If you receive this post in the mail, click here to see the image.
Summer is coming and we have two months ahead without classes and many plans on what to do now that you have more free time.
Precisely, a reader wrote to me asking for advice on how to prepare a B2 exam of the EOI on her own during the summer. Note: By summer we can also understand a month, or two months, or any period of time in which you have more hours to dedicate to English.
The first thing I think of when someone asks me this type of question is how difficult it is to learn English without the help of a teacher. I say this because even with the help of a teacher it costs. I put myself in the student’s place and I know that he will have to try harder than if he had the help of a tutor, but if he is motivated, he really wants to learn and he is organized well he can give him a good push and even successfully pass an English accreditation . Although for Speaking and Writing you will need some outside help.
That was when I read a blogger Altucher’s post titled ” The Only Learning Technique That Terrified Bruce Lee”
In the post Altucher talks about how he is teaching his 13-year-old daughter Mollie to play better tennis. He does not let her win, and from the left side of the track makes him practice the serve backwards 200 times without stopping.
The girl cries, she feels terrible because she only improves by 5%. He tells her not to worry, that the brain learns first, but the body learns when it sleeps.
Over time, the girl improves 60% and is happy. He warns you that it will get worse later and the same process will be repeated at each level: you will get better and worse and better.
Altucher says, “Don’t be sad when you fail and rejoice when you succeed.”
He, too, is happy because thanks to this technique, his daughter is learning what she really has to learn. If I had simply played tennis with him, this would not have happened.
Anyone who knows anything about learning and teaching English knows that this is exactly the same with English.
If you want to learn a verb, a structure, an idiom, an expression, a sound; You must put yourself as Mollie in a corner of your room and repeat that term, or expression, 200 or more times until it comes out.
Sometimes you will cry, you will suffer but with time you will improve, and you will get worse and better. That is exactly the process you need to move forward. And, as Altucher has warned his daughter, I will tell you: ” Do not be depressed if you fail, just rejoice in your successes.”
Have you noticed the technique?
Altucher does not tell the daughter “let’s play tennis” ; Rather, it tells you something much more specific: ” Let’s do backhand serves.” Exactly what costs you the most. Also, it is one thing, not a set of techniques.
I tell you: “In English, it is better to learn a few things well than a lot bad.”
You must build the house, brick by brick, putting everything in its place. And, and if as a consequence of having been learning badly for a long time, your house is upside down, dedicate yourself, step by step to put it in order.
For example:
Corrects a sound. With some students I spend months correcting the sound of the “y” in words like “yes”, “young” or “yesterday”. Sounds “i”, not “and” as in Spanish. It is / ies /, / iang /, / iesterdei /. It’s just a sound, and yet it costs horrors to make it yours.
For this reason, the work by objectives can be very effective when preparing an accreditation or English exam.
Next, I will tell you the steps to follow to organize yourself correctly with a study plan by objectives.
1. Measure your initial level and evaluate what it costs you the most
In this step I want you to be VERY SPECIFIC. You will try to see what it costs you the most for the specific accreditation you want to approve.
For this you must do a “mock examination”, or mock exam.
Here are some “sample exams”
Sample exam PET (B1)
Sample exam FCE. (B2) Go down with the cursor and you will see it.
Sample exam CAE. (C1) Go down with the cursor and you will see it.
Sample exam Proficiency (C2) Go down with the cursor and you will see it.
Ideally, for EOI exams, look for sample exams at your local EOI as there may be some variations between EOIs.
Here I leave some sample exams from the EOI of Segovia.
If you can’t find them easily, MOVE, ask, ask for help, consult. Do not be passive, do not take the most comfortable way. The most comfortable path equals the path of failure. People who approve freely, move, strive, ask for help, work.
Very important : all these tests must have the answers to be able to self-correct yourself later. If they don’t, you should look for them or ask someone who knows more English than you to correct your exam.
Try to make the mock exam as real as possible. You must measure the times, therefore, you must find the right moment, and put on a clock.
The results of the test exam will give you a pretty good idea of where you are going wrong.
What to do with Writing and Speaking?
Writing you can try to have it corrected in Lang-8 , in return, you must correct some text in Spanish. You can practice Speaking in front of the mirror, but the best is a native (it can be an exchange) or a person who has a higher level of English than you. The best thing is to record yourself and listen to you again after some time has passed to check that you are improving. To record you can use a mobile app or the free program Audacity.
2) According to the results you have obtained in the test exam decide the number of hours you will spend preparing for the exam
To get a more or less realistic idea of the number of hours you should prepare in preparing for your exam , I leave you a table with approximate times of study hours guided by the University of Cambridge to achieve the levels of the Common European Framework.
