Well, hello there and welcome to the Speak English Fearlessly podcast. This is the podcast from Motivated English learners who want to speak English fearlessly and learn practical tips and strategies to conquer the CELPIP exam.

I also love the feature encouraging interviews with regular people, people just like you who are working towards becoming fluent in English so we can learn from their experiences together.

Who am I? My name is Aaron Nelson. I've been an English teacher for over sixteen years and I now work to help students prepare for the CELPIP exam. Through online classes.

Today I'm going to be going about a different way I wanted to try a different format for this podcast, so it will be a little bit shorter. But what I wanted to do was focus on the six reasons why your score on the CELPIP exam might not have been what you were hoping for, and I want to explore a few ideas about what you can do about it.

And I think that the first point that we need to cover this is point number six, and I don't think I'm necessarily ranking them in order of importance or anything like that, but these are the most common points that I hear students talk about.

And the first point or point number six, because I'm going to work my way backwards on this point number six is this saying or this phrase I suck at English, I suck at English.

You get your result back. You see that it's not the score that you are hoping for and immediately those words, or maybe something similar to those words jump into your mind. I suck at English or I'm never going to be able to do this, or I'm never going to be able to get the result that I'm looking for. I might as well give up.

That negative mindset isn't the only time it has been playing in your mind. It isn't the only time that it has been there in your mind. And we've talked about this on on a previous podcast. Actually, it was on the last episode I believe we had an episode around the way we think.

No, it wasn't the last episode. It was the episode previous to this to the to the to the last one. Two episodes ago, we talked about the importance of mindset, and I want to revisit that again with you today because mindset, my friend, is huge. It's such an important part of succeeding in English.

And if you have a predominantly or more commonly mindset that is negative in these crucial moments, where you don't succeed in these moments where you don't get the results you were hoping for, those negative voices sure get loud, don't they? They sure have a lot to say when you're not doing as well as you wanted to.

And where I'm going with this is that, first of all, we're talking about why you might not have gotten the result you were hoping for on the CELPIP exam and that message in your mind of I suck at English or I'm just no good at English, I bet that it's not the first time you've heard yourself say those things about yourself, and I really identify with you if that's something that you struggle with.

You know, for me, I am not a numbers person at all. I hate math. And all my life in in school, in elementary school and junior high school and high school, math has always been my weakest subject area. Always.

I think my highest score in math was maybe a 75%, and that was like a major fluke, like something that was not normal. And to this day, I don't know how I got it. My average score was probably in the fifties, like low fifties. I was terrible at math. And you know what? I had a negative mindset about math because I had struggled so many times because I just couldn't understand word problems and I didn't know why it even mattered to me to be able to multiply and divide and use algebra and all those things.

It just didn't make sense for me. I'm more of a words guy I like to write. I don't like to use math, but I remember having those messages in my mind. I suck at math. I'll never be good at it. Why try? Let's just get through this as best we can.

You know, things like that, without even having a hope of trying to succeed in math. I just didn't have that because my negative messaging inside of me was so loud and I believed it, which was probably the next bad thing about having a negative mindset: you tend to believe the words that you repeatedly tell yourself about yourself.

And to this day, I still don't think of myself as being good in math. Not at all. I mean, I am good at using basic math, you know, adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing things like that. I don't mind that kind of math, but harder math, next level math, algebra, things like that.

No, I avoid it because in my head I have that negative messaging. You can't do it. Don't even try. You suck at math. And how does this relate to you and the CELPIP exam?

Well, if you struggle with a negative mindset like I was trying to say before, not achieving the results that you wanted to on the test won't be the first time that you've told yourself that you suck at English.

Probably all through your journey of trying to learn English. You've had that repeating message inside of you. I suck at this. I can't do this. I'm always making the same mistakes. I'll never be able to remember how to speak in the past, or I always screw up this verb or that verb, or I'm always using the wrong words. And we just kind of beat up on ourselves and we just carry this negative load on our shoulders.

