The problem with passing your Cambridge Advanced exam.

You passed C1. So… you’re done, right?

Not quite.

In this episode, we’re talking about something most advanced learners completely overlook: what happens after you reach a high level.

Because the truth is, fluency isn’t permanent.
 If you stop using your English, you don’t stay the same… you slowly go backwards.

We’ll look at:

•  Why your English can decline after C1 
•  The skills you lose first (and why) 
•  What you actually need to do to maintain and improve your level 

If you’ve worked hard to get here, this episode will help you keep it.

If you’d like a simple, low-pressure way to stay consistent with your English each week, you can find more information here: FIND OUT MORE

 If this episode helped you, make sure you subscribe or follow the podcast so you don’t miss next week’s training, and if you need help with your English, send me a message on Instagram and let's chat. 

Learn more about our courses here: 

Cambridge Advanced Accelerator: SOLD OUT
C2 Fluency circle: CLICK HERE

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Cambridge Advanced Accelerator podcast. My name is Cheryl, and I am here to help you get your English up to that C1 or even C2 level and absolutely smash your Cambridge Advanced exam. So today we're going to be talking about the problem with passing your Cambridge Advanced exam. So it sounds strange, right? Most people think that once you pass the Cambridge Advanced exam, that's it. You've reached C1 or even C2 level if you've got that A in the exam, you've reached your goal, you've got that certificate, maybe you've got that job promotion, you've got that visa to England, you've you've boosted your confidence, you're feeling great, and now we can stop studying. We've done it. But what actually happens is that if we're not careful, your level can drop significantly if you don't do these seven things that I'm about to tell you. Okay, so in this podcast, I'm going to show you exactly how you can keep your English at a C1 level, stay confident in any situation, and stop that drop in level after you finish your exam. But first, let me tell you a little story about me and learning Polish. So, for those of you that don't know, um, my grandfather was Polish. Uh, he moved to Scotland after the war and met, or um, he was based in Scotland during the war and he stayed there after the war because he met my grandmother, and you know, things happened, they fell in love, my father was born, and um he stayed in Scotland after the war. Um, so my surname Milanik uh is Polish. Um, however, at that time, in that day and age, um it wasn't kind of um the done thing to bring your your children up to be bilingual. Uh so he stopped speaking Polish immediately when he was in Scotland and uh only spoke to my father in in English. So the the only words he learnt in Polish, my dad, was um when my my grandfather was really, really angry and wanted him to do something. Uh, you know, when uh parents count to three, you're like, I'm gonna give you three seconds to do the thing you're supposed to do. One, two, three, and you're like, oh god, I better do the thing. So he learned to count to three in Polish, and that was it. Um, that's all he can remember. And um, this really annoyed me when I moved to Poland. Um, I had my first teaching job in Poland, and it really annoyed me. I'm like, God, it would have been so much easier if if my dad had taught me Polish when I was a kid, or if his dad had taught him Polish uh when he was a kid, and I wouldn't have to go through the effort now of having to learn a language in at this point, this was 20 years ago, so in my 20s. Um, and Polish, for anyone who doesn't know, is a really hard language to learn. Uh, there are loads of cases, and um it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to get even to an intermediate level in Polish, it is uh very impressive. So I spent nearly three years living in Krakow in Poland. Um I met my my ex there, um, and she was Polish as well. Um so I was having I had a lot of practice with Polish, I had a lot of input with the language. I went to the university there, I went to Jagalonian University and I was learning Polish. Um so I was using it constantly, I was using it all the time, I was putting many, many hours into learning it, and after about two and a half years, I was like a high B1 level. You might think two and a half years with all that input and living in the country. How are you only B1 level? Trust me, Polish is hard. Um, with Spanish, with that amount of time, I was up at a high B2 level. Um, but in Polish, uh a decent B1 level, and I was very proud of myself. Um people were mistaking me for a native speaker on the streets, that's what everyone wants, right? In another language, and um yeah, I was really, really, really proud of myself. However, when I moved away from Poland, I moved, I got a job um as uh at that point an assistant director uh in a language school in Dublin in Ireland. Um so I moved away from uh from Poland Um and then eventually split up with my my ex at the time or uh my partner at the time, my now ex. We split up. So I went from having my entire life surrounded by Polish to absolutely zero, and because I was being all dramatic about my breakup as well, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with the language. I stopped reading in it, I stopped watching TV, I stopped listening to podcasts, I wasn't in the country, so I went from like 100% Polish to zero in the matter in a matter of a few months. And the thing is I noticed very quickly that my level started dropping, and it started dropping significantly, not just a little bit. Um my level now of Polish is like it's not even elementary, it's I can say like four or five phrases in Polish, uh, and that is it. No, I can say my name, I don't even think I can say how old I am anymore. I can say my name, uh, I can ask for the bill, I can ask for a beer, um, and um I can say my father, my grandfather was Polish. That's it. I can say I lived in Krakow for two