ENGLISH EXAM TIPS WITH EXAM EXPERT FRANK - PART 2 || YOUR ENGLISH EXAM QUESTIONS ANSWERED!

hello everyone and thank you for joining me for part two of this very special interview with english exam expert frank carriso now i should say that that's not frank's official job title that's just the title that i gave him but i think if you have watched part one of the interview and when you watch part two you'll agree that he really is an english exam expert and he also has a very useful podcast so i really encourage you to check that out i'll put the link in the description it's really beneficial to anyone who's studying for an english exam so if you haven't seen part one i encourage you to check that out frank gives lots of useful insights and tips on how to pass the exams you can watch it before this one or afterwards it doesn't really need to be in any order if you like it hit the like button smash the subscribe button or just click on them in a normal way and enjoy the interview [Music] well one is what are the best strategies to pass the speaking part and the other is what are the most common mistakes students make at writing and speaking they can watch my video for strategies but um oh yes definitely yeah tips or insights but obviously you have a different perspective um yeah the most common mistakes okay um well um i i would say that strategies uh doing a preparation course is always helpful i mean like choose i mean find a language school for example near where you live you know where they where you know that they have access to official materials and you know just you know as anything you would buy you check that you know they have good references and they have good teachers and but doing preparation you know guided by a teacher who knows how to prepare students that's essential um because you can you can do it on your own but it would require a lot of observation from your part it i'm not saying that you can't you of course people can but they would have to take into consideration for example uh looking at a lot of sample videos of you know in the official channels you have a lot of speaking uh videos um and there are a lot of people giving advice making notes of those pieces of advice is always helpful also it's it's a good idea to notice the type of grammar the type of vocabulary that is required for every task because even though the assessment skills that that examiners use to evaluate a student in the uh speaking i'm talking about the speaking not everything fits perfectly in every section so in part one um you are supposed to do something in part two you're supposed to do something in part three and part four and so on so noticing for example what kind of structures people tend to use more in in which part the the kind of interaction that is needed in in each part for example is is very good i mean if if as a student you can you can make notes of make a list of structures and and even using i mean like watching videos and you can write down your own expressions like oh that that was a good one i'm gonna try see if i can use it the next time i practice um because for example in the picture you know the long-term you know the one in which you have to describe compare and contrast um of course i mean the type of grammar it would require uh contrasting structures uh comparing structures um and and you know that that will give you uh an opportunity to showcase a very specific part of english so yeah that's why speculative vocabulary exactly exactly about what they're saying exactly exactly so and the type of interaction needed the type of discourse needed uh making a list of oh in part one i need to focus on this in part two i need to focus on this part three and part four so making a list of possible structures the same way i tell my students for example in writing uh knowing the genre you have to write about is number one and i think for writing um you know i know the question was also about writing yeah um it's always it's also good for example to understand what is expected of you in every type of writing in every genre and i think one of the main problems that students usually have is misunderstanding what they have to do what they are they're supposed to do in a piece of writing for example the difference between a proposal in a report for example they look pretty much the same because the layout looks pretty similar you know you have headings you have paragraphs and you may have recommendations or not but they're not the same and the focus of the task is not the same either um i've in classes for example i've corrected i've told students well this is a very nice piece of writing i mean in terms of language is fine but you're losing the focus i mean i think that's a major problem because if you're writing a proposal as if it was a report then it's communicatively speaking you know there's one one of the criteria is communicative achievement you're not fulfilling the task so you have to be careful and i think that students pay too much attention more than necessary to language like oh am i making many spelling mistakes or do i have grammatical errors or mistakes and yes that's fine i mean it's of course you have to keep it in mind but that's not everything that's one tiny little part of the hallmark i do a lot of task analysis in my classes for example i bring material from the official exam books i get writings done by you know students and i sometimes recycle of course i remove the names and everything but i recycle uh writings from my previous courses that i've taught and then i have the students analyze how much do you think this student would get in content or in communicative achievement or in organization and when i use official material for example they get surprised like this person got five in language or this person got five in content and then i tell them yes i mean it's not it's not really that complicated i mean sometimes focusing on on tiny little things that they don't really make much of a bulk you know the of the of the final mark just to give you a very specific example i had this student who had the the the tendency like and it was a little hard for me like to get him out of that habit you know like writing a report using for example extremely descriptive language like um the amazing