guarantee that you will stay focused. You will be tempted to stop and grab at a paragraph that fits into another gap perfectly. DO NOT DO THIS, no matter how tempting it seems! You are looking for YOUR answer to YOUR gap. Do not be distracted by an answer you are absolutely sure is right for another gap. One gap at a time, sweet Jesus! Let's say you find your answer. You're positive. Before you pencil it in, write a "1" next to the blank. Think hard about what you're doing. Would you be willing to bet your Proficiency on that answer? For many students, that's exactly what putting down this first answer means...that's how important those 14 marks in Reading might be. If the answer is "yes" mark it down, cross out the answer choice on the right, and move on to another blank. If the answer is "no," abandon that blank. Find the one that you believed was the next easiest one and go after your answer. Points to keep in mind: If you screw up on that first gap, my experience tells me that you will not, almost unfailingly, be able to get more than two of the seven gaps. If you get sidetracked on the first gap and go hunting after another answer, well, you might as well lie down with your butt invitingly high in the air, waiting for a proper Cambridge...spanking. Remember, you are playing BET YOUR PROFICIENCY. Follow the same strategy for the next three gaps. If one of the paragraphs (A-H) SCREAMS for a gap after you put down your first answer, if you can indeed BET YOUR PROFICIENCY on it, OK, put down "2" next to that gap and answer it. Then go back to choosing your next easiest gap. TAKE YOUR CUES FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, NOT FROM RIGHT TO LEFT!!! STEP 3 - PLAY SEARCH AND DESTROY!!! After your first four gaps are in, or occasionally, after your first 3, you might feel that Bet Your Proficiency will not get you any more marks. It's time to switch games. Search and Destroy involves looking at a gap and eliminating possible answer choices (A-H) for it. If you look at a gap and realize that there is no way (because of clues in the A-H answer choice) that three of the four remaining answer choices could fit that gap, write it in and go on. As always, mark the number in sequence that you did the gaps. Continue until you finish the test. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- JUSTIFY EACH ANSWER. Students often fall into a paranoid relationship with the Item Writer who created the test. Just as people, when they communicate, tend to characterize the nature of a special bond in terms of "being on the same wavelength," students working through an anonymously written test under enormous time pressure occasionally make incredibly stupid mistakes because they mistake something the writer has put in as a simple trap as some grand test of their intuitive ability. From the start of Gapped Text, firmly tell yourself that YOU ARE NOT ON THE SAME WAVELENGTH AS THE WRITER. Look for simple clues such as the ones I've outlined. This is not mind-melding, it's all about pounds and pence. To quote a damned good test-prep writer: "The right answers to standardized tests are always like the girl your mother wants you to bring home, not the one that gets your blood boiling." Look for obvious traps in questions that seem to call for extraordinary mental gymnastics beyond the mental flexibility of ordinary mortals. DO NOT CHANGE YOUR ANSWERS. Once an answer's down, it's down. Occasionally, you will realize that you make a stupid mistake and change an answer. Never change an answer because you "feel" it isn't right. Research has consistently shown that your "feeling" probably isn't worth a tinker's damn. Keep writing down the sequence as you do your practice tests. This will give you the opportunity to see where you went wrong when you review your answers. As you realize how valuable those first few answers are, and that the technique outlined above works EVERY SINGLE TIME, your confidence will soar. Rein it back every once in awhile. 4 out of 7 answers is a fine performance. 57% is nothing to scoff at. What will give you angina is if you score 5 out 7 on one test and 2 out of 7 on another test and go into the exam room on the big day with little more in the way of test strategy than a few prayers to a God who consistently, in my experience, only helps those who help themselves. AVOID ALL OR NOTHING THINKING AND REMEMBER THAT HAY-SOOS WILL ALMOST ALWAYS SIT THE GAPPED TEXT OUT. Do not practice on fake tests. They are not made in the same way and subject to the same criteria that Cambridge uses to make up the real ones. Practice on real Cambridge materials, preferable CPE Past Papers and you won't go wrong. Practice on other materials is worth nothing, and may even hurt your performance in the real test. Go slow and first, and then pick up speed. Forcing yourself to follow the right technique at first is worth every drop of nerve-racking sweat it takes. Plan to do more Gapped Texts than other parts of the test in your test training. There are two reasons for this. Obviously, the technique necessary to do them well is difficult to master, but also, the psychological price of knowing that you did poorly on Gapped Text will hurt you a great deal in the other papers that come after it, namely, Use of English and Listening. Stick with it until you consistently score 5 out of 7. The names of the games are, once again: Bet Your Proficiency (first four gaps) Search and Destroy (last three gaps) Next time...shivers...Use of English, Gapped Sentences! THANKS A LOT!!! Hey, does this newsgroup have an 'upload file' facility like You-know-hoo? credo's hints and tips could be useful to many people; why bury them in the postings? Jan I don't know, but I made my own English file with the tips I've been collecting through these teaching groups... very very useful... As promised, let's move on to the next part mentioned. Use of English, Part 3, is a new concept in language testing. There are only 6 items, so it is just 12 marks out of the 75 available. DO NOT LET THIS PART OVERWHELM YOU. There's a bit of secret history behind this part. As you might now, the revised CPE came out in December 2002. Before that, for years, there was an intense yet quiet debate in Greece (the main consumer of the CPE for generations) about sentence transformations. Cambridge wanted to toss them out: the methodology behind Key Word Transformations was very much linked to lower levels of the Cambridge Main Suite: PET and FCE. You may not know how transformation drills