Native speakers fail English exams

Most native speakers wouldn't pass Cambridge Advanced? Why? 

In this episode we debate the merits of exams to test students. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning everybody and welcome to the Cambridge Advanced Accelerator. My name is Cheryl and I'm here to help you with all things related to the Cambridge Advanced Exam and of course getting your level up to that C1 or even C2 level. So I wanted to talk a little bit today about something that I've been talking about on Instagram recently, about the difficulty of the Cambridge Advanced exams, and if indeed a native speaker would pass these exams. And to cut a long story to cut a long story short, I've given the Cambridge Advanced exam to many native speakers. Smart native speakers, university level educated, all of them fail. And all of them fail, not just by a small amount. All of them kind of spectacularly fail this exam. And it's not because obviously they they don't know English, they're native speakers, they know how to speak English, and it's not because they're not smart enough or intelligent enough, they were all, you know, um uh reasonably uh academic people. Um the issue is that they've not prepared for it, they've not learned the technique for the exam, uh, and this has caused them to fail the exam. Now that's a pretty kind of um simple explanation of it, but it's something that people tend to underestimate is the level of difficulty of the exam and the level of um the level of technique learning required to pass this exam. It's not enough to just work on your English and get your English up to a high level. You need the other half. For example, I know that my my wife Ellie is awesome at English. I'd say she when I met her eight years ago, she had about a C1 level. I'd say now she's kind of hovering somewhere between C1 and C2. Uh she knows a lot of Scottish uh a lot of Scottish um dialect as well now. That has certainly um gone up. Um she knows a lot more slang kind of language that would be used on the the streets in in Scotland. Um so I'd say she's kind of up kind of at that high C1 bordering C2 level, but I would never ever tell her to do the Cambridge Advanced exam because she would not pass it. Um she is incredibly smart and incredibly gifted with languages, but she's absolutely rubbish at passing exams. She's not academic at all, she hated school, um, she's more of a kind of creative soul. Um so even if even if I sat down with her giving her one-to-one sessions like every single day for a year, I still don't know if she would pass this exam because it's just kind of not in her DNA to do it. Uh, she finds it incredibly boring, which to be fair, it kind of is. It's a boring exam, but she's just not interested in anything academic. So, thankfully, if we ever want to move to the UK, the highest exam she needs to pass is B1. I think she only needs an A1 to get uh your first visa. So uh we don't have any issues there. But I know a lot of people kind of have that situation that they're maybe really good at English or whatever language, but they're just not a kind of um academic person. And if you're not an academic person, you're gonna struggle with this exam. It's a completely different skill that you can learn absolutely, um, but if you've never been good at school or you've never been that kind of academic person, it's gonna be really hard for you. If you're already like a fairly academic person like me, I liked school, I was good at school, I was good at tests. Um, I don't think I've ever failed a test apart from my driving test, which surprise the prize is more of a practical skill. Apart from my driving test that I failed three times, um, I don't think I've ever failed an exam or anything at school. Um, and this is I've lost my train of thought now because I went off on to driving. Uh but what I wanted to say is that if you're good at school, if you're someone who's fairly academic anyway, then you should find it very manageable to learn the technique and that side of the skills that you need to pass the Cambridge Advanced exam. It's not gonna be easy, it's still difficult, but you'll find that you are able to kind of uh make that progress. Okay, if you're not that academic, you can absolutely do it, but you're gonna find it even more difficult to do. Okay, so I can I can uh kind of relate this to so this is why um native speakers would fail this exam, okay. Um, but if they studied for it, they could pass it if they're fairly academic, if they're not very academic, they're still gonna struggle with this exam as well. The exam kind of just to give you an idea of what kind of English level it's set at, it's kind of set at university level because it's used a lot for entrance tests to university. So if you're doing a master's or need to get into university, you have to have this level of of English to get in. So they usually use it for that or for work for jobs. A lot of teachers need this now. Um, I know in Spain, anyway, um, in the kind of CLIL