And here's the thing I want to leave with you about a negative mindset, and that is this an unchallenged negative mindset will always pull you down. It will never prop you up. It's never going to help you will always pull you down. It will never prop you up.

And what I wanted to offer you today is maybe, maybe you did have results. You did get results that weren't the ones you were hoping for on your test. And maybe right now you're just sitting in the middle of this cloud of negative thoughts where you're just telling yourself over and over again, I suck at English.

Hey, I want to invite you to to challenge those thoughts with me right now. I want to invite you to think about this just because you have a negative thought about yourself, it doesn't mean that it's true. It doesn't mean that it's true. If you're saying I suck at English, it doesn't mean that it's true.

It might not come easy for you. That's different. It might not come easy for you. Some of us are better than others at things. My wife, for example, is amazingly good at learning languages. She's so good at it. I don't think that she would have trouble going anywhere in the world. She'd be able to pick up on at least the basics of the language wherever she is pretty quick because she she's just wired that way. She's built that way. She has gifts in that area. She just naturally kind of picks up languages easier.

Me, on the other hand, I have to really work hard at it. It took me a long time to become fluent in Spanish, and to this day I still have to continue working on it 16 years later. But it took me a long time to get good enough in Spanish that I could understand a conversation around me and participate in it. And it was a long time of frustration of wanting to give up, of feeling lonely and isolated. Yeah, of battling that negative mindset. I'm just not good at this.

But like I said, sometimes you have to tell yourself, Hey, just because I'm thinking this about myself doesn't mean that it's true. That's the first thing that you can do to challenge your negative mindset If you're struggling with it, remember that it's probably not totally true. And what you can do with a negative mindset is one challenge it. Challenge that negative thought pattern and start replacing it with something that's a little more kind to yourself and truthful.

Like what I just said before. It's not that you suck at English. Maybe it just doesn't come as easy for you as for others. That's kinder and that's more truthful than the other one because you can learn the language. And I know that I can learn math, for example. That's my area in life where I know I suck at it. But if I have the right teacher, if I have the right resources, I've learned things that I didn't know before. I've I've learned how to do certain kinds of math problems because I had somebody who has helped me or who has taught me.

So it's not that I can't learn. It's not that I totally suck at it and I can never learn. It's just that I need a little bit of extra help. And that's something that you can try to say to yourself if you struggle with a negative mindset, especially if you've just received a lower than hoped for test result.

Don't allow your mind to beat you up. Don't allow those negative thought patterns to put on its big boxing gloves and smash you around the ring. Don't let it do that. Challenge it, challenge those thoughts, Tell them to stop and then replace it with something that is kinder, something that is true.

The fifth reason why your CELPIP score might not have been as high as you wanted is summarized in this question:

How long have you been preparing for the CELPIP exam? You know, in some of the face group... Facebook groups that... I started to say face groups, Oh, isn't that hilarious? All the things that come out of my mouth sometimes are just so funny.

Some of the Facebook groups that I follow that are dedicated to the CELPIP exam have such crazy posts, such crazy posts like this one that I see quite frequently where someone will say, Hey my CELPIP exam is in a week, what should I do to get ready? Or my CELPIP exam is later on this month. What should I do to prepare? What resources should I be studying to get ready for this?

And if you've said that yourself, I'm not trying to, you know, slam you or embarrass you or say something nasty about you, but you need a little bit more time than a week or a couple of weeks to get ready. That is something that you need to keep in mind. How long were you preparing before you took the CELPIP exam?

You need longer prep time than you think you do. A week is not enough. And if there's a program out there or you're thinking about taking a program or a study, a study group or a study course or something like that, that's promising you that you'll be ready in a week or two weeks or even a month. I would seriously, seriously question it.

I don't think that you'll be able to be ready and that amount of time, depending on your level of English. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. But you need longer preparation time than you think.

I suggest that a minimum preparation time, a minimum, a minimum, the bare minimum should be at least three months, at least three months. You probably might benefit from having even more than that, but you need longer prep time than what you think.

The fourth reason why yourself a score might not have been as high as you wanted it to be, and this is has to do with your current level of English. Your current level of English might not have been strong enough to begin with.