came about in the first place, but the basic methodology is called "The Audio-Visual Method" and it came about in the fifties as a direct result of research on language learning done for the US Department of Defense. Transformation drills, therefore, were the rage way back when, and some teachers still speak of them fondly, but everyone else in the world called them old-hat. The story is a bit more complex than this, of course, but the long and short of it was: Cambridge wanted tranformations out, but the Greeks pleaded for them, and that's why you have 14 marks based on KWTs and 12 based on this all-new exercise, Gapped Sentences. How are Gapped Sentences linked to KWTs? Well, you may have noticed that the CPE is a bit light in conscious vocabulary testing. Sure, there are 18 marks in Reading, Part 1, Lexical Close, but that's a very small part in whole. Teachers can't really convince students to study, study, study vocab based on 18 questions that count for about 4 percent of the student's total mark on all five papers. So Cambridge ESOL wanted to do away with KWTs and have a nice, hard vocabulary section worth a lot of marks right in there that forced students to understand the meaning of words and phrases and use them properly. Once they were vetoed by the Greek ELT community, things got a bit nasty. The new CPE KWTs (once again, Key Word Transformations) are remarkably open in comparison with FCE 2-5 word transformations. This has been done deliberately. With 3 more words to play with, the Item Writers can do a lot more. It's still all about grammar skills, though, and that means that the space once envisioned for vocabulary in Use of English is far more limited. That's why Gapped Sentences are as difficult as they are. Gapped Sentences, though, have been something of a letdown. How hard can you make the items before you hit the logical ceiling of difficulty (a native speaker should, all other things being considered, be able to answer these questions)! There were also technical concerns that screwed everything up. Greece raised an objection to the form and insisted that ALL the items be the same part of speech, at least. Once this was granted, the writers couldn't come up with some REALLY hard stuff, like this: I would like to ADDRESS the question of taxation without representation. Get out you ADDRESS book and look up I.P. Freely, would you? In the 1860's, Abraham Lincoln wrote a speech called the Gettysburg ADDRESS. So, now that all the parts of speech are the same, the test responds well to intelligent strategy. The importance of KEEPING A VOCABULARY notebook cannot be overstressed. There is a learning connection between the hand and the eye: you need to WRITE new words and phrases as you come across them DOWN, prefereably in an intelligent, well-thought-out way, but WRITE THEM DOWN in a list, WRITE THEM DOWN on a grid, WRITE THEM DOWN in a mind-map, JUST WRITE THEM DOWN!!!! Point clear? Vocabulary word demands discipline, but pays off handsomely given time. Strategy 1: WE GO SLOW! The easiest approach, when doing this part of them test, is to read off the three sentences and see if something jumps out at you. GO SLOWLY. Generally speaking, a word may jump out of you for one of the gaps, but not for the others, and out of kneejerk impulse, you'll put it down. CHECK TO SEE IF THAT WORD COMPLETES AN IDIOM in the sentence. Here's an example. Cambridge CPE Past Papers, Test 1, Item 28 Winning the competition came as a .......... surprise to Marianne. Robin is determinted to keep on collecting football stickers until he has a .......... set. Sir Ralph arrived at the fancy-dress party in full army uniform, .......... with badges and medals. Here, on this one, you might logically write "a full set." Is it an idiom? No, it's just a collocation, something you've seen somewhere else before. Before you write "full" in the box provided on the answer sheet, physically write in your answer in all three boxes. Winning the competition came as a FULL surprise to Marianne. Robin is determinted to keep on collecting football stickers until he has a FULL set. Sir Ralph arrived at the fancy-dress party in full army uniform, FULL with badges and medals. If the first and the third sentences don't jump out of you as utter balderdash, you haven't been working on pumping up your vocabulary. "Full surprise"? Ridiculous. You might not have seen that if you didn't WRITE DOWN THE ANSWER IN ALL THREE SPACES. Strategy 2: HARNESS YOUR UNCONSCIOUS Let's go back to this problem. Winning the competition came as a .......... surprise to Marianne. Robin is determinted to keep on collecting football stickers until he has a .......... set. Sir Ralph arrived at the fancy-dress party in full army uniform, .......... with badges and medals. What part of speech is the missing part? It's an adjective: you might not be able to tell from the third part, but in 1 and 2, it's just obviously an adjective and since it has to be the same in all three sentences, it's an adjective. Subvocalize it like this. Winning the competition came as a (something) surprise to Marianne. Robin is determinted to keep on collecting football stickers until he has a (something) set. Sir Ralph arrived at the fancy-dress party in full army uniform, (something) with badges and medals. a (something) surprise a (something) set (something) with Decode the meaning of the third sentence, which is obviously your biggest problem. full army uniform, (something) with badges and medals. Say it to yourself a few times: full army uniform, (something) with badges and medals. full army uniform, (something) with badges and medals. full army uniform, (something) with badges and medals. Anything yet? If this doesn't work, go on to another item. Your unconscious works like this: it will just keep on churning away at the problem and an answer will pop up. Don't push it. Go on to KWTs. If you completely forget this item, well, you still have to double-check your answer sheet at the end of the Paper, so you won't completely miss it. But just keep on repeating it as you get through different items. full army uniform, (something) with badges and medals. full army uniform, (something) with badges and medals. full army uniform, (something) with badges and medals. There is a good change, that somewhere during the test, it will come out. full army uniform, COMPLETE with badges and medals. a COMPLETE set a COMPLETE surprise Strategy 3: FOCUS ON IDIOMS, DREAD ADJECTIVE+NOUN COLLOCATIONS Nine times out of ten, the sentence of