News to Thinkers - Edición 6 - Diciembre 2015

LDC Report • ESOL Exams: An escape from Colombia.
Hi!
How are
you?
ESOL Exams:
An escape from
Colombia.
By
Tatiana Valenzuela • 9°B
Recently at school we presented the
Cambridge University International Exam.
It may seem like just another normal exam,
where you study the topics you’ve seen in
class, but it’s not. It’s so much more than that.
Starting with a short but hardly prepared interview
with a native speaker, I had the opportunity to put
my speaking capabilities into play, answering
questions and establishing a conversation with
my classmates. Although it might be easy, you
find yourself worrying to much about saying the
right things with the right pronunciation, spelling,
grammar and things of that sort. Of course, the
pressure everyone gives you doesn’t help at all.
Then, I had the writing and reading exams, where they
don’t evaluate contexts but skills in comprehension,
analysis, vocabulary, etc. It’s ironic how they
evaluate it seems rather quick but takes all of your
time and, if you don’t know how to take advantage
of it, you will find yourself answering wrong.
At first they give you information, articles and long
texts where you have to extract the main ideas to
understand it. I find it very helpful, to construct
clear and concise ideas, instead of constructing
a long paragraph of useless information.
Then you have the longest part. Usually they ask you
to reply to a letter, to make an article, to give your
opinion of a polemic topic or to make come up with
a story of your own. Despite the fact it is a simple
activity, it might take you a lot of time if you don’t
have any inspiration and don’t manage the time.
How can I carefully read a seven-page exam but also
include the writing part in just an hour and a half?
Personally, I prefer to start with the writing, so I can
complete it quickly and do the other things calmly.
At the end, you have the listening part, that for me
is the most difficult of all. Even though here in the
school we learn international English, it is always
hard to listen to a conversation in British English
when you’re so used to hearing the American English.
So you just sit there, trying to focus on what you
have to hear and making your best attempts to not
get distracted by that one mosquito flying around.
However, once you get it, the exam is simultaneously
a hundred times easier. As you hear the audios twice,
you have a second chance to check your answers
and then put then fill them out on the answer sheet.
So, when you finally finish your exam, there’s
a voice in your head saying that you’re free,
and you just have to wait until the bell rings.
These exams are different from the ones we take
here I n Colombia. At the end of each term, I find
myself studying until midnight everything I’ve seen
in the term. But then I say, why I am doing this? ESOL
exams don’t ask you what is the past perfect form of
the verb run, but how to put it correctly in a sentence.
That is something that is essential for education,
something we just adapted to this year. Our process
this year has been why is this language important
for my future? Why is it necessary to improve my
skills? What is the real reason to learn English.
So that is it, an escape from the education we’re used
to having in Colombia, which we should re-evaluate.
16 • Revista News to Thinkers