Two alternatives to proficiency head banging

Fun stuff to do out of school

Instead of panicking to get the proficiency when you don't need it, our advice is: chill out. The overwhelming majority of kids in their mid-teens don't need anything more than the FCE with an A or a B. If you have a good First Certificate in English at that age, you have all you need to really start to understand and appreciate movies, lyrics, websites and books in English. Find a subject you are interested in, like wargames, lovemetal, body art, bikes, web design or whatever, and start reading lots of stuff in English. Without doing a single multiple choice question your English will improve, and if you really do have to do another exam in the future it will be a piece of cake.

IELTS: the way forward

If you are really stubborn and insist on doing another exam now, we advise you do the IELTS. This is the grooviest exam on the market at the moment, and it's not a monkey exam (as they say in Greece) like the Michigan. It is a serious exam from Cambridge university in collaboration with a few other educational organisations.

Check this out: EVERYBODY GETS A CERTIFICATE. Each section begins with slightly easier questions and they become progressively harder. When you get your certificate it will give you a mark from 1 to 9. If you get a 7.5 or 8 you are on pretty much the same level as someone with the proficiency. And guess what: no grammar or vocabulary questions!!! They just check how good you are at doing the things you will actually have to do in real-life English-speaking situations: reading, writing, listening and speaking.

Fullspate believes that this is what exams should be like. Everyone should get a certificate. There is something sadly wrong with a system in which so many students come away empty handed.

It is also worth noting that if you want to go to a British university they would prefer you to do the IELTS exam. Different departments will demand different scores depending on how good they think your English needs to be to do those particular courses. To do an engineering course you might only need a score of 6.5. To do psychology or philosophy, where you need to be more articulate, they would demand at least 7.5.

For more on IELTS contact the British Council or go to www.cambridge-efl.org