years. That's it. That's it, that's the only things I can say in Polish. Um first thing that went was my ability to speak. I could still understand things, but my ability to speak started going. Um last thing to go is my ability to uh to read and to listen. But my speaking skills and my writing skills went very, very quickly. And now I'm just really annoyed with myself because I still have lots of um lots of Polish friends, uh, I have lots of Polish students. I know a lot of you guys on course with me at the moment are from Poland, and it it's just really annoying because I put all that time and money and effort into learning that language, like hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of hours of learning to come away at the end of it with nothing, with like four phrases and counting to three from my dad uh with his uh with his dad when he was angry when he was a kid. Um, so I keep on thinking my thinking to myself, like, oh god, I wish I'd just put that little bit of effort in to maintain it. I wouldn't have needed to study for hours and hours and hours every single day, like kind of what you do when you're intensively preparing for an exam or something. All I wouldn't have needed to do was just an hour or so of maintenance just to kind of keep the language alive so I didn't completely lose it. Um, so not studying at 100% intensity, studying at like 25% intensity just to keep it alive, and that would have saved me, in effect, losing thousands of hours of my life studying something that I have absolutely no recollection of now. So that's something I don't want to happen uh to you once you've passed your Cambridge Advanced exam. That unfortunately something that often does happen because we study so intensively for the exam. You're studying um for maybe like an hour a day, uh, every day for six months, nine months, and once you pass your exam, suddenly you're like, okay, it's finished, it's done, I don't need to do this anymore. Okay, and we stop studying completely, and that's when the drop starts to happen. So, what can we do to stop this? How can we keep your level? Now it's pretty easy, you don't need to do anything dramatic to maintain your level or even slightly increase your level, okay? Um you don't need to be studying an hour a day every single day like you were doing for the Cambridge Advanced exam. Okay. The C1, it's not going to fade overnight. Okay, you're not gonna suddenly go um like my Polish, you're not gonna go from C1 to A0 overnight, but your level will fade if English suddenly stops being part of your life, okay? And that's what we want to avoid. We want to keep your English alive, and you want to keep your English part of your life. So, how can we do this? So, step number one is don't stop using your English. We can stop exam tasks. You do not need to do any more exam tasks after you pass your Cambridge Advanced exam. You don't need to do the CPE exam, you do not need to do proficiency. Having that C1 exam certificate is more than enough to prove your level. This shows you have a university level English level, which is higher than most native speakers, to be honest. Okay, so once you have that, stop with exam tasks, okay? But keep doing things in English, keep your phone in English, okay? Change the settings on your phone, change your language to English, keep watching your Netflix TV programs in English without the subtitles. No subtitles, guys. At your level, you don't need them, okay? Listen to your podcasts, keep doing all those things, reading The Guardian or reading books that you enjoy. Keep doing all of that in English just to keep it in your life, okay? To keep it alive. Doesn't have to be every day, but just doing something to keep the English alive. Okay. Number two, and more importantly, we need to keep your active English alive. Okay, so the first thing that goes, like with me in my Polish, is your spoken fluency. Okay, along with that goes your active vocabulary, so your recall of the vocabulary when you're speaking or you're trying to write. Okay, speaking goes first, then writing. So your ability to understand a podcast, read an article, or watch Netflix, that's going to stay alive for much, much longer. Okay, but we need to make sure that you are keeping that spoken fluency alive. So, what I would recommend here is just have at least one proper English conversation per week. Again, it doesn't need to be something you do every day, but just have a conversation with someone in English at a high level, not like I know a lot of you guys are teachers and you're teaching English uh every day, but we're teaching lower levels, right? We're teaching, we're singing if you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. We're talking to kids at kind of pre-intermediate level. Um, having a normal conversation with someone in English um every week, okay. This is gonna kind of keep that active language alive. Write one short piece of writing a week as well, okay? So this could be just writing a little summary of a podcast that you've been reading, um, or keeping a journal. If you journal in the morning or in the evening, do that in English, but just something small, it's not gonna take hours and hours of your time, but to keep that active English alive. Okay. Next thing this helps me a lot with my Spanish. Keep reading in English, okay. Obviously, for me with Spanish, just keep reading in Spanish. Polish, I didn't do this, so I have no hope now. I can't do it. But um, with my Spanish, so I have a C1 level in Spanish, but I don't go to lessons or anything anymore. Um, how do I keep my Spanish alive? Very, very important to me is reading. I read one book a month minimum in Spanish, so I usually read one book in English and one book in Spanish a month. This really helps me to maintain my vocabulary level mainly, um, and even start kind of boosting my level with with vocabulary. Um, but I find it really, really useful. I just for 10 minutes every evening I read in bed before I go to sleep, and I read a book in Spanish. So I would recommend that you guys