schools, the bilingual schools schools, teachers are required to have this kind of C1 level, but in many, many jobs, um uh the kind of level has gone up now. It used to be many years ago that B2 was enough, but now employees are wanting that C1 level of English. And I can understand why, because like if I was gonna employ someone and I saw that they had the Cambridge Advanced exam on their certificate, well I know okay that yes they have that C1 level of English, but I also know that they've worked on a whole load of other skills as well, which are going to be really useful for the company. So they're gonna be um they're gonna be great at time management, they've learned critical thinking skills, they've learned how to deal with anxiety, they've learned how to stay motivated over a long period of time while um preparing for the exam, they've learned analytical skills, they've learned a whole lot of useful things apart from speaking English. So I'm gonna be very, very happy if I see that's that certificate on um a C V. That is why the Cambridge Advanced Exam, over all other exams, is one of the most prestigious in the world, because of all those extra added benefits that it has, that it takes, that it shows that you can do to be able to pass the exam. So if you're failing the exam at the moment, or if you're like, oh god, my English is terrible, it's awful, I just can't pass this exam. Remember, it's not necessarily your English, your English could be absolutely amazing, like in native speakers, and you can still fail this exam if you're not good at this other side, or if you haven't practiced it enough, okay? So I don't want you to feel disheartened or that your English is not good if you fail this exam. The exam is not showing your English per se. Well, it is, but it's showing a lot of other skills as well. And I mean we could have a wider discussion here about the about testing in general and how accurate testing is if it's a true reflection on someone's ability. I mean, I remember at school my maths exams, we had to like memorize a whole load of formulas before going into the exam. They couldn't just like write the formula on the exam sheet and then you showed that you could use it. No, you had to memorize it and then uh use it in the exam. In my history exams, you had to memorize a whole bunch of dates to pass the exam. Um in my English exam, English literature, we didn't study English grammar at school, only English literature. Like I had to memorize like uh entire poems and quotes from books and things to be able to write an essay in the exam. Um, nobody taught me how to actually write an essay, which would be a more important skill skill for getting a good mark. It was all about memorizing stuff for exams. Um so yeah, we could have a wider debate about uh exams in general. If someone kind of sat me down in a uh in an A-level maths exam now, uh A-level is kind of the exams that they sit in England when students are I think about 17, 17, 18. We use a different system in Scotland. Uh we have hires, although I think they might have changed now since I was at school. Um, and we sit these um as our kind of final exams to get into university. Kind of similar in Spain to the EBAO. Um, would I be able to pass those ones now? Like, no, because I don't have all that information memorized in my head. Um, I would have to uh go back and learn the technique for the exam. I would have to learn the rules, how to play the game to pass those exams. And I imagine it would probably be the same for you guys if you went back to high school today. You would have to relearn a whole bunch of things in order to pass it. So it's the same with the Cambridge exams. Do they show your level of English? Well, you need that high level of English in order to pass them, that's for sure. But you need those other skills too. And if you don't have those other skills, then you're not going to be able to show your true level of English. When it goes up to the C2 exam, the proficiency exam, this is taking it to a whole another level. The proficiency exam is aimed at about PhD level English. Now, how many native speakers have a PhD level of English? Not many. I don't. Uh not many people do. Uh so they will really struggle to pass a proficiency exam. Even with technique training, a native speaker would have difficulty with the proficiency exam. Even me, who uh prepare students for Cambridge Advanced on a daily basis, and I do these exams on a daily basis, I would have to study bloody hard to pass a proficiency exam. And most native speakers would. In fact, I remember I remember when I was working uh in um academies um when I was working in in Ireland and uh someone had a proficiency class. They we didn't get them very often, but someone had a proficiency class, and uh the teacher was uh in the staff room with the course book, kind of looking through it with this kind of puzzled, anxious look on his face. And he's like, guys, has anyone ever heard of this word before? Staff room of 20 teachers. Nobody had