You were trying to do something that you weren't ready for. Have you ever thought about that? Maybe your current level of English isn't high enough for you to do well or to do well enough, or to achieve the score that you're hoping for?

You're you're expecting too much from yourself. Remember that the CELPIP exam is designed to measure your ability to use English in everyday situations. and it gradually gets harder.

Each question gets more difficult as it goes along if you're trying to achieve a high score on the CELPIP exam, the higher your score, the higher your level of English is. They go hand in hand.

Someone who is, you know, just a beginner, someone who's just getting started with English won't be able to score high on the CELPIP exam. It's just not possible. You need to have a strong level of English to get a strong result on the CELPIP exam.

You should aim to have at least an intermediate level of English or a higher before you even attempt the exam. That's like a B1 or a B2, but the higher the better.

But here's a caution. A higher level of English doesn't always guarantee you a higher CELPIP score. But here's the thing: a lower level of English will for sure not help you.

The third reason why your CELPIP score wasn't as high as you wanted it to be, has to do with the clock. The clock. That timer.

Oh, I've heard more students say that that timer has been a like a factor of intimidation to them, to the point where it totally distracted them and it made them get so nervous and freaked out that they lost their train of thought. They weren't able to concentrate on answering the question effectively because of the clock.

Have you been practicing your speaking, your reading and your writing skills against the clock that ticks away right in front of your eyes?

Have you been practicing in that way?

If you haven't, that could probably be a reason why you didn't achieve the score you were wanting to. Maybe when that exam opened up and you immediately saw that timer starting to tick away, you panicked, you freaked out, you realized, Oh my goodness, I'm not going to make it.

Maybe you were you were reading through a long, a long reading section and you felt lost. And all of a sudden you notice that, Oh, no, I've only got 5 minutes or I've only got 10 minutes to finish this. How am I going to do it?

And instead of focusing on the activity or focusing on the questions,

you will like that fear and that panic sets in about the clock. That's a huge factor, my friend. And maybe it's what affected you. And the best way around it is to learn how to become comfortable with the pressure of the clock, learn how to become comfortable with being timed and trying to answer it completely inside of that time.

And one of the best things that you can do to prepare for it is to use something that you might even have in your pocket right now or in your hand: it's your cell phone.

Use your cell phone's timer app to practice. Give yourself one minute or 2 minutes to explain something, to talk about something. Give yourself 10 minutes to read through a challenging article. Use the timer. Practice putting yourself in that kind of pressure so that when you are actually faced with it on the exam, it won't be something totally new to you. It'll be something that you're used to.

The second reason or reason number two, why you might not have gotten the CELPIP score that you wanted is maybe you've missed some easy points.

Here are the most common ones that students miss. And this is coming from the folks at celpip.ca.

I've heard many different webinars talking about this. These are some of the most common mistakes that students make. So if you have a pen and paper, you should be writing this down. These are simple things that you can fix. These are totally fixable things. These are totally under your control that you can deal with.

The first one. Are you writing 150 to 200 words for your answer? Not below, not below 150 and not going over 200. Are you doing that? Are you writing 150 to 200 words for your answer? And are you aiming to get as close to 200 as you possibly can? That's the first way you can lose points by going over or by being under that limit. The test will ask you to write 150 to 200 words for your answer, and they're looking to see if you're following that instruction. So don't miss out on points by not writing completely or by not answering completely. That's that's the next part of this.

Did you answer the question completely? Some of the questions have multiple parts to it. Did you answer every single part? Like there might be a main question and then many times there are sub questions. Did you answer them? Did you answer all of them or did you accidentally leave one out or forget one that will cost you points?

And finally, this one is also a common one in your writing. Did you remember to use paragraphs and the proper level of formality? That one's a big one. If you're writing an email to a friend, it's okay to use slang. It's okay to use English in the way that you talk, you know, like it's less formal, more conversational.

