Improving your English with exams. 

What is 'the backwash effect' anyway?

Language exams are important to students as they are often requested by universities or in jobs. Various countries or their institutions require official language qualifications to study or work there, and globally-recognised exams open doors for candidates. 

But are you improving your English with exams, or are you simply focused on passing the test? Can you take advantage of exam preparation to improve your general language level and pass the exam simultaneously?

Some of us think that improving English and exam passing should be the same thing. Students need qualifications and certificates, but the exam is supposed to reflect the student's linguistic ability. Importantly, exams should provide the structure and material for the learners to improve. Moreover, the study experience should have a positive effect on your learning and your level. Teachers call this effect backwash and it is similar to the feeling of things washing out to sea from a beach, then coming back in eventually. 

Here are a few ideas to get the best of your exams courses and improve as much as possible while you learn to enjoy the learning process. 

Well-known exams

As the world globalises and digitalises, people want to see other places for study, work or leisure. They need an international language for these, and English is exactly that nowadays, especially being the majority internet language. Academic institutions often ask for language qualifications like IELTS or TOEFL. Various countries consider the Cambridge exams to be important official marks of linguistic ability for work or study. There are other official exams and Spain for example, also has an official government language organisation. This is the Official School of Languages (Escuela Oficial de Idiomas), which provides language courses in English and other languages. Many other countries provide official learning opportunities, so there are options globally to get language certificates. 

A language exam is a clear mark of progress and this is one reason why many learners not really needing certificates do exam preparation. However, the majority of students preparing for exams need them for professional or academic reasons. The thing is that many of these students want to learn how to speak in social situations or order food in resaurants, or ask for prices in shops. They want to be able to watch movies, understand songs or make friends with new people. Therefore, their professional needs aren't the only thing they need English for. They need to use their English outside work or study time. However, they are studying exam-preparation courses, so how can the exam materials and teachers help them improve their social English?

Maybe a better way to look at it is how the students can help themselves. 

Passing vs improving 

The thing is, students become frustrated and stressed out about exams and passing because their academic or professional ambitions depend on the qualification. It can be easy to become obsessed with passing. Whenever this obsession mixes with some of the less effective traditional methods of learning, like doing as many exercises as possible to prepare, it may end in failure. It also ends up in a lack of improvement, also known as a learning plateau. 

For example, in Spain, students talk about 'getting the title', which is a common translation for passing and getting the qualification and certificate. Spanish students also have a word to describe the anxiety and obsession with 'getting the title', needing it for academic and employment prospects. The word is titulitus, and it is not good for effective learning. It can exist in any country and the pressure to do well academically sometimes stops authentic improvement of linguistic ability. 

So, how can teachers help students relax, enjoy and learn more effectively? How can they help the learners get the best from their exam-preparation experience? How can improving your English with exams become more effective and enjoyable? 

Linking the two together.

It shouldn't be this way and learning should be an enjoyable experience. Studying for the exam should be enjoyable too as it gives you the chance to structure your learning and development. 

So, there are a couple of ideas you can think about to help yourself when improving your English with exams.

Motivation

Motivating yourself to do anything is essential, but with language learning you should think about what objectives motivate you. OK, the exam certificate is important, but what do you want to do with your English? Would you like to travel across an English-speaking country, ordering train tickets and accomodation as you go on your journey? Do you want to have conversations with new people, friends, work colleagues or potential new employers? You will also have to do all of this when you are working or studying in English-speaking country. 

Exploiting exams materials 

How can you actually use the material that you are using in class to not only prepare for the exam but also improve your level? Well, the teacher might be only using past exams to evaluate your level, but some teachers use the exam exercises to help students develop. 

However, your teacher might not do this. Maybe your teacher gives you exam readings or listening tasks to do quickly in class (or for homework), puts the answers on the board, takes your score then moves on to something else. 

The important thing is task analysis. An exam reading task is full of grammar and vocabulary in context to record and learn from. As a learner, you should realise that less is more! We mentioned earlier in this article that preparing with as many exercises as possible might not be all that helpful. Another suggestion is that the students, or the teacher as part of the lesson, should analyse the exam tasks. If you analyse the reading articles or the listening scripts, you will find lots of language in context. All of this can be recorded into vocabulary notes, and students can add their own personalised examples to help deepen their comprehension of the new language. 

If your teacher doesn't analyse the task, do so yourself and record your vocabulary and examples of new or tricky grammar. 

Study plans for exams students and general learners

Obviously, study plans are possible if you are just studying general English without an exam course. However, the exam gives you the opportunity to structure things and it gives you a crystal-clear objective. Importantly, your structure should centre around your most important tool, which is a language record, or vocabulary book. 

If your vocabulary book is well organised, it will form an effective part of your exams study plan. A good exams, or general English, study plan might contain the following elements: 

1. A language record

Should we call this a vocabulary book? Call it what you like but remember that a well-organised record of study will help you and is essential for revision. Learners should use it for everything linguistic, not just words. You can use it for grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and other linguistic elements. Remember that it doesn't have to be totally nice and tidy, but it does need to be coherent for you. 

2. The Contents page of your course book. 

The contents are a map of the course you are following and can guide you in what you are learning and maybe even what you aren't learning. Is there any grammatical element you need to revise that isn't in the coursebook? Use your coursebook contents as a check list for grammar, vocabulary and skills learnt, then think about what else needs developing. 

You could photocopy the contents `page and staple it into your language record, so you are focused on the course plan as you revise. 