project was carried out and i was like this is irrelevant i mean using that kind of language in a report is irrelevant i mean just look at it from a real perspective imagine that i am the owner of a company and i want to know what's going on in one department because it's you know i'm not making enough money and i then i i appoint you to go there and then let me know what's going on i just want to know what's going on i don't need to know your opinion about if you think it's amazing or if you think it's incredibly beautiful no i that's irrelevant to me so and that's part of the content you know that minor it says minor irrelevances and things like that so um getting students to really you know understand the marketing criteria and and knowing for example what they're they're supposed to be doing it's it's it's a i think that's the best strategy that you can follow i mean like really understanding what what is expected of you yeah that's one of the recommendations i made similar to what you're saying is to try to put yourself in the shoes of the examiner try to imagine what the examiner is looking for when in the writing or speaking in in my classes i never expect them to come up with a mark i mean i i never tell a student how much yeah i tell them like how much do you think this person would get like an approximation you know like do you think a three or a four in this particular you know criterion and you know they come up with a number that's fine they can come up with any number they want but then when i tell them the real number they got they get like wow yeah yeah so it makes sense it's uh it's true i think definitely people focus too much on certain areas it's and and forget about other other areas so that's a very good point too yeah so let's move on to the next question okay this one is also about speaking and writing so what are those mistakes that are really unacceptable um in both speaking and writing in terms of grammar or spelling so are there any particular mistakes they're just unacceptable more than others well spelling spelling in writing for example spelling is not much of a problem actually i wouldn't say it's a problem at all because uh even at proficiency level if you look at the the marking criteria for proficiency to get five points in the writing in language for example because spelling uh falls under the category of language um even at very high levels slips are acceptable you know so uh having the odd spelling mistake is acceptable i have them to be honest i have to i have to read again what i write because many times spelling is very difficult in english i think exactly and this is this is something that exactly this is something that students don't usually understand like or they don't get like spelling is difficult even for native speakers spelling is difficult and you cannot expect a native speaker to know the spelling of a word just you know out of the blue yeah if they've never seen it before or never never learned it exactly exactly so spelling is not much of a problem unless it's consistent like if it's if it's it if it becomes systematic you know like it's a repetitive trait or repetitive thing that you notice in the same piece of writing then yes then we have a problem um and of course in that particular area because even in the language you have one descriptor for grammar one descriptor for vocabulary one descriptor for mistakes so you only have three descriptors i think in the language in the language criterion um and even for spelling which is mistakes it's only one of those set of descriptors um so this is so you can realize that how little spelling counts now in the other parts of the exam yes spelling is essential especially in the listening listening yeah that was another question actually so yeah you could continue with that because i think you're asking yes listening in listening no spelling mistakes are accepted yes part two in particular is it part two or part three i'm not sure that part two i think yeah yeah because you have to reproduce what is said and also in the um uh use of english for example if the word formation task no spelling mistakes and part four the key word transformation knows all the mistakes right actually yeah alternative spellings are accepted like if a word has an alternative uh alternative spelling like uh skeptic you know skeptic has two i think two spellings one one with k and the other with c um and you know words like that um but yes in speaking for example it has to do with probably different pronunciations of the same word for example um the word controversy which i say controversy i don't know how you say it but controversy exactly so you say controversy and and it's commonly found in britain for example to say controversy even though i've heard other british people say no i say controversy yeah so in you'll find both pronunciations in the uk but in the us you would hear most definitely i would say you were you would hear controversy well i think it's not a problem but you have to be consistent like again what we said before if you say in the beginning of the test for example you say controversy and then you say controversy then that sounds odd yeah like privacy and privacy and many other words exactly vitamin vitamin yeah tomato tomatoes all those things but usually students have one way of pronouncing it they don't usually change their pronunciation i think as you mentioned before that's not usually a problem but yeah with the spelling it's perhaps more more problematic because if they're not sure i think sometimes even students may even think well i'll try this spelling in the first paragraph and as i'm not sure i'll try a different thing no no no no no that that level right yeah yeah it should be consistent yeah exactly exactly do examiners really count words when it comes down to the writing card for example let's say a student writes 270 words even though they are supposed to write less than that would an examiner count them all and be anal about it okay this is something if you look again at the marking criteria for writing there is nothing nothing absolutely nothing that says if a student wrote this number of words they would be penalized there is nothing it's um the number of words is um it's to orientate a guide like a guideline orient