But if you're writing an email to someone in a business situation and it's not okay to be as conversational as you are with a friend, there's different levels of language or different kinds of words that you should be using, and there are words that you should avoid using like slang. Are you doing that when you're writing?

Here's a couple of more:

Did you speak for the full 60 seconds or 90 seconds of the time that you were allowed or allotted? You can lose points if you speak over that time and you can lose points if you speak under that time, just like in the work in the writing section.

Are you taking advantage of the of the time that you've been allotted or did you run out of things to talk about beforehand? Or and this is also a mistake where you cut off did the test move on to the next question before you were finished? That's another way you can lose points and here's what you can do about it. Are you ready?

Practice. Yep. Nothin sexy about that. I know there's no, you know, secret hack that you can use. All it is is practicing and a lot. And you should be practicing using your cell phone's timer, just like what we were doing in the previous one about helping you to get more comfortable working against the clock.

You should also use your cell phone's voice recorder to practice speaking. Definitely. Definitely practice that because that's one of the biggest challenges.

This is the number one that I'm going to talk about here next. Speaking to a blank screen.

Oh, man, I've had so many students say that that was the one that totally screwed them up, speaking to a blank screen. That's something about the CELPIP exam that's so hard. You don't have a person to talk to. You're talking to the computer, and if you're not comfortable doing it, it's going to totally mess you up on the day of your test.

But you know what? This is something that you can totally prepare for. You can totally be practicing this. And one way is to use your cell phone, turn on your cell phone's voice recorder app and practice speaking into it, not using video, not looking at yourself in a frame somehow or in a mirror, talking to that empty screen while you explain something for one minute or 2 minutes or 3 minutes, get comfortable doing those uncomfortable things.

And this is really, really important because we are designed to be talking to other people. We need to see the well, we like... let me rephrase that. We like to see the face of the person that we're talking to so that we can see their expression, We can see how our words are hitting or or being received by them. We depend on that information, don't we?

So when you don't have that, when all you're doing is talking into a computer screen, well, if you're not practicing it, it can totally throw you off.

You know what? I'm making this podcast. I screw up so many times, I'm going to leave some of the mistakes I made in here, my mistakes, especially around getting started.

Now I feel like I'm flowing really well because I've been speaking for the past, Oh, dear. I think I've gone longer than I thought I would. But at the beginning, because I wasn't talking to a person and I know that there's ways that that I should do this, that, you know, like visualizing that I'm talking to somebody, maybe to my best friend or I have an image of what you might look like, who I'm trying to speak to with this podcast.

I should be seeing you in my imagination as I am speaking. And now as I'm talking to you, I have that feeling inside that I'm sitting across from you, talking with you about, oh, how frustrated you are that you didn't get your results that you were hoping for, and just going through some things with you that maybe you missed on the test that maybe will help you as you try again. And I do hope you try again. I do hope you try again. Don't give up.

But yeah, going back to that whole challenge of speaking into a blank screen, don't underestimate this part. So many students say that that is the thing that messed them up. On many of the celpip.ca webinars that I've listened to that is one of the most common pieces of feedback that gets mentioned:

Talking to a computer screen with no person to interact with was super hard and it made me lose points.

You can totally work on this and I already gave you the way to do it. Pull out your cell phone, use your timer, use your voice recorder. Don't turn on the video like don't try to record a video. Just speak into that voice recorder and practice doing that. Practice, practice, practice.

Like I said before, there's nothing sexy about this. There's no top secret hacks that will immediately help you.

To do so well on this part, you really do need to put in time practicing doing the things that are uncomfortable working against the clock, speaking to a blank screen and not to another person.

Those are the things that will help you to actually achieve the results that you are hoping for. But the most important thing that I want to leave you with today is this: Don't give up if you didn't get the results you were hoping for.

I know it feels so disappointing. I know you probably you probably just wanted to walk away, go back home, or just give up on your dream of coming to Canada. Or if you're already in Canada, maybe you're thinking to yourself, I just...I can't do this. It's not worth it. I'm just not built for this. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. It might not come easily for you, my friend, but you can do it. You can do it. Don't give up.