Good luck with your exams!!!

Good luck to all my students taking exams over this weekend. I thought I'd post some tips to all those taking their FCE interview in the coming weeks.

PART ONE

1 Be friendly, be polite. This is a chance to show the
examiners how well you can speak English, not a fight to
the death.

2 Learn some words that may come up, e.g. the name of
the subject you are studying or the job you want to do
in the future.

3 DO NOT learn a little speech by heart. It sounds
unnatural and you'll get even more nervous than you
need to be trying to remember it.

4 Keep eye contact with the examiner. That means looking
him or her in the eye rather than staring at your shoes
or some point on the wall behind them.

5 Remember there are no wrong answers here, only well-
expressed and badly expressed ones.

6 DO NOT give short, monosyllabic answers, nor tell them
the story of your life.

PART TWO

1 Remember that the question you'll be asked about the
photos will have three parts, answer all of them.

2 If you don't understand the question ask the examiner to
repeat it. You'll not lose marks for this. However, you will
lose marks for answering the wrong question.

3 DO NOT stop speaking till the examiner tells you your
time is up.

4 Pay attention to what the other person says as you will
be asked a similar question to theirs when they finish.

PART THREE

1 Make sure you understand the question before you start
speaking. If necessary, ask the examiner to repeat it.

2 Move your chair so that you are facing the other person.
Remember what we said about eye-contact.

3 Start with a question, not a monologue.

4 Listen to what the other person says, comment on it, ask
them questions.

5 Disagree with the other person whatever they say. It's
always easier to have something to say if we disagree.

6 Give the other person chance to speak. You'll lose
marks if you monopolise the conversation.

7 DO NOT stop speaking until the examiner tells you that
your time is up.

PART FOUR

1 Remember the questions asked in this part are always
connected with the topic in part three.

2 Give full answers, not just short, monosyllabic ones

3 Comment on what the other person says, use their
name.

4 There are no wrong answers, only badly-expressed
ones.

End of term

This weekend most of my students are taking their exams so it means that the school year has effectively finished. I'll be doing lessons until the end of the month but the with fewer hours. Anyway, today was the last regular lesson with my FCE class and as you can see they were in high spirits.

Using video to improve student's interview performance

Here is Dimitris's and Bill's FCE interview. As you can see, neither of them particularly enjoyed the experience but it is a great learning activity. I'll let them know how they did in more detail next lesson. However, I wanted the rest of the class to comment on their performance on their blog using the ideas and suggestions from the handout below.

PART ONE

1 Be friendly, be polite. This is a chance to show the examiners how well you can speak English, not a fight to the death.

2 Learn some words that may come up, e.g. the name of the subject you are studying or the job you want to do in the future.

3 DO NOT learn a little speech by heart. It sounds unnatural and you'll get even more nervous than you need to be trying to remember it.

4 Keep eye contact with the examiner. That means looking him or her in the eye rather than staring at your shoes or some point on the wall behind them.

5 Remember there are no wrong answers here, only well- expressed and badly expressed ones.

6 DO NOT give short, monosyllabic answers, nor tell them the story of your life.

PART TWO

1 Remember that the question you'll be asked about the photos will have three parts, answer all of them.

2 If you don't understand the question ask the examiner to repeat it. You'll not lose marks for this. However, you will lose marks for answering the wrong question.

3 DO NOT stop speaking till the examiner tells you your time is up.

4 Pay attention to what the other person says as you will be asked a similar question to theirs when they finish.

PART THREE

1 Make sure you understand the question before you start speaking. If necessary, ask the examiner to repeat it.

2 Move your chair so that you are facing the other person. Remember what we said about eye-contact.

3 Start with a question, not a monologue.

4 Listen to what the other person says, comment on it, ask them questions.

5 Disagree with the other person whatever they say. It's always easier to have something to say if we disagree.

6 Give the other person chance to speak. You'll lose marks if you monopolise the conversation.

7 DO NOT stop speaking until the examiner tells you that your time is up.

PART FOUR

1 Remember the questions asked in this part are always connected with the topic in part three.

2 Give full answers, not just short, monosyllabic ones

3 Comment on what the other person says, use their name.

4 There are no wrong answers, only badly-expressed ones.

Here are the questions from the interview. I asked the students to pay particular attention to those in Part 2 and 3.

FCE interview tips

One of the things I do to help prepare students for the First Certificate interview (paper 5) is to record one with them. So, over the next month or so all the students will be videoed and I'll burn the interviews onto CDs which they can take with them and see at home (we have only one PC available so watching in the lesson is not really an option). The benefits of doing this include:

1 A chance to spot an persistent errors in grammar, pronunciation etc.

2 They make sure that non - linguistic elements, such as body language, eye contact etc are appropriate.

3 The opportunity to see where they didn't understand something and how they dealt with it.

Mistakes students make in the interview

From my experience as an examiner I've noticed that poorly prepared students often make the same kind of mistakes in the interview. These include failing to make eye contact with the person they're talking to, whether it be the examiner or the other candidate. Also, they don't ask for help when they don't understand something and so lose marks for not answering the question asked. Finally, as they have not been taught suitable repair techniques; unable to switch the Greek, they are at a loss to deal with a situation where they can't think of a suitable word or phrase and hence just wait in silence.

Click here to see a handout I wrote that helps students identify and correct such issues.

Teacher feedback

In the interview above both students are great, confident speakers who will do well in the FCE exam in May 2007. We can see this in the way they answered the questions in Part 1 and Part 4 of the interview.