orientate i think orientate is british but i'm not really another example yeah orientate orient yeah well anyway it's to guide students to i think it's the other way i think orient is english is british and orientated is american you see i have no idea it's not important yeah yeah exactly so guide i will use the word guide so basically to guide students um on how to keep it um concise as concise as possible but giving a full answer um but what happens for example if you write fewer words than you know the the limit that they put because they put you between this and this like they give you like a range of of words that you can you know move around it doesn't really matter and i and honestly it's a waste of time counting the words because examiners don't as far as i know let i want to make that clear as far as i know examiners don't count the words um as as far as i know um and um what happens is if the answer is too short then you have to look at what the marking criteria says um what about content if the student for example wrote fewer words then he or she might have probably forgotten to include something the reader is not completely informed you know like the the criteria says uh in the writing it says you know the the reader is fully informed or partially informed or something like that so maybe the person omitted something or forgot to answer something and that is penalized because you're not following the criteria if you write too much let's say that the limit is 260 words and you wrote 300 it's not a problem as long as you don't say anything which is irrelevant because it's very common that you if you write too much then you're you will end up writing something which is okay that's nice but it's not really relevant to the task yeah like it's not really connected and that is penalized okay so the number of words per se is not penalized what is penalized is what comes as a consequence of writing too little or too much and of course if you if you mess up with the content you it's like a cascade because if you mess up with the content you can mess up with the communicative achievement and you can also have problems with maybe organization and the last one language but language is not usually affected when when you don't cover enough material well maybe yes because um you don't showcase all the range of structures that you're supposed to be covering you haven't taken the opportunity to demonstrate your exactly so so it's yes like a domino effect um one thing and this is something that i i want to let your followers know is the advantages you have when you take the computer-based exam because and and i understand when my students tell me oh no but because they feel the computer so distant like i need to feel proximity you know holding a pencil and reading on a paper is better for me i understand that because i am that kind of reader myself i prefer to read in paper rather than reading on you know off a screen but taking the computer-based exam has a lot of advantages first the listening you have headphones and it that eliminates all distractions yes it's a great advantage having headphones on you concentrate on your listening and you have no distractions in the reading for example i understand that reading off a screen is not usually you know it's not healthy or but you have all the advantages i mean in the screen you have access to everything you can you can select text you can highlight that text pretty much the same way you do with a pdf reader for example you can highlight text you can add notes to that text you right click and you have a like a sub menu that says add note and you can write your own notes which can come really handy for example for the cross text task in advanced um and can also come really handy in the scanning task which is you know the end the last one yeah you do a lot of scanning you know that exactly and and you know that a segment will only give you a number of answers like a maximum of three answers so when you have found them and you you see that you have already highlighted the answers um you know that can come in very handy in the writing you have a word count at the bottom so when you type your answer which is really nice because um uh you you type and you can see how many words you're typing so you have the word count at the bottom so you don't have to worry about counting words and another thing is uh which is uh it goes back to a question you asked in the beginning another problem that i've seen in my my exams and the mock exams that i've done in my classes in writing is that students have this horrible tendency to write to write a rough draft before passing on to clean and they have time to they have time for the first task but not for the second one for the second one they see themselves like hurrying like trying to get it done before the time finishes my advice is plan take your time to plan something six seven minutes planning will save you loads of time later especially when you want to write something that looks clean when i see my students writing something and they see lots of scratches on the paper that tells me i know for sure that that student did not plan at all so when you have this all those scratches on the on the answer sheet it it tells me that oh this person exactly they didn't plan they didn't plan at all and i think planning is essential and it's something that a lot of people overlook yeah if you're the kind of person that likes to write a rough draft before passing on to clean the computer exam will come in really well for you because you can start organizing your ideas and then you can copy paste copy paste from the same text and select a whole bunch of text and move it on to the beginning that's a lot easier to edit your word and the best part you get the results two weeks after i was going to say that yeah yeah it's very important too i mean people get very impatient when they're waiting for the results so maybe they need them for a particular reason but um yeah that's that's the one recently recently a student of mine took the exam he improved a lot to be honest in the beginning when he started with me he i was a little worried that he might not get the level because he was just borderline i mean he would get kind of consistently a little lower you know