I will try to answer your questions and share my experiences as well as I can. English is not my mother tongue, though I have been taking the language since I was in grade one.
Actually, there really isn‘t that much of a secret to it. I did the exam because I wanted to be eligible for an Australian student visa.
I really did not know what the exam was all about when I signed up for it. I figured it would be similar to CPE, which I took in 1999, thinking then that it would be the last English exam I would ever take. Well it did not turn out that way, obviously, as I am now trying my level best to share my experiences of another English exam I took like seven years later.
So I went to my local British Council and asked for any study materials, and they sold me this book, which had a CD for the listening and speaking parts. My exam was scheduled for a day after the weekend, so I spent the whole weekend slaving away over the book, throwing it across the room when I got wrong answers, trying to fill in the blanks and such, getting a feel of how the exam was structured. I did the listening and reading portions in the book, and also listened to the speaking parts on the CD. I just wanted to eliminate all elements of shock or surprise that I would experience while taking the exam.
Writing was the only thing I was too lazy to actually practice for. It was not such a hot move, as I was pretty rusty in time management, since I had not sat for a written exam in over two years. So yea, practice that as much as you can. The big mistake I made in the writing portion was that I spent too much time on the first essay, trying to make it perfect that I had to practically rush through the second essay, which had more weightage in terms of marks. For the conclustion, I had just one sentence which did little justice to rounding up the entire essay I wrote. Few things to remember though, do away with long sentences, because they make what is being said more confusing (am not practicing what I preach though). Always make sure that there is ONE POINT PER SENTENCE. Write in active, the dog eats the bone, and never, the bone was eaten by the dog.
Listening...what did I do in listening? I kept reading ahead as the speakers were speaking on the tape, and writing down words and phrases they were saying. So when the relevant word or words were spoken, I just jotted it down. Over here, I think it would be helpful to really try to get an idea of what is going on, since the speakers speak so very slowly, and to think ahead and anticipate. Don‘t space out, stay in the exam hall, and relax, like you‘re listening to the radio or listening to a movie playing in the background.
Reading was tough. I read the comprehension passage, read the questions, and just tried to find the MOST perfect answers. The exact answer is not outright there, I had to dig around through lines, across lines, and sometimes over paragraphs to get the full answer to a question. The matching part was harder. What I did was I took each topic and eliminated paragaphs that certainly could not be related to the former. That helped, though some topics required a judgement call and divine intervention to choose correctly.
For speaking, I just sat down and spoke my heart out, on furniture in my house, of all the boring topics that one can throw at me. Anyway, the key to speaking naturally for me was that I just did away with the shyness associated with speaking in English. If English is not your mother tongue, and you converse in your mother tongue with your family and friends, you would naturally not suddenly start speaking in English with them. Even if you do, you would hesitate and become all shy and tongue tied, and what happens is that it just does not flow smoothly. So try to overcome the hesitation that comes with speaking in English, and try to randomly speak in English with your friends and etc, to get a feel of it on your tongue, so it does not end up being all artificial and wooden when you really need to put it to the test. Do use simple words and try not to accidently put in a word from your own language, normally a word that is commonly used to end a sentence or show an exclamation or expression.
So that is what worked for me. I nearly missed the exam because it was raining as I was about to go, and I was having breakfast at the other end of the city. I arrived in the hall, out of breath, and with pounding heart. But I left my nervousness and excitement outside and walked in, ready to sit down and do the test , which in many ways, did test my limits. Hope I am of any help to you and please do ask if you have anything on your mind.