3. Your timetable for classes and self-study.

Have you done one of these or have you marked certain times of the day or week for your study? Managing your time and marking specific times for study creates an internal obligation to make an effort. 

Have you set a deadline for sitting the exam or have you already signed up and paid for it? Calculate your progress and when you feel you are on the home stretch to achieve the level required to pass the exam, then sign up. 

4. Improving your English with exams from previous years, and how to use these effectively. 

It's not the quantity but the quality of the material that will help you improve, so sometimes less is more. However, you should look through past exams for a couple of things.

The first is to time the exam and organise the order of exercises. Look at the past exercises and decide how long you can spend on each exercise so that you can finish all of the exam in the time. In what order should you do it and which exercises are harder or have more points? Maybe you should do these first and also give them a little more time?

These ideas are important for passing the exam as you do have limited time though it's less important for general improvement. However, if you have signed up for an exam to prove to yourself that you are improving, you do want to pass, don't you? Therefore, you should think about what time and order you allocate to the exercises. 

The second reason for looking through past exams is for the content. These exams tend to repeat the same grammar and vocabulary, and teachers sometimes collect a base of repeated items from the exams. This is called a corpora by teachers, and it is a good idea for a student to do this too. The reason language repeatedly appears in exams is that these items are what teachers and language organisations expect of certain language levels. 

Finally, think about the exam task and what the writers designed it for. These tasks have to be very objective, with only one correct answer. Therefore, the answers are very black and white, so the exercises are very reliable. 

5. Improving your English with exams, AND non-academic resources.

These are good as you can integreate them with your free-time activities. Resources like the TV, DVDs, streaming channels or internet sites can be used for reading, listening or audio-visual practice. This is a lot more relaxing and fun than classroom studying. It will help you to change your perception of English, or any language you learn, from an academic subject or task into a part of your life and an essential part of your personal expression. It might help you improve generally but how will this help you pass an exam?

Well, it is important to change your perception of the language from a certificate you need or a level to achieve to an integral way of understanding and engaging with the world. If you do that, the exam result will not be so important, but your own sense of personal improvement will be. 

6. Organising and making your language record visually memorable.

Improving your English with exams should also improve your organisational, not to mention artistic skills. Here are a few ideas for organising that vocabulary record of yours: 

• A stapler is your friend. 

Sometimes, your teacher will give you handouts from class and it is good to keep these notes together with your vocabulary and language record. Why not staple it into your vocabulary book? You can always see the page under and you have a much more comprehensive record of study to revise. 

Remember what we said about analysing the task? Photocopy the transcript from that listening exercise you did in class and staple it into your vocabulary record. Underline examples of grammar and vocabulary, mark the stress and rhythm of language to help your pronunciation, and use different colours whenever you are doing these things. This will help you with specific language items tested in the exam. 

But why would you use lots of different colours? 

You should use colour to make the vocabulary memorable in your mind. Your mind does not only recognise words and spelling, but also colour. It connects images to meaning, so many teachers use things like mind maps in lessons. This is something a learner can continue to do and develop for themselves outside class.  

Therefore, think about these visual aids: 

• Multi-coloured pens. 

You can write new vocabulary in one colour and the definition in another. Learners can mark pronunciation elements like stress in a specific colour to make it more prominent to the eye. Whenever you are highlighting errors in red, maybe you could also highlight your examples of good work in green? 

• Mindmaps. 

These are also known as spidograms, and are extremely useful for not only memorising vocabulary but also putting vocabulary and ideas into groups. They can also be never-ending, and you can continue to add and expand them as you encounter new language and vocabulary groups. 

• Visuals, and picture art. 

You don't really need to be good at art to do this, but a picture can sometimes explain a thousand words. Think about prepositions of position. Prepositions are very difficult to explain with words, and teachers might end up trying to explain the word with that word. This leaves students confused, so why not draw a little picture, explaining it visually? 

• Time lines. 

What are these and how do they help you as a learner? Teachers use these to explain verb tenses and they are another visual tool to explain with fewer words. Students can do the same. 

• Recording errors and using positives and negatives to learn. 

As we can see in the time lines, the artist has included a clear example of what NOT to do, by crossing out an incorrect option. Use the positive and the negative to learn, and ALWAYS include your mistakes, clearly showing them beside examples of good language. 

What is backwash, does it help, and how? 

If you structure your learning, you will have the notes to refer to and this will be something you can constantly refer back to or read and revise whenever you have some free time. Maybe you travel to work on the train or bus, or you have international travel for professional purposes and you can use this time to look over your vocabulary notes. Maybe the exam preparation has made you a better learner and more organised in your learning processes. Importantly, the process of learning for the exam might have made you enjoy using the language more. The trick to improving your English with exams is the learning process, not the final product.

The effect that the learning experience has on students is called backwash and it can be very positive if students follow some of the steps we have suggested here. Improving your English with exams is a common study plan, even for learners who don't need a qualification and it has an effective structure for doing so. It can make learners more confident and a nice certificate is always a good wall decoration. The important thing though, is the student's feeling of improvement. 

Final thoughts and ideas on improving your English with exams.

Remember that these ideas, strategies and resources are options for non-exam students. Even if you are preparing to sit an exam, always bear in mind that the most important thing is improvment. Some students pass, others fail but has your level improved? That is the most important thing. Passing an exam can fill you full of confidence, but the trick is to help the exam fill you full of language and ability. 

Look at our exam prep materials by clicking on the image:

You can also find free exam-preparation materials on the Cambridge website at this link and also at flo-joe.co.uk.