Interview day

I was in school today as many of my students were doing the interview part of their language exams. As you can imagine many of them were nervous at the prospect but I think they'll do well. I've spent most of the past eight months preparing them for this moment so there was little I could do except reassure them and just remind them of a the stuff we've been doing.

Sometimes it's small things like keeping eye contact with the person you're speaking with (as opposed to staring off into the middle distance), asking for the questions to be repeated and not getting hung up on an unknown word that make the difference at this stage. Basically, just chatting away in English so that when they go to be interviews they do not suddenly have to switch language. 

So now I've almost finished as my students are now done with their PET /FCE/ ECCE/ CAE/ ECPE/ CPE exams.  Now It's time to think about what I'm going to do in summer and how I'm going to earn a living for the next four months.

Exam registration

For all of you taking either the Cambridge or Michigan exams this May the deadline for registration is fast approaching. For those taking the FCE, CPE etc it is 29th of february. For those taking the ECPE it's the 25th.

For more details on registering click here for Cambridge (you can now do this via the internet).

For Michigan click here. You can't register on the internet unless you do it via a school.

Exam day

Today my students at school were taking their interviews for PET, FCE and CPE interviews. happened to have my camera with me. Surprise, surprise!! Chatting to them afterwards, it seemed that they did pretty well and the preparation we did paid off.

Spiderman, Batman and the FCE interview

The FCE exams are fast approaching and that means getting students ready for their interviews. The problem is that after you've done the format a few times the students start to get bored and their answers become wooden and stilted. So to liven up the whole procedure I've been playing with a few ideas that spark interest.

Part one

In this part of the FCE, CAE and CPE exams the students is expected to give information about themselves. they are asked things such as;

Where are you from?
What do you do for a living?
What do you like about where you live?
Do you have plans for the future?

Instead of asking about themselves, students can answer as if they were;

1 - A famous person.
2 - Somebody else from the class?
3 - A super hero
4 - A character from a fairy tale/movie/book.

Part two.

Instead of the usual stock photos choose two photographs of

1 - Super heroes
2 - The class at tho different times during the school year.
3 - You at two different stages of your life.
4 - A recent news story.

Part three

Ask your students to think of the different powers that super heroes have e.g. invisibility, flight etc. Write these on the board. Divide them into pairs and ask them to either rank them in order of importance or choose the four they'd most like to have.


Part four

In this part of the FCE exam the questions are usually based on the topic discussed in part three. So try these;

1 - What do super heroes do for a living?
2 - What problems do the husbands/wives of super heroes face?
3 - If you had super powers would you use them to make money?
4 - What disadvantages would your powers bring you?

Exam registration dates

Photo by Andrei

On of my greatest fears is that I'll forget to tell students about exam registrations and so the deadline will pass and they will be unable to do take their FCE, ECCE etc. Although I haven't made that mistake yet, I've come pretty close on a couple of occasions. So to make sure you don't make the same mistake here are the registration dates for the most common EFL exams here in Greece for the coming summer.

Cambridge (FCE, CAE and CPE) - Feb 20th till 2nd March

Michigan ECCE - up till the 1st March

The Kratiko exams - from jan 15th till 31st Jan

Click on the links for more information.