heard of this word in the in in our lives. I can't remember what the word was, but um, usually when you open a proficiency course book, I can guarantee there's gonna be about four or five words on between just like one or two pages, it's gonna be four or five words that I've never heard of in my life. Um, and then he was trying to do this reading test, and he's like, guys, does anyone know what the answer is to this uh number 22 or whatever it was? Um, he's like, the book says the answer book says it's C, but I've no idea why it's C. I cannot see at all. And I guess we were all like hovering around looking at this task, all these uh English teachers um hovering around, we're like, oh god, oh my god, I've no idea, I can't answer this. Um and and we hadn't a clue, we hadn't a clue how to do that. Uh, and this is not the first time I've heard stories like that. Um, in fact, I was speaking to my friend who works in a British school uh here in Tenerife the other day, and she said she had exactly the same thing that uh her her husband would had to do a substitute class of um of an English proficiency class, and he was the same. He was like running around the staff room being like, I have no idea what the answer is to this question, it's impossible. Um so again, the reason I'm telling you this is because I don't want you to feel that your English is awful or terrible if you can't pass one of these exams, especially C2. In fact, this is why I don't teach the proficiency exam, the C2 exam. People ask me time and time again to give classes in it, but I don't think it's realistic for to real life to expect someone to pass the proficiency exam. Uh I don't think it's realistic to have that PhD level of English. And if the majority of English teachers who are native speakers struggle to do this and would have to prepare really hard, then I don't really think it's um it's worth doing, and I don't generally feel that anyone asks for the C2 exam when um uh when you're applying for jobs. C1 is more than enough, and if you get a grade A in the C1 exam, you get C2 in your certificate, and I think that's much more realistic and achievable than trying to prepare for the fresh proficiency exam. And you might you might be thinking, well, Cheryl, why do you teach the Cambridge Advanced? Why do you teach these exams at all? Um, and my reason behind that would be number one, I don't just teach the exam. In in all my courses, yes, I want to help you pass the Cambridge Advanced exam, but I also want to help you improve your level in general and feel confident speaking English, feel more fluent in the language, feel more confident in the real world as well. So I put a huge focus on that in the courses, in preparing you for the real world as well, as just uh as well as passing this exam. Because I think, after all, that's important. However, in this day and age, we all know how important having a certificate is, having proof of your level of English. That's just what you need. You can be the best speaker of English in the world, but if you do not have that piece of paper that says that, you're not getting the job, you are not getting the visa, you're not getting into university. That's why we have tests. We need to have tests to be able to prove what we can do, and it's the same for anything. If I want to go to university and study science, I'm gonna have to pass my science exams to get in. If you want to do a job that requires you to know English, you're gonna have to pass these exams. It's just how it is, and that's why I teach these exams because I know how important they are for your future. I know how they're gonna give you a better job, they're gonna help you earn more money, they're gonna help you move to the country you want to go to or get into the course you want to go to. I know how important that is. But as I said, I like to help you with the other side of things as well, which is equally important, is being able to actually use the language. So that's why I work on both things, guys. But it's a really interesting topic, and I'd love to keep chatting with you guys about this. Um, what do you think? Uh especially I think in in high schools, are we just uh preparing students to pass exams? Or are we actually preparing students for the real world or actually how to use the information in that subject? For example, in history, are we just teaching them to pass the history exam, or are we teaching students to think critically about history and how to learn from our mistakes so we don't make the same mistakes again? Are we actually teaching students how to use English in real life, or are we just telling them to memorize a hundred phrasal verbs that's going to be in their exam at the end of the week? It's food for thought. Interesting topic to think about. Let me know in the comments. Let me know what you think about this. I'd love to hear your views. But that is it for me this week. That is our kind of thought provoker for the week. Um, I hope you have a good one, and I will see you soon.