the three in the problem that will give you the answer beyond the shadow of a doubt will be an idiom. When you discover an idiom lurking among the problems, cherish it as your best friend. Item 29 They heard the news of their wrecked holiday plans with .......... hearts. For anyone convicted of such a crime, there is a .......... penalty. Simon is convinced he will be able to carry that .......... rucksack all the way. The missing item is obviously an adjective, yet again. The last item depends on the MEANING of the whole sentence (another point, don't wimp out and read half the sentence!). Idiom alert! This is what your mind should be saying to you: wrecked holiday plans... (something) hearts Happy hearts? Sad hearts? Bingo. A sad rucksack? Uh-uh. A (something) rucksack ALL THE WAY. Why are those last three words there? We also have "will be able to carry." Such a crime? Why? A major crime. Important crime. Big crime. Penalty...big penalty. Major penalty. Major rucksack? NO. Major heart? NO. If you've done your vocabulary work, the answer will come at you, and the starting point of that answer will be the sentence with the idiom. HEAVY hearts a HEAVY rucksack a HEAVY penalty POINTS TO REMEMBER: BUILD UP YOU VOCABULARY If you haven't spent enough time building up your vocabulary, well, you can take consolation in the fact that the Cambridge CPE exam people understand that they do not promote good vocabulary learning skills among their candidates. They do not clearly understand, however, that in a world with limited vocabulary input in the target language, such as that of candidates studying for the test in Brazil, this policy effectively discriminates against candidates who are economically unable to go to Britain to study. They may not give a good goddamn, but their discriminatory policy and narrow-minded appraoch should not deter you from devoting a lot more effort to the difficult work of building your vocabulary than you might think you need based on your amateur analysis of what the test tests. It's boring, but keeping that notebook will pay great dividends. BE ON ALERT FOR STUPID STRATEGIES Peter May, author of a somewhat popular book called _Towards Proficiency_, writes and teaches in England. As such a person, he has a number of "innovative" strategies for helping students pass this test, and almost all of them are geared toward students studying in Britain, immersed in the language. Peter May is also one of the most egotistical fools writing junk preparation materials for Cambridge exams. I have it on good authoirity that he only reached his present lofty position as an Oxford University Press writer because he is a champion kiss-up when he needs to be. May knows how the game is played and he writes to make as much money out of students and gullible teachers as possible. I've met the man and I can attest to those insurmountable facts. To get back to the point, May actually recommends writing down all the words that spring to mind for each gap in the gapped sentences and then seeing if any match. This is a stupid strategy, because your mind, deprived of a "full English" immersion environment, will most likely be unable to think of many alternatives. Moreover, you will not improve with practice. Moreover, I doubt that this strategy words with foreign language learners in Britain, either, despite their more advanced passive vocabulary resources. However, it's in the book, because materials writers have to write SOMETHING down in test-prep books, and depending on how much of an a.shole the writer is Unless you are personally dealing with someone who has actually prepared students for this test, TRUST NOTHING. Look at the dates that your books are published, as well. Good materials only come out, as a rule, years after the examination in question is revised. A book is more profitable if it is rushed to market just as soon as a new version of a test comes out, but it is also full of what the writer THINKS will be on the test, and not what s/he has actually experienced in preparing students for it. That's why when I saw that you were keeping a tip file, Rafe, I started worrying. The new CPE came out in December 2002. Pretty much anything that's out there right now is half-witted materials written by people who don't understand the test. The other half is written for the British market. No one with real brains who actually prepares students abroad is currently writing internationally available materials for CPE. The main figures are: Nick Kennedy-Macmillan (works in England), Kathy Gude-Oxford (works in England), Leo Jones-Cambridge (works in England). William S. Fowler, the old expert in this test (who worked in Spain and was the first person to talk about the problem I am outlining here), died before the actual revision came out. Pretty much all that you're going to find out there is junk, written by people jumping on the revision and hoping to make money. Some books have good parts, but you have practically no chance of finding your way through the minefield. GET A PRIVATE TEACHER, WITH REAL EXPERIENCE in preparing kids for CPE in Brazil. Everything else is a dangerous strategy, especially dealing with people in Usenet groups who may or may not know what they're talking about and who hide their identity behind stupid Internet aliases!!! thank you very much... you've been very helpful, if you want to write more I'd appreciate... Like I said...what do you need to know about? I've spent the last five years exclusively preparing students in something of your situations for the CPE and other examinations. > thank you very much... you've been very helpful, if you want to write > more I'd appreciate... other part that I find rather difficult that one which we have to rewrite a sentence using the word given, and we're supposed to write among 3 and 8 words... Concerning other examinations, I hold the FCE and I'll probably apply to CPE next year. I was wondering if it would be worth applying to the Michigan Proficiency... Somebody told me that it's easier than Cambrigde Proficiency... Do you agree with that? Thanks again... > other part that I find rather difficult that one which we have to > rewrite a sentence using the word given, and we're supposed to write > among 3 and 8 words... Key Word Transformations...I'll get on those soon, but it's a bad time right now. > Concerning other examinations, I hold the FCE and I'll probably apply > to CPE next year. I was wondering if it would be worth applying to the > Michigan Proficiency... Somebody