Ένα πολύ ενδιαφέρον άρθρο για τον πανικό καθηγητών, γονιών (και παιδιών????)… να πάρουν “Proficiency” στα 15 τους.
(Για να διαβασετε το άρθρο στα Ελληνικά, πατήστε εδώ)
The insane panic for the proficiency
Why bang your head against a brick wall?
When people come to fullspate and confess that they are thinking of doing the proficiency certificate in English we tell them to sit down, take a deep breath and think again. In Greece, where we are based, hundreds of thousands of families are absolutely sure that their kids MUST get the proficiency. Little Nick and Maria down the road got the proficiency, so it becomes a matter of family pride to prove that their kids are just as good. Unfortunately, the chances are that these parents know almost nothing about either the content or the aims of the proficiency exam. Perhaps if they understood a bit more about the proficiency exam, and a bit more about how kids can improve their English, there wouldn’t be this nationwide panic. (Hey! Shouldn’t schools be doing more to inform parents?)
Let’s not forget the aims of the proficiency exams. The new European framework for these exams states that language learners at this level (the top level – level 5) should be “approaching the linguistic competence of an educated native speaker.” Let’s put that in block capitals: APPROACHING THE LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE OF AN EDUCATED NATIVE SPEAKER. And by the way, we’re not talking here about hip-hop English. We’re talking about the sophisticated English used in seminars and tutorials at university.
Similarly, the handbook for the Cambridge proficiency tells us that candidates should be able to handle abstract ideas and concepts in a mature way, and they should be able to “advise and talk about complex, sensitive or contentious issues, understanding colloquial references.” Does that sound like you, or do you think you need to carry on with your general education a bit more before you attain that level of intellectual maturity?
In a nutshell:
1. If you want to teach, your ambition in the short term should be to do a degree in English at university. In this case the proficiency would definitely help, but there would be no point doing the exam before you turn 17 or 18
2. The certificate might be an essential qualification for a job, but if it is really necessary you don’t want to take the exam more than one or two years before you apply for the job. An employer that really wants you to be a fluent English speaker will not be satisfied with a ten-year-old certificate.
3. Should you try to run before you can walk? What’s the big rush? Enjoy walking first, and when you feel confident you can start a gentle jog.
4. Use it or lose it. Unless you are going to do a degree in English or get a humble job in the office of an English firm at the age of 18 you are probably not going to use the language much until you finish university in your early 20’s. By that time you will have forgotten so many of those lovely proficiency words and phrases that you spent so many long hours back in your teens trying to remember (words like “exacerbate”, “ameliorate”, “procrastinate”, and “obfuscate”). Isn’t it a shame to sacrifice so much of your youth learning stuff that you are going to forget before you really need it?
5. High school students in Greece are unbelievably overburdened with extra lessons in the evenings at what we call cramming schools (where they try to quickly cram as much information as possible into the very limited space between your ears). University students have much more free time, and because they should have a clearer idea of what they are actually going to do with their English they should be more motivated to sit down and learn the 50 or 60,000 basic words and phrases which top-notch proficiency candidates ought to know.
6. Where are the poets and the painters of modern Greece? If teenagers had more free time it might be possible for a few more of them to discover that they have a talent for things like poetry and painting.
Does that mean I should just drop out of the cramming school and play more footy in the street with those guys my mum calls ‘losers’?
Definitely not.
Αναδημοσίευση από fullspate.net, από συγγραφείς βιβλίων επιπέδου Proficiency.