We offer only parts of the original tests (which are quite big): two tasks on grammar + vocabulary (Use of English, as it is called in the exam); one task on reading (testing the two reading strategies – skimming + scanning) and three listening tasks. The students who have completed 60% of the tests correctly get a pass, all the rest fail. The testing procedure is very close to the exam conditions including exact timing for each part of the test.

The analysis of the test’s results allowed us to bring out most common mistakes and, subsequently, the reasons leading to them.

A little bit more than half of the students perform with 60 – 70% correct answers. So, what are the difficulties that students face?

The most difficult ones are Use of English and Listening. Grammar and vocabulary parts are quite unusual in the form, and they significantly differ from other tests in current use. These are the so-called “open doze” tasks (texts with missing grammar or vocabulary units); transformation exercises with a key word and a more or less common multiple choice task (with a vocabulary focus). An open doze type task may look like this:

A transformation task may look like the following:

I last visited Glasgow twenty years ago.

for I _____________________________ twenty years.

And students should write: I haven’t been to Glasgow for 20 years.

Despite the fact, that there are coherent texts with titles in the tests as opposed to separate sentences, students don’t see and evaluate the text as a whole. They don’t understand what word should be used for the gap. These missing words are not only individual language items which exist separately from one another, but they exist in a certain context. For example, the expressions “out of sight” and “at first sight” collocate with the same word “sight”, but in order to use each of them correctly, one has to understand the overall meaning of the text.

One of the reasons for such an inability to hear may be the lack of and sometimes even the absence of authentic tapes at the lesson. Doing listening tasks, it’s important to remember that students should listen to a modern recorded language (as authentic as possible) and try to understand meaning first of all, and extract needed information irrespectful of various native speaker accents. In practice (not at a lesson) it is rare that we meet people speaking “Royal” or “Oxford” English.

Often students complain that there are a lot of unknown words and phrases in the text. But the texts are selected in such a way, that the general meaning and necessary information can be obtained through context.

The format of the Cambridge exams is also the basis for the Russian school Olympiads’ tasks. The results of the final round of the all Russia 1998 Olympiad showed that those participants who studied English on the material of authentic coursebooks were most successful.

However, working with the materials of international exams is useful not only from the view-point of preparing participants for competitions. The format of these tasks seems to be more reliable when running tests (final or diagnostic) in contrast with traditional test types – grammar translation of closed type exercises with yes or no answers. The new testing format presupposes a different kind of preparation aimed at developing receptive and productive skills, keeping the balance between accuracy and fluency both in writing and speaking. What have the students learnt from this testing? Firstly, and this was proved by their teachers, the students who had imagined their results to be much better, could realistically evaluate their knowledge. They received additional motivation for learning the language further and more seriously. At the same time, the students who passed the test, were very positively “stimulated”, and this added to their self-confidence. The survey of parents showed that the test results raised their trust in teachers and schools. Sometimes parents make unjustified demands on teachers blaming them for poor knowledge of their children.

Using such tests as diagnostic means allowed the teachers to identify certain difficulties in learning and plan their lessons accordingly.

We would like to hope that this testing format will become more popular in Russia, as it has already happened in Krasnoyarsk, Omsk, St-Petersburg and some other cities, where departments of education are carrying out projects in cooperation with the British Council with the aim of introducing such tasks in school testing and making programmes on the basis of international standards in language learning and teaching.