lower the past lower than the passing score and we i mean he he worked really hard and in the end i mean he he took the computer-based exam and i told him you've got to let me know how you did and he passed with a really high mark i mean a really good mark you pass with 180 i think and then he passed with 187. wow fantastic so yeah and you think the computer-based exam the fact that he took the computer-based exam contributed to that made a difference yeah it made a difference and for him he was not very comfortable with the idea of taking a computer-based exam but he did it and it's important to practice i think with a computer-based exam before and on the official website you can find uh there's one there's one yeah so it's just to get a feel for managing the screen and everything yes and and also if for example you you can get hold of i think there's a there are some books uh common mistakes at cae and how to avoid them but making sure you buy the edition that says test bank in the cover that it says test bank it will give you access to four full exams um on the official cambridge website and um you get a scratch code i mean and at the back of the cover you you scratch the code you introduce the code and then you have access to um a computer based it's the same version you get in the paper books you know the official paper books um you have i think advanced one and two you have four exams per book and you have access to only four exams from exactly the same exam you get on paper i think the only exception is the the speaking and the writing i think you can do the writing but you you need to have someone who can check it yeah right yeah yeah all right and going back to what you said about the planning for the the writing i always recommend 15 minutes to plan i mean oh okay yeah yeah it depends yeah but yes i think 15 from 7 to 15 would be more yeah good yeah people say it's excessive 15 minutes but i think as you said it's i think no it will save you time basically you will fill in the blanks yeah yeah exactly yeah i think it's really pr but when i say planning and i plan exactly what you're going to say in each part of each paragraph each and think about vocabulary so then you just have to write it out another thing another thing that i got from a student and this is this is a tip that i got from a student you can have like a memorized list of uh connectors let's say um linkers for example and then the the very first thing that this person this student did was in the booklet uh she wrote all the linkers that she could remember like making a short list and then when she was planning and when she was doing the actual writing she would look back at the link at the list and then say oh i can use this one i can use that one and then one one uh because she didn't want to repeat the same linkers oh this one i can use this other one that she remembered just because she wrote uh you know that list of of linkers and that's something that can help as well yeah yeah just to clarify so you don't have to keep keep remember trying to remember all the time you have it just have to remember once so just before you start planning just before you start writing you make your own list of linkers for example just you know to work on the linkers but yeah that's a that's a really nice idea i thought it was a great yeah yeah yeah it's and it's just saving yourself time and energy just making it as easy as possible for yourself so you don't have to waste time you know that um just quickly a couple more how important is correct punctuation yeah how important is correct punctuation like commas full stops paragraphs punctuation falls under the category of organization um you know the the typical example i always tell my students you know i write a sentence on on the board and that says uh it's time to eat children and then and then i say it's time to eat comma children it's time to eat children exclamation point um yes exactly i tell them what is the difference of course there's there's a world of difference between the two sentences so that i tell them this is how important punctuation is yeah um you know avoiding those run-on sentences like one sentence is running on top of the other and things like that that basically will affect um coherence like the way you link your ideas um it's it's i think it's a basic thing and and i do devote time at least in the beginning when the first classes like making sure that punctuation is fine it's important but it it it's not really that important unless it creates some sort of confusion um you know when you read something sometimes in my case for example if i'm reading something that a student of mine has written and i have to read it again because i didn't get it the first time then we have a problem right so when i read something then i say wait a second let me go back i'm and then my brain is trying to make sense of it yeah then we have a problem i mean my brain cannot have those problems for example and often students just include too many commas for example there are commas in random places which can affect the flow and the comprehension i remember that i had a student at proficiency level and he was like asking me is does it make a difference for example if i use the serial comma or not the oxford coma you know the coma before the end the conjunction and i was like no no no no no no that that level that level of punctuation no no yeah yeah even native speakers arguments and huge debates about the oxford conflict i mean not not to that level but um like when you start with a with a with that with an introductory sentence and not putting the comma i think it's it's a problem you know yeah however or exactly exactly or for example when you use conditionals sometimes they forget the comma when you begin with the if for example they forget the comma and it's not much of a problem but it does affect you know like the the the flow of ideas yeah yeah i understand yeah so it's not something to obsess about obsess over but at least pay attention to it and try to improve it exactly good i think the last question this one i'm not sure if you can answer but it's uh it's an interesting question i've always been wondering why uh in the exams they still use the old-fashioned way of the cd player for the listening