New achievement

A couple of weeks ago I attended C1 Certification exams at the EOI (Official Language School) with the humble intention of assessing my level the same way I did back in 2011. I was not really sure I had the skills needed to pass all the exams, in part because of the lack of speaking practice, to give an example. However, that was the point of signing up for it, to test those skills. That's what exams are for, right?

Well, the exams were all on the same day. In the morning, I had the speaking related evaluations (they took me around 25 minutes in total, and they were carried on in pairs). In the afternoon took place the rest of the exams (reading, writing, and listening), and they lasted for around 4 hours. All things considered, I must admit that I really enjoyed it.

In my view, my worst performance was during the first part of the spoken part (mediation). I didn't even know what that was before that morning, but I did my best, and in the end, I realized that it had been my weakest point. During the afternoon, I felt quite inspired, and I left the place with a feeling that my results on those 3 skills should be good enough to pass.

A couple of weeks later, the grades were published and I got really surprised. Apparently, I had missed two of the exams. I couldn't believe it, I knew I had been there, and it hadn't been a dream. The other results were the way I expected, but I would have to wait until the exam review day to find out what had happened.

After a long weekend waiting, on Monday I went to the EOI building to check my exams and to ask for an explanation. And the explanation was easy, there had been a human mistake while passing the data to the computer. The teacher who made the mistake apologized repeatedly, and we went to the head of the department to explain to him the situation and ask him to change the grades. Then, after all, I had passed the exams, and now I have a certified C1 level of English.

The exams made me realize how much I still have to learn, but at the same time helped me to see how far I have gone with a lot of self-learning, and some external help to practice speaking, get confident, and enjoy having conversations in English. This means a lot to me!