Attempting Cambridge CAE exam, hints ?

February 10, 2008 12:39 PM

Any recommendation on how to best prepare oneself for Cambridge University CAE ESOL test ?

I have been studying english for the last 10 years , more or less constantly and I think I have trained enough and that I am ready to attempt the CAE exam. I choosed not to attempt the Proficiency one because of its stronger requirement for phraseal verbs, as I never really spent some decent amount of time on learning any.

So far, I have found that my greatest shortcomings are showing in :

1. pronunciation
2. listening and comprehension

I am addressing the pronunciation problem by listening to BBC broadcasts and learning how to use the IPA notation to read the correct pronunciation out of the Cambridge Dictionary.

I would like to know what methods any of you may have used to improve your pronunciation, assuming you were aiming as I am to approximating BBC one. I also would like to better understand how much pronunciation may be relevant in the 15 minutes speaking test in CAE test.

As for listening and comprehension, I seldom have problems understanding both BBC-style and "learned american" accent, while I am still struggling with Southern US accent, Irish and Australian.

Specifically, my anxiety with CAE listening and comprehension tests comes from the fact that part of test requires listening only ONE time to a tape, and I have found that I am not that good at taking notes while listening to an english speaker.

Aside from futher training on taking notes while listening to english talkers, I would like to have your recommendations on how to improve this skill , particularly in the context of CAE examination.

Least but not last, If you actually took the CAE or Proficiency exam I would like to know about your first hand experience. Thanks for your time !

posted by elpapacito to writing & language (10 comments total)

The writer of the CAE website could stand a brush-up on his or her English. Get a load of the second sentence here:

CAE is an exam for advanced users of English. This exam is aimed at people who can use written and spoken English for most professional and social purposes. It is widely recognised work or study purposes.
posted by jayder at 12:46 PM on February 10, 2008

Well, I would rewrite that phrase as follows :

CAE is an exam intended for people with an advanced command of the English language. This exam was devised for people who can actually write and speak English at a level deemed to be acceptable for most professional and social purposes. CAE is also a widely recognized degree in many workplaces and educational institution.

But then again, the CAE webmaster may know more than me, but be a lot less accurate. It wouldn't surprise me, it's amazing to see how many people think they don't need to learn any more about their own motherlanguage
posted by elpapacito at 12:58 PM on February 10, 2008

Oh and

In order to ensure our exams meet the needs of users

shouldn't it read "meets" as it's a third person ?
posted by elpapacito at 12:59 PM on February 10, 2008

In that fragment, "exams" is the subject of the verb "meet". Since "exams" is plural, it's "meet" instead of "meets", even though "exam" and "exams" are both third-person. In contrast, "in order to ensure our exam meets the needs of users" would be fine (though I personally think it sounds a little awkward.)

For example:

The dog barks. correct
The dogs bark. correct
The dog bark. incorrect
The dogs barks. incorrect

I think the sentence might be a little confusing to non-natives because it drops a "that" introducing the embedded clause (very common in English). I would have written it as "In order to ensure that our exams meet the needs of users", myself.
posted by Kosh at 1:24 PM on February 10, 2008

Third person plural in your example, so meet is correct. Our exam meets, our exams meet. (Since you ask...)

Good luck, by the way
posted by IndigoJones at 1:24 PM on February 10, 2008

I haven't taken the CAE exam but I took the IELTS exam offered by the same people which also has a similar taped oral comprehension test. The test was very easy (not very sure about its relative difficulty compared to the CAE exam; but I assume that CAE is harder) and I got a perfect score in the oral comprehension. I actually found the test easier than most such exams because they don't expect you to remember parts of the passage and then answer questions at the end of the passage (such as the GRE) but allow you to take notes and give you the questions before the start of the passage. This makes things much easier as you can look quickly through the questions to see what information you need to look out for and then quickly note it down as they read through the passage. Understanding the accents they used (there was a variety of voices used; the passages were like mini radio plays) was not difficult at all - they were very clear and easily understandable. If the format of the CAE is not like this please disregard this.
posted by peacheater at 1:40 PM on February 10, 2008

peacheater writes ". This makes things much easier as you can look quickly through the questions to see what information you need to look out"

Yes this test you have just mentioned looks pretty much like part of the CAE listening, possibily the phrases are more complex, but it seems that one has a fair chance at looking at the question before starting listening to the tape, which is certainly helpful.

Kosh & Indigo : wow thanks for pointing out the really obvious, it's the third plural person , so obviously there is no need for "s" as it's not the single third person. My fault !
posted by elpapacito at 2:17 PM on February 10, 2008

Whoops, for anyone who was confused by my comment, I meant the THIRD sentence. I was an English major, not math, so counting is not my strong suit.

That's what I get for trying my hand at snark.
posted by jayder at 2:21 PM on February 10, 2008

Least but not last,

I'd say last but not least.

I've taught CAE classes, I even acted as the assessor for mock oral exams, but it was a long time ago, so my knowledge of the exam is very fuzzy.

For the note taking, I would say practice, practice, practice. Listen to the news and discussions and take notes. I just googled note taking, and it bought up a whole load of study skills web pages, use that advice.

From the teachers notes, pronunciation is only one of the 5 things you'll be marked on in the oral, and the notes say:

Pronunciation
This refers to the candidate’s ability to produce intelligible utterances to fulfil the task requirements. This includes stress and intonation as well as individual sounds. Examiners put themselves in the position of a non-ESOL specialist and assess the overall impact of the pronunciation and the degree of effort required to understand the candidate.

I would take that to mean that you do not need to have a native English speaker's accent (and my fuzzy memories back that up), but you do need to be understood by an English speaker. Of course, there's no reason why you shouldn't aim to get a great RP accent if you really wish! Also note that they mention stress and intonation, don't skip those!

The school I taught at ran conversation classes for FCE and CAE candidates and they got to practice general discussions as well as the exam format. Can you find similar groups to work with? Also talking with native speakers would be brilliant (but I know sometimes hard to arrange). You don't mention working with other people on you revision, and I think that really helps, even if they're other learners. I got my students in our small town in Poland to talk in English as much as they could in the lead up to the exam, because the opportunities for other ways to immerse themselves were really limited.

Basically, practice, practice, practice.

You seem a lot more prepared than some of my students, and are certainly putting a lot more thought into it than they did. If you've got any more questions, contact me, I'll see if I can dig about my fuzzy memory to help.

Good luck!
posted by Helga-woo at 3:14 PM on February 10, 2008 [1 favorite]

One thing I used with my student was the BBC radio programme,From Our Own Correspondant. The reason I used this was because they are available as a podcast and selected stories on the web are also available as transcripts. This means you can practice your listening and note making and then check using the transcripts.

The other good thing about them is that the subjects are almost always interesting.
posted by itsjustanalias at 2:23 AM on February 11, 2008 [1 favorite]