However, their performance in Part 2 and Part 3 could have been much better. The main problem was that they failed to answer the questions fully (part 2) or failed to understand them (part 3). This was, in part due to the fact that we haven't done much interview practice yet but also because they rushed to answer, even though they didn't really understand what was expected of them. Instead what they should have done is asked for the question to be repeated or checked with each other what they understood in part 3.

Free FCE listening test downloads

While surfing I came across the Weberberg site which as a lots of useful links for EFL/ESL listening exercises. Amongst them are links to the Cambridge ESOL site which has complete listening tests (including mp3 downloads) for the KET, PET, FCE, CPE,

Photo by a*c

FCE Interview tips

The exam season is once again fast approaching so I though I'd post this again.

Cambridge interviews do's and don'ts

PART ONE

1 Be friendly, be polite. This is a chance to show the
examiners how well you can speak English, not a fight to
the death.

2 Learn some words that may come up, e.g. the name of
the subject you are studying or the job you want to do
in the future.

3 DO NOT learn a little speech by heart. It sounds
unnatural and you'll get even more nervous than you
need to be trying to remember it.

4 Keep eye contact with the examiner. That means looking
him or her in the eye rather than staring at your shoes
or some point on the wall behind them.

5 Remember there are no wrong answers here, only well-
expressed and badly expressed ones.

6 DO NOT give short, monosyllabic answers, nor tell them
the story of your life.

PART TWO

1 Remember that the question you'll be asked about the
photos will have three parts, answer all of them.

2 If you don't understand the question ask the examiner to
repeat it. You'll not lose marks for this. However, you will
lose marks for answering the wrong question.

3 DO NOT stop speaking till the examiner tells you your
time is up.

4 Pay attention to what the other person says as you will
be asked a similar question to theirs when they finish.

PART THREE

1 Make sure you understand the question before you start
speaking. If necessary, ask the examiner to repeat it.

2 Move your chair so that you are facing the other person.
Remember what we said about eye-contact.

3 Start with a question, not a monologue.

4 Listen to what the other person says, comment on it, ask
them questions.

5 Disagree with the other person whatever they say. It's
always easier to have something to say if we disagree.

6 Give the other person chance to speak. You'll lose
marks if you monopolise the conversation.

7 DO NOT stop speaking until the examiner tells you that
your time is up.

PART FOUR

1 Remember the questions asked in this part are always
connected with the topic in part three.

2 Give full answers, not just short, monosyllabic ones

3 Comment on what the other person says, use their
name.

4 There are no wrong answers, only badly-expressed
ones.

Lesson plan

1 Ask students to write down three things they should or shouldn't do in the interview.

2 Students swap answers in groups of four.

3 Elicit answers from the class, write them on the board.

4 Give out the handout above and ask them to underline any words or phrases they don't understand.

5 Go through the handout, section by section, giving examples of things.

6 Chose two students, preferably ones who aren't shy about talking in front of the others, and tell them that you are going to interview them.

7 Explain to the rest of the class that they are going to listen to the interview and make note of the ways in which the two interviewees do or do not follow the advice given in the handout. Also they should think of ways in which the people could improve their performance.

8 Do the interview. It would be a good idea to record this. Usually, I use my digital camera to do this and then transfer the recording to my laptop in order to burn a cd which I give to the students who've been interviewed.

9 Divide the class into two groups and assign an interviewee to each group. The groups then discuss the interviewees performance and make suggestions as to how they can improve.

10 If you have enough time, get students into groups of three and ask them to do the same interview (one person being the examiner, the other two candidates). Just make sure that those who were interviewed are now examiners.

11 Give the students who were interviewed the cd and as them to watch it and see how they did or did not follow the advice in the handout.

Essay writing resources for EFL/ESL

One thing I really believe in is that we must also look outside the EFL/ESL world for our teaching ideas. Well, there are lots of great ones out there for teaching foreign languages I think that we often underestimate our students ability to think and reason in a second language. That's why I am always on the look out for stuff that English speaking teachers use in their L1 classes. so, here is a link to www.teachit.co.uk which is full of great teaching ideas which I've used over the years for post FCE (b2 level) students.

This particular link has a lot of ways to teach discursive, persuasive and argumentative writing. I find that the advice that most EFL books is sorely lacking and amounts to little more that copy this model essay.

Set books for FCE

I was just over at FCE Blog and I came across this link which is a PDF file by Penguin with some interesting ideas about how to use set books for FCE students.

Claudia says;

"This is a possible reading path:

Useful pages for students
Pages 6, 7 and 8 include brief descriptions of the type of text you will produce, style, target reader, organisation and content. A detailed analysis of your response to the book as well as exam tips.

Useful worksheets for students
2- FCE question types. The 10 examples given are taken from UCLES 1997- 1998 sessions.

3- A sample essay. Based on Wuthering Heights, it includes questions to analyse how the task was achieved.

5- Analysis of the plot. A chart to take your notes while reading.

10- Personality chart. There is a collection of adjectives to help you describe main characters.

14- Evaluating the book. Set of model sentences to include your opinion of the book."

I don't usually prepare students for the set book but I do like the idea of them reading extensively and always give my students audio books in MP3 format as a way of getting exposure to literature. If you would like a copy of a DVD with audio books (I have dozens) email me here with an address and I'll send it.

Spot the difference

If you've ever done a spot the difference exercise then you should be familiar with the basic idea. You can also use for teaching EFL. Divide the class into two groups Give one group a copy of the top picture (which they cannot show their partner) and the other group the bottom picture. The idea is that in pairs the students find out the differences just by describing their own photos). It is also a good way of preparing students for the FCE interview (part 2) which students, amongst other things) have to compare and contrast two photos.