Background: This esl podcast is about preparing for an examination. We have a dialogue between two students. One student prepares very well, while the other likes to study at the last minute. Have a listen and learn vocabulary and phrases about preparation. Come and listen to a fun English learning podcast, and also now you can discuss it on our forum! Discussion forum
Exam
ESL Conversation
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A: How’s the studying going?
B: I haven’t started yet. I’m thinking of going on a caffeine bender and pulling a couple of all-nighters
A: Cramming is the worst way to prepare for an exam. There is no way your brain can process and absorb so much material in such a short time.
B: I used to cram all the time in high school and did just fine.
A: It can work on easier tests but don’t get over-confident. This exam is going to test your understanding of the knowledge rather than just ask you to recite facts. Have you at least been going to class and keeping up?
B: No, I’ve missed most of them. I’ve been in party mode all semester. I’m usually good in physics, I was just hoping to skim over the chapter summaries, do a few practice problems, and wing it for the most part.
A: This is all new material. It takes time for these concepts to really sink in.
B: The test is all multiple-choice. The answers are right in front of you. It’s all process of elimination.
A: That’s a huge misconception. Multiple-choice tests can be really tough. Sometimes the answers are so similar and you really have to know the material inside and out to do well.
B: We’ll see. How bad would you feel if I ended up beating you on this?
A: I can’t see it happening.
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Key vocabulary and phrases that are discussed in the podcast:
Caffeine bender – A bender is a slang term for going on a spree. It’s usually when you do something unhealthy without taking a break from it. An example would be, “I was on a drinking bender all weekend”.
All-nighters – This just means that you stay awake all night doing something.
Cramming – A method of studying where you try to learn a lot of information in a very short time. Usually it doesn’t work very well and students who cram are often a little lazy and procrastinate studying until the last possible minute.
Keeping up – Staying up to date. Not falling behind. The sentence, “I’ve been keeping up with my school work.” Means that you understand the material taught up until that point. You can also talk about keeping up with a race. Someone could say, “We should go for a bike ride today. Do you think you will be able to keep up?”
Party mode – Being in some kind of a “mode” is just slang for saying that you have been doing a lot of it lately, and your mood and feelings are appropriate for doing that. You could say, “It’s been a great vacation. It will be hard getting back into working mode”.
Skim – Read over quickly and briefly.
Wing it – Do something with very little or no preparation. “She has a natural talent for giving speeches. I heard she didn’t prepare for that one and was able to simply wing it”.
Sink in – You can talk about knowledge or concepts “sinking in”. If you totally understand a concept you can say that it has “sunk in”. If you ask someone, “How does it feel to have won the million dollars?” The person might reply, “I don’t know, it still hasn’t sunk in”. That means they are still so surprised, they haven’t really been able to fully accept what just happened.
Process of elimination – This is a method of finding out an answer by ruling out all the possibilities except for the right one.
Misconception – Something that you wrongly believe to be true. It’s a common misconception that all Americans are rich.
Inside and out – Knowing something inside and out means that you know something extremely well.
August 8th, 2008 at 10:50 am
One of my friend took part in skydiving course just for fun.oh yea and also he said that once in his life he got a chance to feel like a bird.what a fantacy!
Everthing was going pretty good till it came to the big day.real flying!!!
He seemed quite cool about that though.he said he had enough time to sink all these necessities in.He was ready to be like a bird already.woow!
During his parachute jumping ,He made a wrong move just before he jumped out of the plane.For some reason,He forgot all the proper steps to land in safely.In a word horrible.He hurt his leg really bad.It could have been even worse.But looking on the bright side ,His wings still are in its place(:
Considering the instructions more important than everthing ,showing extremely self-esteem on a subject requiring a lot preparation ,to top it off trying to be like something else was a totally misconception.
To me, it was a ridiculous act trying to keep up a bird(:
Sorry for my faults already
Take care cool guys
September 16th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
wow.. Nisha,
I salute your creativity of making all the vocabularies (which you have learnt from Andrew and Addison) into an easy.
It\’s not an easy job to \"wing\" it over.. =)
To me, it\’s awesome. It must have a lots of preparations before coming out this easy.
Good trying, I think I should try this also.
Keep it up. =)
Dawn Oon
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:12 am
i would do like to learn same new word because i am going to do ielts test in 13 of december and the in text i very difficult to understand . i am very nervous coz i don’t know if i will past the exame i know i have to practi more my writting and learn a new words i tking my listening is good i understand what i say me but the readining is it little baldy otherwise i have to study more than i have to did . i writtining that coz i need we help to improve my english we can help me
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