the experience in one of my exams was of a muffled sound so that every candidate had to complain in writing afterwards i mean no i'm enormously intrigued by what their answer will be but i'm not sure if that's uh in your realm of expertise um i i i cannot give a definite answer but i think i have a very good answer that makes sense because that's what my experience you know having this proximity um i think it is because of the being physical because um physical material can get easily destroyed um i think it has to do with the fact that when you have files like for example in mp3 files you can have all the security in the world and you you can only have like the certain people have access to those files but they can leak and i any examination body will take the security measures to you know avoid these things from happening you know like getting official material leaked and that you know you can have access to exams or questions and and i know i've i've heard for example that the ielts exam you know the the other yes exactly um i've heard that um some questions have leaked or that listenings have leaked and i think keeping things in physical format like having a cd that would get easily destroyed later like it's broken into pieces i think that they do it because of that because of course if you have access i mean internet can can be faulty sometimes i mean you can have problem problems with access uh to the internet and accessing the files for example can be problematic so having a cd would would work just fine of course i mean you can also have problems with the cd you know yeah yeah but you might prepare yeah it's safer and more secure and also it can't be hacked yeah that's i think that's the thing you can you can copy protect a cd for example you can you know have like a like a protection you know so you don't copy it and um i think they do it because of that which is another reason why you should take the computer-based exam i mean like you have the headphones um and of course depending on the center on the exam center they have these loudspeakers and sometimes depending on where where you're sitting um you can listen to the you know get a better you know acoustics or whatever um i think it's um it depends on the exam center as well yeah the quality of the material the equipment you know yeah especially i think during sorry sorry but during the pandemic i think you have to have the windows and doors open so you get more oh yes yes yes problematic so definitely the computer-based is the best way to go i think it's the best way yeah exactly so i would i would and of course just to remind people the computer-based is still taken at the exam center yes you don't take it from home that's true yes many people think it's an internet or online exam it is it is i mean it is because you access uh you access through a special browser that locks the computer right i mean the browser it's it's not the typical firefox or it's just a special browser that uh it's it's used for proctoring purposes you know um and and then that browser locks the computer so you don't have access to other websites or even the the start menu or anything i mean it logs the whole computer you only have access to that window and that's it but yeah but you can't do it from yeah from starbucks or from your house yeah you have to be in the center yeah exactly that's that's a common misconception about that it's worth mentioning yeah just a very quick one more question from my question because when i do practice exams with my students um i play the role of the examiner as best i can and i'm often not sure when students are speaking and it's a timed task when i need to interrupt them if i have to sort of be quite strict like after one minute or two minutes whatever the task is how much leeway do you can you give to the student um well at least i think it's out of courtesy and and just let them finish a sentence i mean in my case i would never stop a student for example if i'm doing a mock speaking for example um i would never stop a student mid-sentence um unless unless i know that or i i have the impression that the sentence will be longer um but but something that you have to remind your students is that the thank you when when examiners say thank you it's because the time is finished and we have enough and examiners have enough information to move on to the next part um it's nothing against the student because i feel that sometimes students might might take it as a oh i i did something wrong so yeah i think it's important that they the students get used to being being interrupted i i hate interrupting because it goes against all my instincts as an english teacher i want my students to speak as much as no no no i mean i tell my students in class for example like speak until you hear thank you yeah yeah when you when you hear the thank you just stop and then that's it no problem yeah the problem as long as you have answered the question exactly if you've answered the question it's all good okay i think that's that's about it fantastic frank i should you know remind people that you have a fantastic podcast it's what you say in english and i'll put the link in the description thank you for the video because it's really useful as this interview has been it's been such valuable insights that you've given us for me personally and i'm sure for all the people watching so i can't thank you enough um and hopefully maybe we can do it again because probably i'm going to get bombarded with questions now from people now you know i have contact with an examiner but yeah thank you very much thank you thank you for the opportunity

Channel: To The Point English with Ben.

Views: 1,502

Keywords: cae exam tips, c1 advanced cambridge tips, fce exam tips, b2 first cambridge tips, c1 advanced cambridge exam tips, cpe exam tips, c2 proficiency cambridge exam tips, c2 proficiency cambridge tips, c2 proficiency tips, how to pass the cae exam, how to pass the c1 advanced cambridge exam, how to pass the c1 advanced cambridge, how to pass the c2 proficiency cambridge english exam, how to pass the cambridge english exam c1, how to pass the c2 proficiency cambridge exam, cae tips

Id: T5ZwquJzG7c

Length: 37min 2sec (2222 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 18 2021