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English as a second/foreign language certificates
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| Lira |
I reckon many of you here are not native speakers and must've learned English with the aid of preparatory courses, school teachers, books, osmosis, films, songs, porn flicks... and no matter how much you've learned, you usually need a certificate that you do actually speak as much as you claim you do (even if you don't :p). So, has anyone got one of these certificates? Are they really worth it? I'm thinking of taking Cambridge's CAE or CPE in order to teach English and earn some money, but I know there's also TOEFL (what does it stand for?), Michigan,... and I wonder if the CAE is too different from the CPE.
What are the differences between them? Have they helped you in any sense?
I still find it somewhat stupid to have a sheet of paper telling people something that they could check by just talking to you in English for a couple of minutes. Oh well... |
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| Ian^ |
| I think personally that if you want to teach english then you'll need some sort of qualification and that looks solid enough. I know it'll sound big-headed, but english is possibly the most useful language to have, as this board shows it's very widely spoken and as I'm about to start spanish in september have did french & german at school, can say that english/spanish are probably the 2 most practical languages to have. |
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| TranceGiant |
I took the TOEFL(Test Of English as a Foreign Language) one 2 years ago. Piece of cake. And judging by your posts you shouldn't have to worry at all. Even people with no such great skills can score well if they study one of those prep. books explaining each part of the test and providing basic grammar/vocabulary knowledge.
TOEFL consists of 3 parts: Listening Comprehnsion, Structure / Written Expression (basically testing your grammar/syntax) and a Reading Comprehnsion (reading and then answering q's, smiliar to the verbal SAT part..). Additionally there's the Test of Written English where you gotta write a little "essay" on a given topic within 30 minutes.
I got 647 outta 677 on TOEFL and 5.0 out of 6.0 on the TWE ....It's expnsive and useless, especially if you gotta take it in addition to SAT's where your English is tested already anyways. |
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| UnBracKo |
Cambridge exams:
Key English Test (KET)
Preliminary English Test (PET)
First Certificate in English (FCE)
Certificate in Advanced English (CAE)
Certificate of Proficiency in English (CPE)
Business English Certificates (BEC)
Here the FCE is all you need for search a job or for your studies but for teach english at least you need the CPE, I believe. |
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| Lira |
But what are these exams too different, UnBracko? I'm yet to decide between CAE and CPE... and BEC sounds interesting too.
| quote: | Originally posted by Ian^
I know it'll sound big-headed, but english is possibly the most useful language to have |
It doesn't sound big-headed at all, don't worry. English is actually the lingua franca nowadays, so what you said is nothing but the truth :)
| quote: | Originally posted by Ian^
english/spanish are probably the 2 most practical languages to have. |
Indeed, I gotta work on my Spanish too, as Portuguese only gets things worse for us here (it's too similar and it becomes easy to mix things up :().
| quote: | Originally posted by TranceGiant
I took the TOEFL(Test Of English as a Foreign Language) one 2 years ago. Piece of cake. And judging by your posts you shouldn't have to worry at all. Even people with no such great skills can score well if they study one of those prep. books explaining each part of the test and providing basic grammar/vocabulary knowledge.
TOEFL consists of 3 parts: Listening Comprehnsion, Structure / Written Expression (basically testing your grammar/syntax) and a Reading Comprehnsion (reading and then answering q's, smiliar to the verbal SAT part..). Additionally there's the Test of Written English where you gotta write a little "essay" on a given topic within 30 minutes.
I got 647 outta 677 on TOEFL and 5.0 out of 6.0 on the TWE ....It's expnsive and useless, especially if you gotta take it in addition to SAT's where your English is tested already anyways. |
I'd like to understand why it's so expensive as well :( (being the cheap bastard I am, this is what worries me the most :D) And you scored high, why was TOEFL useless for you? By the way, what are SAT and TWE? :p |
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| Ian^ |
| quote: | Originally posted by UnBracKo
Cambridge exams:
Key English Test (KET)
Preliminary English Test (PET)
First Certificate in English (FCE)
Certificate in Advanced English (CAE)
Certificate of Proficiency in English (CPE)
Business English Certificates (BEC)
Here the FCE is all you need for search a job or for your studies but for teach english at least you need the CPE, I believe. |
As a Spaniard (or Catalunyan incase i just offended you :p) what is the requirements in spanish as a 2nd (or 4th) language over there ?I'm aiming to work in the canaries or menorca/mallorca anyway, but what will most people look for ? |
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| torontotrance |
| I was offered to teach English in China and I said HELL NO!, no way am I ever going to that country (people are great I bet, country is nice but the government is still evil). It's not hard for someone like me to get a certificate to teach English, a course or two I believe. I've taught ESL for a year or so at my church's ESL friday night thing (we would get 100 people showing up), I've taken a break from it but it was so much fun because you have all these foreign people from a variety of different countries looking at you as a hero because you speak English and they want to emulate you. To all of them, English = opportunities and a new life, I met some great people there and they invite me to their parties (they hold them at restaurants) and I get to show off my mad skillz with chopsticks. |
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| UnBracKo |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
But what are these exams too different, UnBracko? I'm yet to decide between CAE and CPE... and BEC sounds interesting too.
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CPE is more difficult than CAE, with CPE you'd have more opportunities too. |
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| Spad |
Teaching a language is odd, I looked into TEFL when I went to Thailand, coz I was considering staying there longer and working.
From what I could gather, in order to teach English to Thai people I didn't actually need to know any Thai.... :conf: |
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| StereoPrincess |
the ed up part is this...
A person that passes one of these tests might be the worst speaker of english ever and a native english speaking person could not pass that test worth a damn. |
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| UnBracKo |
| quote: | Originally posted by Ian^
As a Spaniard (or Catalunyan incase i just offended you :p) what is the requirements in spanish as a 2nd (or 4th) language over there ?I'm aiming to work in the canaries or menorca/mallorca anyway, but what will most people look for ? |
A decent spanish that allows you have a daily conversation, that's all. I dunno in what you wanna work but I don't think you need an official tittle for work here. Also English will be very usefull for you in the tourist zones like Balears or Canarias.
But if you wanna an official dertificate the (Instituto Cervantes is who organizes these exams like Cambridge with English. |
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| Lira |
You should've gone, Andy :p
| quote: | Originally posted by UnBracKo
CPE is more difficult than CAE, with CPE you'd have more opportunities too. |
| quote: | Originally posted by Spad
Teaching a language is odd, I looked into TEFL when I went to Thailand, coz I was considering staying there longer and working.
From what I could gather, in order to teach English to Thai people I didn't actually need to know any Thai.... :conf: |
True, that's what they call "natural approach". You teach people the same way they learned their native language. I'm not fond of this but the problem of learning a language with foreign speakers (as I learned with Brazilian teachers) is that they've already have their own accent (sometimes thick as hell) and you thicken it when you speak.
After high school, I would have problem speaking in English because I would pronounce "heed/hid" the same way, "bed/bad" the same way, "pool/pull" the same way, "cot/caught" the same way (yet differently from the Americans that also pronounce them the same way), "ice/eyes" the same way, and would often confuse "th" with "f" or "v" (my spelling was alright though, as we learn things mostly with books). Simply because no one had ever told me such thing, most times because not even the teachers knew these differences. If I had learned with a native speaker, I would probably get it, as I did after getting addicted to British sitcoms :D |
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