told me that it's easier than > Cambrigde Proficiency... Do you agree with that? > > Thanks again... Yes and no...and I'll get on that in a bit, too. ok, thanks. I'm looking forward to it. > ok, thanks. I'm looking forward to it. All right, Raf, here we go. Key Word Transformations (those seven question on the U of E portion of the test that you're worried about here, which I will hereafter refer to as KWTs) are one of the odder aspects of the CPE. It's important to give you and the group some background on this. My most accurate snitch once told that Cambridge, in the revision of the CPE, tentatively decided to get rid of KWTs. After all, sentence transformations are part of an older method of language teaching involving DRILLS. Now, many language teachers still feel that the ability to conduct effective oral drills in class as a means of introducing material is one of the distinguishing features of a professional language teacher, but the majority of us, influenced to a great degree by something called "the communicative approach," feel that such drills are artificial in the extreme and that we would be better off without them. What is this "communicative approach"? By and large, it is an idea that is the creation of a group of linguists headed by a fellow named Henry Widdowson who, at the moment, is still one of the most respected professionals in the field. The approach holds that in teaching language, especially to adults, we should do our best to devise activities that force the student to actually communication their needs and wants or, in its "light" version, place our students in situations that force them to assume a character and role-play their way out of a situation. The most strident critic of this approach is Michael Swan, who, back when the approach first emerged, argued in a pair of articles that while the communicative approach did have its merits, it didn't actually force students to learn language items. There is a certain merit, according to Swan, to forcing a student to communicate, but when students fail to communicate in these situations, it may not be indicative of a certain lack of "communicative competence" (another fantastically complex and nebulous Widdowson & Co. academic concept), but rather, may be due to not having enough vocabulary at one's command to deal with the communicative problem at hand. Swan's critique, in my view, has never been adequately met. Widdowson, in his response to Swan's articles, basically lambasted him for being an old warhorse, and never really got down to commenting on Swan's actual points. It is worth mentioning that Michael Swan, at the time, was generally recognized to be the world's foremost language teacher, and Widdowson as the world's foremost Second Language Acquisition linguist. Widdowson's real-world experience in the trenches of language teaching was therefore necessarily limited, but he did know his academic politics and how to lambast someone in an academically-oriented article. To trainee teachers, the communicative approach sounds like the greatest thing since sliced bread, but for those of us who have smelled the smoke and seen the elephant for some time, well, Swan's argument makes a great deal of sense. What does this ancient history (1980s vintage) have to do with KWTs? Well, in an interesting twist, Swan's long-term writing partner, an American turned UK language teacher, Catherine Walker, was the commissioned expert who was responsible for revising the Use of English paper of the CPE in 2002. ----------------------------------- We have KWTs on the First Certificate in English (FCE) and the CPE. The physical difference is simple. On the FCE, you are allowed 2-5 words to fill in the gap, while on the CPE you have to use 3-8 words. FCE transformations, for experienced teachers, are a matter of introducing students to the most commonly used structures of transformation. There is an excellent section in a book called _Cambridge First Certificate Handbook_, by Helen Naylor and Stuart Hagger, published by Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-62918-7 which covered the most common areas. At FCE level, the book works superbly. It is still worth working through the KWT section in your CPE preparation. The problem is those three extra words in the CPE version of KWTs. As far as my research can tell, NO ONE has managed to grasp that the CPE transformations are VASTLY more open than FCE KWTs. That is to say, while in the FCE, only two or so versions of answers would be accepted to fill the 2-5 word gap, in the CPE, a KWT might have six or so possible answers. This is a real problem for candidates preparing for the CPE. One might spend a lot of time working through possible variations in CPE practice books, get to the test, and only then realize that you hadn't seen the same kinds of transformations. Once upon a time and long ago, I had to do a seminar based on W.S. Fowler's notes on the revised CPE. Do NOT use his skills books! Unfortunately, halfway through his revision of the materials, Fowler keeled over while playing tennis. This explains why I, of course, did the seminar! Fowler was of the opinion that in general, CPE KWTs would contain two standard elements, a structural point (something you'd find in a thick grammar practice book), and a lexical point (an idiom, a collocation, a common word combination). I have not found this to be true. Some KWTs have only structural points, others have only lexical points. There might be as many as three points tested, as few as one. There are, however, two marks available for each KWT, both in FCE and CPE. The way that the marks distribution is decided is by drawing a line between the words in the answer somewhere in the middle of the whole answer. The two marks are not interdependent. I have repeated asked if there is some kind of standard procedure in drawing this line, and have received equivocal answers. One prominent Cambridge ESOL employee/seminar leader (test guru in the pay of the organization) has insisted that the line reflects "discrete testing points." This is an example of what she meant, which incidentally is an actual item from the December 2002 (0300) examination (the regular internation version). 