GOODBYE TO ALL THAT
The new format FCE and CAE exams
Language testing is not what it was. The "good old days" are no more and "the times, they are a changing"! Teachers involved in preparing students for the new FCE and CAE exams need to understand the changes to the exam formats, as well as the rationale behind them and the implications for teaching methodology.
Why language testing is changing
1. COMPETITION. Leaving aside what Cambridge ESOL may say officially about the reasons for the revisions to the FCE and CAE exams, there is no doubt that they are aware of real or potential competition from exams which are quicker, shorter and cheaper, such as TOEFL IBT and IELTS, as well as competition from rival examining bodies (Trinity and Pearson in the UK, ETS in the USA).
2. CUSTOMER NEEDS. Related to the above, exam candidates want more flexibility, and will vote with their feet. Enrolling three months in advance, spending a fortune on a preparation course, spending two days on the exam itself, then waiting several months for the results, is NOT customer friendly (not to mention the fact that the date for the listening/oral component is often not known until just a few days before, so making it impossible to book holidays, organise work or study commitments, etc.). Needless to say, the competition is tacking these issues with enthusiasm.
3. THE COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK (CEF). Despite the fact that many language teachers insist on remaining oblivious to it, the geography of language teaching and learning has been fundamentally changed by the widespread adoption of the CEF system of
describing competence in a foreign language. The system works on a system of "can do" descriptors, giving learners, teachers and testers a common framework for evaluating linguistic abilities. For example, at level B2, a candidate can... Shockingly for some, grammar is not an assessment criteria at all, but speaking, reading, listening and writing are.
Exams, including the Cambridge ESOL main suite, which aspire to certify students according to the CEF (as they all do now, given its widespread adoption) must therefore move increasingly in the direction of testing what candidates can "do", not what they "know". This also has a benefit to the "end-users", the universities or employers who rely on the credibility of certificates issued by exam boards when making decisions about employment or course admission, where linguistic requirements are invariably practical.
Interestingly, the main rival to the "British" exams, the commercially-run ETS (which has recently launched the impressive new TOEFL IBT) has shown a startling ability to respond to the needs of its clients (candidates as well as universities) by designing testing material which simulates and integrates real life skills, and in which grammar is only evaluated as one of the components
of effective use of the language itself (i.e. accuracy in speaking and writing). They have come a long way from the "original" TOEFL (which contained something like six hundred multiple choice questions!), via the TOEFL CBT (which pioneered computer-based testing), to the current version, administered completely online.
4. TECHNOLOGY AND COST. Again, the Americans have been pushing the envelope using computer-based and now Internet-based testing, even in the evaluation of spoken and written skills. Administration and processing costs of exams such as TOEFL IBT must be lower that those of Cambridge ESOL exams by several orders of magnitude (as they do not require specialised local staff, or even postal costs for sending
exam papers), and results are available online to candidates within a couple of weeks, rather than approximately 8 weeks for unfortunate FCE candidates. Cambridge has launched a version of PET which can be administered by computers, but shows no sign of tinkering with its other exams as far as we are aware.
What's new
FCE and CAE are both being revised (the new formats will be used for the first time in December 2008) to make them shorter and more standardised. Unofficially, it would seem that exercise types which were introduced a few years ago but which have proved to be unsuccessful are being eliminated (error correction) along with exercise types which have been giving students
nightmares for years (the register transfer in CAE), so making life more boring for teachers but much less stressful for everyone else. A summary of the changes is below:
FCE
Paper 1 - Reading: One hour, instead of an hour and a quarter. Only three tasks, no more gapped paragraph tasks.
Paper 2 - Writing: One hour twenty minutes, so ten minutes shorter than before. The first task requires fewer words, and may involve writing an e-mail (an amazing new means of communication which Cambridge has recently become aware of). The second task includes a review option and a set book question which will relate to a specific book (there will only be two set books instead of five).
Paper 3 - Use of English: "You say you want a revolution, Well, you know, We all want to change the world" (Revolution - The Beatles). Here's the biggy, this part will be cut from 1 hour fifteen minutes to just 45 minutes. The error correction task is going, and the length of some of the other tasks is being reduced, with a total of 42 questions instead of 65. Burn, burn, burn it all!!
Paper 4 - Listening: other than standardising the task types to avoid repetition and make the whole paper much more predictable (i.e. part 4 will always be multiple choice)
Paper 5 - Speaking: no real changes, other than the addition of written prompts to visual materials (i.e. the group task).
CAE
Paper 1 - Reading: One of the two similar matching tasks will be eliminated, to be replaced with a "themed texts" task, a la CPE. The time remains the same at one hour and fifteen minutes, but the number of questions has been reduced from 45 to 34.
Paper 2 - Writing: According to the boffins at Cambridge ESOL, there will be both less "input" and less "output" on the part 1 task (the transactional letter), meaning that there will be less to read and less to write. Part two remains unchanged, apart from the addition of a set text question. The total time will be reduced from two hours to one hour and a half (reflecting the reduced "input" and "output" required!)
Paper 3 - Use of English: “Every revolution ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic” (Albert Camus) - This paper will last only one hour, a full thirty minutes shorter than before, and will have fifty questions rather than eighty. As with the FCE, it's in this paper that the real changes have been wreaked. The horrible register transfer exercise is out, as is the gapped text (the one at the end, with the missing bits, that looked more like a reading comprehension exercise), and gone too is the error correction. In come a gapped sentences exercise (as in the CPE - these are fun!) and a key word transformation, like FCE and CPE. Continuity from each exam to the next is one of the stated aims, and here you see it being applied.
Paper 4 - Listening: The infamous Part 2, in which "you will hear this only once", is going, to the great joy of candidates all over the world, who loathed it. Note, however, that in both TOEFL IBT, IELTS and LIFE, candidates get to listen only once, so there's an argument that Cambridge ESOL are being a little too responsive here. Then again, at least it will be consistent, as all parts will now be heard twice.
Paper 5 - Speaking: In part 1 (the introduction section), the extremely stupid second part (in which the candidates are suddenly urged to "ask each other something about...") is being cut. Other than that, and the addition of written prompts to visual materials (i.e. the group task) as with the FCE, nothing much is new.
You can find sample papers on the Cambridge ESOL website, along with lots of other helpful things.
Implications for teaching and exam preparation
By now, it should be evident what direction language testing is going in. The dramatic time reductions in paper 3 of both exams is the writing on the wall for teachers who are still glued to grammatical (structural) syllabuses. If our students are not experts on English tenses, it should not stop them from obtaining certification of their real language abilities. Problems with the present perfect?? TEACHER, READ MY LIPS: IT DOESN’T MATTER (much) SO DON’T WASTE TIME ON IT!
Language courses will more than ever need to prioritise real skills, such as reading, writing, listening and speaking, and that means prioritising motivation, vocabulary, pronunciation and communication strategies. It means our students “buying into” English as a medium for communication, rather than trying to memorise facts as they might do before a more traditional exam.
Teaching these things may seem much less “tangible” than a new tense, or the ability to fill gaps, but it is certainly much more interesting, as well as being more relevant to the real world and to our students’ actual requirements.
Post script
Course books - we'll need new ones, won't we?
Past exam paper books – these should still be useable, as long as care is taken to avoid “old” exercises.
We hope that you find this material useful. As usual, please e-mail any comments you may have to:
info@madrelinguabologna.com
