Looking back at my exam and wondering ...
It is sort-of halftime between taking my CPE exam and getting the results. The initial great and relieved feeling of being done with it has made room for a more in-depth analysis of what I hope to have achieved. I do not fear having failed, but naturally I want to get good marks. I know my knowledge should be sufficient for an "A", but it’s not what’s in my head but what’s been put onto exam paper that counts.
An "A" needs an overall percentage of 80 or more, "B" ranks from 75 to 79 % (a rather small corridor), and "C" is awarded for 60 to 74%. There were five papers - Reading, Composition, Listening, Use of English, and Speaking. Each will be rated individually and then make up 20% of the final result.
My personal estimation about how each part went is this:
Reading
I never had any problems with this one - in the practice tests (we used old exam papers) I usually scored around 95% and I hope it went just as well in the real exam.
Listening
I was able to understand everything that was said. I did have some slight problems with the underlying meaning in one case (which concerned 2 or 3 questions) - more a case of me being unable to gauge moods correctly than lack of language grasp. I would have had the same problem if it had been a German interview that I would have had to answer questions about.
90% should be possible here, more if I was lucky at guessing.
Use of English (aka grammar and vocabulary)
I know of one mistake I made (or rather one word that simply refused to come to mind). But that is two of around 75 marks you can get for the whole paper. Then there was the task of writing a short summary, which I always did badly at in the practice tests. I did practice this in the days before the exam, though, so I might have improved a bit and achieved at least half of the 14 the points calculated for this.
I hope to be somewhere close to 90% for the whole paper, definitely above 85%.
Speaking
Speaking was my weakest task in the previous exams, and this time round I once again started off worse than I would have hoped. This was mostly due to being a bit nervous. I do hope that the examiners will take that into account - it should be quite a common occurrence. It got better once we got to the task of talking for 2 minutes about a given subject. My prompt card for this was okay and I was able to think of something to say. The joint talking (it’s always two examinees doing the speaking test together) went less good - I had absolutely no idea at all what to say, and that wasn’t due to lack of English vocabulary. I would have been just as helpless if it had been in German.
I guess hope I have been rated somewhere around 70%.
Composition
This actually was the second part of the exam, but it is the one I feel worst about in hindsight. Worst as in "Uh-oh, I wonder whether it was clever to do it this way..."
We had to write two texts, each about 300-350 words long, within two hours' time. The first was compulsory, the second to be chosen from a list of four tasks.
Part one was fair enough; we had to write an article, which is always easier to do than a more formal task like an essay, report or proposal - at least to me. I guess blogging and reading blogs has made me more fluent in colloquial than formal language, so any task not requiring a highly formal style suits me fine. We had three statements from an allegedly previous article about how your upbringing does or does not influence your personality, and the task was to write a follow-up, discussing these statements and giving our own opinion.
I was done with this in just less than one hour and then looked at the list of choices. I had not done that before writing the first text, so as not to get too nervous. But - surprise, surprise! - there even was a choice of informal tasks! I could have done a letter for a student exchange programme, pointing out the Speshul Highlights of my Hometown, but as soon as I read about this choice, my face spread into a grin and I knew I didn’t need to look any further:
Write a review for an international media magazine about your favourite tv programme, introducing it to a wider audience.
Well, that’s not the exact wording, but you get the gist: A tv show review! Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
At first I though about doing it on House MD, but in my nervousness I was unable to remember all the names of House’s team members. So I went and wrote about - Battlestar Galactica!
Yes, I did my CPE exam on a SF tv show, hehe!
I wrote about how it started off with a pilot to test the waters, referred to the old show from the 70s, pointed out improvements due to technical progress etc. etc.
I even remembered characters’ and actors’ names, mentioning Richard Hatch especially.
I felt soooo good about the task, I was on a high all through the rest of the day. (Well, until the speaking exam started, that is...)
In hindsight, though, I doubt whether it was all that wise to end my review with the words: "So say we all."
I have no idea at all about what percentage to expect on my writing task. I will have to wait patiently until 3 August.