38 I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt the meeting. intention I'm sorry, I .................................................. the meeting. Cambridge markers are directed to accept: did not have any intention / of interrupting didn't have any intention / of interrupting had no intention / of interrupting Clearly, the split lies between two points here. You need to know the structural point of no=not any, as in "have no intention" or "didn't have any intention" and you also need to know that this point is followed by "of" and an -ing form. Two discrete testing points, even though one might argue that there are three points: that verbs following "of" usually take -ing forms. But on the whole, you see that there is some kind of logic behind the split. Incidentally, you could write: ...I had no intention / I hate English... and still get one mark. The marks, once again, are not interdependent. However, this item appears in the December 2002 (0301) version (the test that is given out in Greece. 38 The guide pointed out to us the magnificent carvings above the windows. drew The guide ....................................................... the magnificent carving above the windows. Cambridge markers are directed to accept: drew our / attention to drew to / our attention Where exactly are the "discrete testing points" here? This KWT clearly has only ONE testing point, whether or not the candidate knows the idiom "draw attention to." The split is based on nothing more than the desire of Cambridge ESOL people to have two marks in this question. In short, the seminar leader who dished out the "discrete testing point" bullshit to the hundred or so teachers attending her seminar needs to be beaten to a bloody pulp for misdirecting teachers in the hope of advancing her career by appearing to have all the answers. This is a very common fault among people who are paid by Cambridge ESOL to promote these tests. This is not, not, not a cheap shot at my colleague Einde O'Callaghan, the number one poster in this group, who moonlights as a Cambridge ESOL employee and is paid to _administer_ the test in Germany. Cambridge ESOL hires other people to do seminars all the over the place and make money by lying to people, hoping to indirectly promote language teaching books they have authored. Einde is not, I repeat, NOT!!! one of those cheap hucksters. ------------------------------------------- In light of the above points, this is what you need to know to do well on this test. Trust NO one's questions, other than Cambridge ESOL, when preparing for these tests. The fake questions written by "test experts" do NOT appropriately reflect the level and nature of the real CPE. There are several culprits in this regard who should be named. Peter May, Kathy Gude, but most especially, MARK HARRISON. Longman's CPE U of E book, written by Fiona-Scott Barnett, isn't half-bad, but it still isn't right. I've already talked about Fowler. You can generally trust books by Cambridge University Press for accurate practice materials, but be careful. Base your final preparation on real Cambridge ESOL Past Papers...they're boring, but they're accurate. Analyze those questions very, very carefully. Remember that the two marks for KWTs are not interdependent. Write something down! Take a guess if you have to. You could get a mark out of sheer, blind luck. Moreover, you have a good deal of information locked up in your mind as passive vocabulary. Your guess may just be right because you have unconsciously tapped this source. Don't laugh! I've seen it happen a hundred times. Sometimes, you can indeed use the Force, Luke. Be prepared for KWTs of different complexity sitting right next to each other. Just because you needed eight words to complete a fantasically difficult KWT does not mean that the next one will be just as difficult. Students often make the mistake of thinking: no, it CAN'T be that simple. Sometimes, it is. Sometimes Cambridge just needs two easy marks in U of E and hands you something you could have answered before you even heard of the Cambridge Proficiency. Once again, use _Cambridge First Certificate Handbook_ in your CPE preparation. The KWT section has never been equalled in any other book of my experience. The kinds of things you will face in the CPE will be more difficult, the questions will most likely have many possible answers, but some general familiarization with the general kinds of transformations Cambridge asks you for at FCE level will still help you get through the CPE questions and not miss any easy marks. After you get done doing the KWTs, you should go over them again. I tell my students that they can look at three things (not because there are only three things, but it's an easily remembered number). It helps if they write down the answers to these three questions right after each of the practice items (and before they check their answers!) Have I remembered all the prepositions I need? (Yes or no) Have I spelled everything properly? (A surprising number of marks are lost because of this.) If I were creating this test, where would I put the split? Why? The last question should be answered slowly and justified carefully. My last bit of advice is to pay close, close attention to building your lexical vocabulary of idioms, phrases and collocations. My main problem with the new CPE is that it does not really, openly, encourage students to study their vocabulary. You can point to certain sections (Reading, Pt1 and U of E Pt3,4) and tell students that they need to write, Write, WRITE these expressions down, but it is the rare student who takes these warnings to heart before it is too late in the game. Vocabulary is "the silent skill" of the Cambridge Proficiency, and that's too bad. That's all I have on this topic. Next up on the agenda, the Michigan English Language Institute's Examination for the Certificate of Proficiency in English, more commonly known here in the ancient land of the Hellenes as the Michigan Proficiency. ...or rather, the "Mee-tsee-gahn Praw-fee-seh-see." <snip> > This is not, not, not a cheap shot at my colleague Einde O'Callaghan, > the number one poster in this group, who moonlights as a Cambridge ESOL > employee and is paid to _administer_ the test in Germany. Thanks for your comments. I must point out that I only do the oral exams. > Cambridge > ESOL hires other people to do seminars all the over the place and make > money by lying to people, hoping to indirectly promote language > teaching books they have authored. Einde is not, I repeat, NOT!!! one > of those cheap hucksters. I wouldn't even dream of writing a language teaching book. The longer I do this job the less competent I feel in some ways - at least in the sense that I feel less certain that I know ALL the answers at the various levels of