do that in English as well. Next thing to do, and kind of building on that, is keep building your vocabulary. Again, we don't need to study millions of grammar structures, you learn them all at this stage, okay? Uh you don't need to do gap-fill exercises, you need to practice using your English, practice speaking, right? But vocabulary we can always improve and we can always build on. Now I'm not saying learn hundreds of new words every single week. I'm not saying learn at the same intensity that you learned for preparing for the Cambridge Advanced exam, but making a note of new words while you're reading your book each month. Okay, if you are listening to something in a podcast or watching something on Netflix or reading an article, if you see something new, noting that down and using our same techniques that we use for preparing for Cambridge Advanced, our Quizlet flashcard sets or spaced repetition, review that vocabulary from time to time, okay. Again, this is like a couple of minutes a day. Please do not use duolingo as a way to remember vocabulary. Okay, um is not keeping your language alive, but um vocabulary building, just keeping that um keeping that going is really gonna help stop you losing vocabulary, but also just slightly improving, keeping pushing, keeping going, okay. And the final thing that I would highly recommend you do, and again, this is what I do in Spanish to keep my Spanish to maintain it at that C1 level without having to go to classes, is keep socially active in English. Using it, we're keeping our English alive in everyday life, but using it in a social context, using it for fun, not as a chore, not as a something that you have to do, something that you don't want to do, just keeping it as a fun activity will really help motivate you to keep your language alive. Okay, so um making friends in English, going to if you have in your local area uh language exchanges, these are great. People online, there's so many people that you go and you can speak to all over the world, but just having that kind of that motivational boost for learning, finding a partner who speaks the language. You know, my wife is Spanish, so that helps in in speaking uh speaking Spanish. Although we often speak this weird Spanglish together, like we start sentences in English and then finish them in Spanish, or I'll speak in Spanish and she'll respond in English, or vice versa, she'll speak in Spanish and I'll respond in English, and yeah, we have people. If we go out for dinner or something, the waiters get really confused about what language to speak to us in because we're always like switching, switching, twitching constantly. But that social push, that that idea that oh god, I have friends who speak Spanish, so that makes me have to speak in Spanish, want to speak in Spanish. When I go to the gym, I love going to the gym, I love working out, and my trainer says everything in Spanish. So my like my gym level Spanish is like C2 is like off the charts because I'm constantly chatting about gym stuff. Uh, there's words I don't know the word for in English that I know in Spanish because it's a gym word. So having that kind of social element really really helps as well. Okay, and you do not need to live in the country to have that social element, okay. Um you can find this anywhere online, okay. We have the internet, it's very, very easy to find people to chat to online that's really gonna help you with that. Okay, so once you pass your C1 exam, I'm just thinking of this now because I was mentioning the gym. Once you pass your C1 exam, you want to think of your English like fitness. Okay, so you don't need to start from zero again uh once you pass your exam to keep your level up, to maintain your level, but you need to maintain it, okay? If you stop using it, the first thing that's gonna suffer is your fluency, then your vocabulary access access, then your confidence, then your precision, and it's gonna gradually decline. Like when we finish the exam, when we pass the exam, we're on a high, we feel amazing, we're on cloud nine, we're over the moon, life happens, work, family, everything gradually starts going back to normal, your English is slowly disappearing. And it's not because you don't care, it's just because there's nothing kind of pulling you back in, you don't have that goal of that exam. Okay, so this is why we want to follow these steps to keep your maintenance level up, to keep your English alive, just like someone going to the gym, okay. Think of a bodybuilder. Once they do all that hard work and they build all the muscles, okay, they don't suddenly say, Okay, I have muscles now, I am done, I am finished with the gym. Because if they do that, then their muscles are going to disappear. Uh, it's going their fitness level is going to disappear, and it disappears quite quickly. I don't know if you've ever gone on a two-week holiday and not gone to the gym, and then you go back again, and the first day after it's absolute hell, and uh everything's sore and you can't and you're unfit because the level drops, no, use it or or lose it. Okay, learning a language is the same thing, it's like a muscle that we need to use regularly and we need to maintain. Okay, we don't need to go hardcore, but we do need to follow a maintenance plan. And if that's something that you need help with, we have the fluency circle for C2 level students who've already passed their Cambridge Advanced Exam. Um, I'm not going to tell you too much about it, I'll just leave the details below if that is something that you're interested in. Once you've got to that C1 level, you've passed your exam, but we don't want to lose that level, we want to maintain it. Then Fluency Circle is for. You. That is it for today, guys. I hope that gave you some food for thought. Some food for thought is an expression that means it thought uh gave you something to think about this week. Um, have an absolutely fantastic week. I will speak to you guys very soon. And as always, if you have any questions, please uh let me know in the comments below.