I guess I would be much less nervous if A., who was in class with me and did her CPE last summer, hadn't practically failed her writing task - she got very bad marks there and has no idea why. All her preliminary writing tasks were good and she scored high in all the other papers.
An "A" needs an overall percentage of 80 or more, "B" ranks from 75 to 79 % (a rather small corridor), and "C" is awarded for 60 to 74%. There were five papers - Reading, Composition, Listening, Use of English, and Speaking. Each will be rated individually and then make up 20% of the final result.
My personal estimation about how each part went is this:
Reading
I never had any problems with this one - in the practice tests (we used old exam papers) I usually scored around 95% and I hope it went just as well in the real exam.
Listening
I was able to understand everything that was said. I did have some slight problems with the underlying meaning in one case (which concerned 2 or 3 questions) - more a case of me being unable to gauge moods correctly than lack of language grasp. I would have had the same problem if it had been a German interview that I would have had to answer questions about.
90% should be possible here, more if I was lucky at guessing.
Use of English (aka grammar and vocabulary)
I know of one mistake I made (or rather one word that simply refused to come to mind). But that is two of around 75 marks you can get for the whole paper. Then there was the task of writing a short summary, which I always did badly at in the practice tests. I did practice this in the days before the exam, though, so I might have improved a bit and achieved at least half of the 14 the points calculated for this.
I hope to be somewhere close to 90% for the whole paper, definitely above 85%.
Speaking
Speaking was my weakest task in the previous exams, and this time round I once again started off worse than I would have hoped. This was mostly due to being a bit nervous. I do hope that the examiners will take that into account - it should be quite a common occurrence. It got better once we got to the task of talking for 2 minutes about a given subject. My prompt card for this was okay and I was able to think of something to say. The joint talking (it’s always two examinees doing the speaking test together) went less good - I had absolutely no idea at all what to say, and that wasn’t due to lack of English vocabulary. I would have been just as helpless if it had been in German.
I guess hope I have been rated somewhere around 70%.
Composition
This actually was the second part of the exam, but it is the one I feel worst about in hindsight. Worst as in "Uh-oh, I wonder whether it was clever to do it this way..."
We had to write two texts, each about 300-350 words long, within two hours' time. The first was compulsory, the second to be chosen from a list of four tasks.
Part one was fair enough; we had to write an article, which is always easier to do than a more formal task like an essay, report or proposal - at least to me. I guess blogging and reading blogs has made me more fluent in colloquial than formal language, so any task not requiring a highly formal style suits me fine. We had three statements from an allegedly previous article about how your upbringing does or does not influence your personality, and the task was to write a follow-up, discussing these statements and giving our own opinion.
I was done with this in just less than one hour and then looked at the list of choices. I had not done that before writing the first text, so as not to get too nervous. But - surprise, surprise! - there even was a choice of informal tasks! I could have done a letter for a student exchange programme, pointing out the Speshul Highlights of my Hometown, but as soon as I read about this choice, my face spread into a grin and I knew I didn’t need to look any further:
Write a review for an international media magazine about your favourite tv programme, introducing it to a wider audience.
Well, that’s not the exact wording, but you get the gist: A tv show review! Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
At first I though about doing it on House MD, but in my nervousness I was unable to remember all the names of House’s team members. So I went and wrote about - Battlestar Galactica!
Yes, I did my CPE exam on a SF tv show, hehe!
I wrote about how it started off with a pilot to test the waters, referred to the old show from the 70s, pointed out improvements due to technical progress etc. etc.
I even remembered characters’ and actors’ names, mentioning Richard Hatch especially.
I felt soooo good about the task, I was on a high all through the rest of the day. (Well, until the speaking exam started, that is...)
In hindsight, though, I doubt whether it was all that wise to end my review with the words: "So say we all."
I have no idea at all about what percentage to expect on my writing task. I will have to wait patiently until 3 August.
I guess I would be much less nervous if A., who was in class with me and did her CPE last summer, hadn't practically failed her writing task - she got very bad marks there and has no idea why. All her preliminary writing tasks were good and she scored high in all the other papers.