competence. In advanced classes I often feel that I fly by the seat of my pants as I'm constantly faced by questions that I didn't anticipate. It makes the job more exciting, of course. My only advantage is that I'm a native speaker with some experience, knowledge and understanding of the way the language works.But I haven't got the conceit to think that I would be able to write a book that would be any help to other teachers. I'm more a practitioner than a theoretician as far as language teaching is concerned. As regard the Cambridge peoploe i have to deal with - my supervisor has what I regard as a healthy "distrust" of the "wisdom" of Cambridge, which enables us to take a much more relaxed attitude to the exam. Although I must say that the oral part of the exam isn't the greatest problem for Germans. I personally think that they have most problems with parts of Paper 3 - which brings us back to the topic of this thread. Regards, Einde O'Callaghan I have a correction to post on this thread: Catherine Walker's name is really Catherine WALTER. And now, for my last humongous post! The Michigan Examination for the Certificate of Proficiency in English (ECPE) is put out by the University of Michigan English Language Institute (UM-ELI), the oldest and most respectable organization of its kind in the States. You may be interested to know that the original purpose of the UM-ELI was to research ways to quickly teach adult students spoken English, á la the G.I method, or later, the Audio-Visual Method. Its primary funding came from the United States Department of Defense. This language teaching method was most commonly associated with complicated language labs and the strenuous oral drills I talked about when I discussed Cambridge CPE Key Word Transformations. Let's look at the actual structure of the Michigan Proficiency: Writing: 1 composition, 30 minutes. Listening: 20 short conversations, 15 Questions and Responses, 5, 5, 5 3 radio programs (monologues or dialogues), everything heard once, about 35-40 minutes. GCVR 40 grammar questions, 1 multiple-choice cloze passage with 20 questions, 40 vocabulary questions and 4 reading passage with 5 multiple choice questions each. 75 minutes. Speaking: 1-1 interview. Unlike Cambridge, the ECPE is more or less only recognized in the country in which it is administered. If you want to go and study in the United States, I am sure that you will be told that many American colleges and universities accept converted ECPE-Michigan English Language Aptitude Battery (MELAB) results as proof of language proficiency, but in the real world we live in, Raf, you're still going to have to take the TOEFL or IELTS. In other countries, if you want to work, you will either need to take a test like the TOEIC, one of the tests in the Cambridge Main Suite, or some home-grown variety of language test. From what I understand, you can get a job with the ECPE in Brazil or Greece, but practically nowhere else. How good are you at memorizing single-word vocabulary? If you aren't the type that can sit down and work through vocabulary exercises all day long, the ECPE is not for you. On the other hand, if you are, you've already mastered the key element of doing well on that test. How good are you at tricky multiple-choice reading questions, for the four readings? The difficulty of these questions lie somewhere between the CPE's Part 2 and Part 4 questions (in, of course, my opinion). They are usually tricky and often poorly-written with an eye toward statistical normalization and not good language teaching practice. Can you deal with hearing the Listening script only once? Adult students occasionally find this difficult, but traditional language school students who have done a lot of tape-work in class usually find ECPE listening simple, for a simple reason. You may have noticed that your worst teachers absolutely LOVE doing listening work. That's because all they have to do, really, is punch "Play" on the machine and zone out, and no one can accuse them of being the waste of skin they are. So, paradoxically, if you had a lot of bad teachers for many boring hours of language school, you'll probably do just fine on Listening but fail everything else. That's the funny thing about the ECPE. It isn't like Cambridge, with its impossibly arcane system of figuring out the TRUE distribution of marks, a system so arcane that the actual mathematical details haven't been published in a generation. Teachers today are simply told "your students need approximately 60% of the marks available." The UM-ELI, demands that you pass every section of the test. You are supposed to need to get 65% of the questions right in order to pass, but on a closed test battery like this one, where no past papers are ever revealed until years after the administration of the test, and no computerized breakdown of scoring is accessible, well, you just have to take the ELI's word for it. This year, for the first time, I have it from reputable sources that students failed the Writing test, the first time that this has happened in my experience. Granted, I'd seen this in statistics I received by means of some of my more reliable snitches, but I'd never actually MET students who failed the Writing test. I have had adult, non-traditional students fail Listening, but pretty much everyone feels it's a joke. Grammar-Cloze-Vocabulary-Reading (GCVR) is the section to fear in this test, with the big V, Vocabulary, being the Terminator of Language Tests. I have it on good authority that the Speaking test is a sham, and I have sent students into that test whose spoken English was utterly barbarous, so I can confidently say that there is a very good chance that the rumor about Speaking that I once heard is true, that the ELI doesn't trust the local speaking examiners to do the job they're paid to do and changes the mark for speaking if the student passes all the other sections. Perversely, Cambridge does not have this problem, and also pays their examiners far, far less. Here in Greece, a CPE examiner gets 16.45 and hour and a Hellenic-American Union (HAU) Michigan examiner gets 30.00 an hour. Cambridge also adamantly insists on their examiners having actual language teaching qualifications. According to what I've told you here, the test looks, on the surface of it, easier than the Cambridge CPE. There are a number of "buts," however. As previously mentioned, we have seen no real past papers since the nineties. The format of the test has changed a number of times since then, and there is