Number of guided study hours
Approx. 350–400
Approx. 500–600
Approx. 700–800
Approx. 1,000–1,200
| Common European Framework | |||||
| A2 Beginner | Approx. 180–200 | B1 Intermediate | B2 Upper intermediate | C1 Advanced | C2 Proficiency |
Keep in mind that they are approximate hours, this means that they can vary from person to person depending on talent, memory and other personal circumstances.
In addition, these hours are guided, this means “with the help of a teacher”. If you do not have help from the teacher and English is a subject that costs you a lot, you can easily multiply the hours by 2.
How to calculate how many hours you should spend studying
Please keep in mind that we are always talking about APPROXIMATE hours, they may be more and, for some very talented lucky people, less.
We will combine the Cambridge approximate hours table with the results of your test exam. For that, let’s see the following indicative table.
Approximate table of results
-30% correct answers- Consider taking a lower level exam or extending the preparation time to twice what you put in the approximate hours table above.
+ 30% to 60% or more correct answers- You can prepare the exam. Look at the hours above in the Cambridge table to determine how much time you will need.
Your objective should be to get at least 80% of the exam correct (out of every 10 questions you answer, 8 must be correct), when you take a second test exam after studying.
If you don’t reach 80%, DO NOT show up.
To pass the Cambridge exams you only need 60% but, with the nerves you cannot trust that you will achieve that result. Therefore, it aspires to 80%.
In the same way, you must proceed with the EOI exams.
For example:
-I want to prepare for B2, and the sum of the results of all my skills indicates that I have obtained 40% correct answers (out of every 10 questions, I have correct 4). This means that I have to go up 40% more to reach 80% (out of every 10 questions, I must answer 8).
– The Cambridge hours table tells me that for level B2 I need 600 hours in total.
If I calculate 15 hours a week (3 hours a day x 5 days = 15) x 4 weeks = 60 hours a month. 600: 60 = 10 months.
I will need at least 10 months to prepare the FCE-B2, if I already have B1 level previously.
We now combine this information with my results.
With 40% I am halfway to achieving 80%, therefore, in theory, it would be 5 months studying x 60 hours a month = 300 hours of study.
If you only have one or two summer months, you will have to increase the number of study hours per week to advance faster.
In two months you could reach 120 hours, studying 60 hours each month. You would be almost half of what you need in total.
As you can see in 2 months you can go a long way if you set your mind to it, but in many cases it will NOT be enough.
Also, I repeat, we are talking about approximate hours, it may be more and, for some very talented lucky people, less. 3) Plan your goals to advance How am I going to study those 60, 40, 30 or X hours that I plan to dedicate to English during the summer? Study for very specific weekly goals. For example: Objective 1: Increase the Reading score from 2 to 8-10 correct answers. Do lots of tests and measure again at the end of the week. Objective 2: Increase my vocabulary. Learn 3 to 5 expressions with new words every day. Check how many I know at the end of the week.
Objective 3: Learn greetings and farewells for formal, informal, and semi-formal letters.
Objective 4: Learn 5 idioms and 5 phrasal verbs per week.
Objective 5: Do 2 very good monologues per week. At the end of the week, I repeat them in front of a person who speaks English better than me, or a native exchange.
Objective 6: Increase the listening score. Go from 3 to 8-10 correct answers. Do lots of tests and measure again at the end of the week.
Objective 7: Practice rephrasing. Raise the score from 5 correct answers to 8-10 correct answers. Do lots of tests and measure again at the end of the week.
As you can see, it is about: 1) CROPPING the study subjects to make them more comprehensive 2) set the objectives at the beginning of the week according to your own circumstances, and 3) measure progress at the end of the week.
You can get the material to study from our free Cambridge courses, which link to all kinds of resources on the web.
Here are the links:
- PET- B1. free PET course.
- FCE-B2. free FCE course.
- CAE-C1. free CAE course.
In this context, it is important to prioritize what is most difficult for you. Therefore, you will have to dedicate more hours to the difficult objectives, for example, listening.
Every time you raise your score, be happy and if you don’t get it, don’t despair. This brings me to the final step in this guide to studying on your own.
4) Always think positive
It is very important to keep morale high, since without it nothing works.
Remember: Everyone can pass, some with more effort than others, but in the end it is achieved. So if things don’t work out for you, don’t get bitter, just keep working, over and over again on what is most difficult for you.
*****
What was the learning technique that horrified Bruce Lee according to Altucher?
Bruce Lee said: I am not afraid of the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks. I fear the man who has kicked 10,000 times.
Goals practice in English does exactly that: make you work one thing countless times until you become so good that everyone is amazed at your level of English.