no guarantee that the past papers accurately reflect the level and difficulty of the real ECPE. When you prepare for the ECPE, you will not have access to materials that will accurately predict how well you will do on the actual test or give you a reliable picture of what the real test is like. In Greece, candidates have the Preliminary test, which is a shorter version of GCVR that students must pass before they're allowed to go on and take the real test. The past papers for these ARE published. A careful examination of the tests shows that the focus of the questions has changed significantly. What's going on in the ECPE Final Test? There's no knowing. In the past three years, the director of the ELI has changed, the director of the ECPE program has changed, and the ELI has published little or nothing that honestly deals with the changes that these individuals have instituted. Once again, a careful examination of the Preliminaries show that there has been a significant change in focus, but the differences are so technical that if I started going on about them here, this post would become worthless for anyone other than a language test-prep specialist. Simple put however, the Vocabulary section on the Preliminaries has become easier, and the Grammar section has become trickier. The real upshot of this, what should really concern you, is that there is not a single first-rate book out there anymore than can be used to successfully prepare students. The best stuff was Diane Flanel Piniaris's series, published by New Editions, but it's moving toward obsolescence very quickly. New Editions used to send me around to do seminars on these books, so I have some idea what I'm talking about. An excellent example to show you what I mean is how Piniaris's books treat the Listening section. Teachers, writers, and publishers were not told until just before the 2003 ECPE that the last listening sections could be dialogues, and not just the monologues that they had been since the 1950s. The fact was only mentioned in passing in one small section of the HAU's newsletter, in any case, and to the best of my knowledge, I was the only language teacher in Greece that picked up on it. When the test came out, 2 of the 3 passages were dialogues, not monologues. Most of the candidates who walked into the test centers that day were absolutely stunned. I remember the faces on my sixteen-year-old candidates, who walked out of the room with a curious, shell-shocked expression on their faces. It is now 2005, and I have yet to see an ECPE prep book that incorporates the monologue-dialogue change. Now, you could live with these changes and the fact that the ECPE is, in general, a tricky test, but on the whole, my experience with the UMI-ELI is that they are a shifty, secretive bunch with a whole lot of dirty underwear that they don't want to wash in public. While this statement may seem harsh, I have had a LOT of experience with the ELI, and can probably confidently boast that I am the number one thorn in their side in Greece (identifying me to anyone from there reading this board, but what the hey). The ELI cannot simply dismiss me, because I once turned down a full PhD fellowship to do my doctorate in the University of Michigan's English Language and Literature program. You don't offer to pay someone upwards of 100,000 dollars to study at your university and later call him a crank. The ELI lies, tells half-truths, publishes misleading statements, and basically needs its a.s kicked from here to eternity before they do anything else about test corruption and cheating other than cover it up and insincerely hope it will go away. They nurture cronies and long relationships with shady binational centers run by unscrupulous people who would sell their own mothers for a worn dime. They threaten legal action whenever possible. And never, never, never will the ELI admit that it is wrong, barring proof on the order of taped phone conversations and surreptitiously-taped seminars that show that supposedly secure test data is being put up on a projector for hundred of test-preppers to view and comment on (all to further a former Michigan MA graduate's and longtime HAU employee's international publishing business). "Duck and cover, lie and prevaricate, deny, deny, deny!" seems to be the ELI's motto. If you try to motivate yourself to work hard to prepare for the Michigan Proficiency, you simply won't be able to do it as well as you would if you prepared solely for Cambridge. That very important consideration is often overlooked by amateurs in this business or students trying to prepare on their own. It isn't really how difficult one language test is in comparison to another supposedly pitched at the same level, but HOW WELL you can prepare your students or yourself that really matters in the long run. The ECPE is not at all a good standardized language proficiency test precisely because of this fact. The preparation work you will do will be incredibly boring, and you'll never really know how near the level you are during the course of your work, which will load you up with stress and have a terrible effect on your motivation to put in the hours of study necessary (you think) to guarantee that you pass. Of course, since we both have it on good authority that the ECPE is indeed easier than the CPE, you from the grapevine and me from at least a hundred testimonials by former candidates of both exams, take BOTH tests, the Michigan ECPE and the Cambridge CPE. It costs a good deal of money, but I think it's worth it if you can spare the dough and the time to prep. There are other reasons as well to take both exams, but they are secondary in importance to the issue of having two chances in one year. Make sure you pay particular attention to your ECPE vocabulary learning work, as difficult as you will find it. Make sure you know how to write a quick "Old Generation" TOEFL essay (lots of self-study materials out there), because the ECPE's essay is almost the same thing (in fact the TOEFL's Test of Written English (TWE), as well as the entire TOEFL test, was originally developed from the UMI-ELI's guidelines for tests that were the precursors of the MELAB and by extension the ECPE). If you're weak at listening, do American English transcript work, which means listening, and then checking your answers by listening again and reading the printed text at the same time. Buy the outdated Oxford University Press prep book, the teacher's handbook, and the cassette (80 euros right there)...it's better than nothing. Work on your grammar, but be more careful about colloquial expressions and real-world grammar (how people actually speak and write, as gleamed from extensive reading and listening) rather than what's in intermediate/advanced grammar books. In addition to the OUP book (_The University of Michigan Examination for the Certificate of Proficiency in English: Official Past Papers_, ISBN 0-19-453362-X (for self-study work, you will also have to get the Answer Book (0-19-453361-1) and the cassette (0-19-453363-8))). I would still use Piniaris's revised Final book and cassettes to prepare. ISBNs are: student's book: 960-403-216-X, teacher's book (there's no answer key, tapescripts, and sample compositions in the student's book) 960-403-216-X, cassettes (pakage of 4)960-403-218-6. The whole package will run you at least the equivalent of 120 euros, plus around 80 euros for the OUP package, which means, in Brazilian money according to today's exchange rate, we're talking about 589.731 Brazilian Reais. Very, very useful... A doubt concerning CPE, how does Cambridge make up our score? It's not clear to me how they evaluate our knowledge, I don't know exactly when I get one or more than mark. I think you should wright a book... It'd sell a lot... "... I get one or more than one mark..." > Very, very useful... > > A doubt concerning CPE, how does Cambridge make up our score? It's not > clear to me how they evaluate our knowledge, I don't know exactly when > I get one or more than mark. I understand the final grades are worked out after a statistical manipulation of the marks you are given by the examiners. Papers 1 and 4 (where there is only one correct answer) are marked by compouterised readers. Paper 2 is graded according to a scheme given to the examiners by Cambridge - they have grading copnferences to make sure that examiners are using the same criteria and a selection of the papers marked by each examiner are graded by chief examiners to make certain that the standards are comparable. This statistical manipulation is quite complex as the purpose is to make certain that the average grades for each exam are comparable for each exam. On paper 3 some questions are computerised and some have to be graded by examiners, e.g. the questions where you have to write something instead of blacking out a little box (called a lozenge, by the way). After the marks have been given they are subject to a statistical manipulation to make sure that the average standard for each grade is comparable from year to year. The results you get are based on this grade. I hope that answers your question. Regards, Einde O'Callaghan It just confirmed my thoughts that it's really difficult to figure out what grade I would get in a mock exam. Don't you know a simpler way to grade a mock? It doesn't need to be 100% accurate, if it's close to the real one it's enough to me... Thanks. The sad fact is, Einde gave you an exactly right answer. I have read that answer just TWICE in the last five years of preparing students for Cambridge ESOL examinations, and I have asked dozens of people in that time. Cambridge doesn't much like publishing that information: in point of fact, the last time they did it in full was in the 1987 General Handbook, according to my most exhaustive research, and even then they skimped on the real details of Peason correlation indices and norming procedures to standardize speaking and writing scores between individual markers. The test has been fully revised TWICE since 1987, of course, but Einde confirmed what I had always suspected, that the underlying system has changed very little these past eighteen years. Generally speaking, Cambridge ESOL guidelines state that you need to get approximately sixty percent of the marks in all of the test. Now, you can't really assess how well you would do in Speaking or Writing: you need someone trained in the Cambridge system to do that with a high degree of accuracy (the way that Speaking is formally marked is supposed to be completely confidential, by the way). However, if you have a copy of the Cambridge Specifications for the CPE (you can download it at www.cambridgeesol.co.uk) or a self-study book of Cambridge Past Papers, the way the objective marks are given out for Reading, Use of English, and Listening is clearly laid out and explained in detail. Granted, you will not be able to make qualitative decisions on Part 5 of Use of English (Comprehension and Summary), but as you put it, you can get an idea if you are, for instance, completely unready to take the test. I usually tell students like you that they should be getting _at least_ 60% of the marks consistently before they register to sit for the test, but I'm well-known to be a daredevil: other teachers will not register a student for the test if they aren't getting seventy percent of the objective marks in real past papers two months before the actual CPE administration. That's my view, at least. Einde may have something better: that last bit of information he laid out came as an utter (but happy) surprise. ANY "CLOSE ENOUGH" APPROACH COULD MEAN THAT YOU'RE THROWING YOUR TIME AND MONEY AWAY. If I were you, I would definitely find a reasonably-qualified private teacher to help me out here. > It just confirmed my thoughts that it's really difficult to figure out > what grade I would get in a mock exam. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Thanks. <snip> > Generally speaking, Cambridge ESOL guidelines state that you need to > get approximately sixty percent of the marks in all of the test. Now, > you can't really assess how well you would do in Speaking or Writing: > you need someone trained in the Cambridge system to do that with a high > degree of accuracy (the way that Speaking is formally marked is > supposed to be completely confidential, by the way). I don't think I'm revesaling anything confidential about the oral exam when I say that the description of what is necessary given in the "Assessment" section of the document at <http://www.cambridgeesol.org/support/dloads/cpe/cpe_hb_samp_p5_faq.pdf> is an accurate description of the minimum requirements. You have to have effective contorol of your English under all the 6 criteria listed, grammar, vocabulary, discourse management (how you construct your utterances), pronunciation, interaction and global achievement (solution of the tasks set). The level of the tasks can be seen from the transcripts. Regards, Einde O'Calaghan |
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