10 years in Canada and still stuck at CLB 8

Hello and welcome to the CELPIP Success Podcast, the most introvert friendly podcast on the planet, dedicated to helping you confidently prepare for and conquer the CELPIP exam.

If you're tired of feeling nervous, stressed and stuck and getting ready for your exam, then my friend, this.

This is the podcast for you.

Who am I?

My name is Aaron and I've been an English teacher for over 17 years and I'm a certified Celpip trainer and I can't wait to help you get ready for your CELPIP exam.

So today over on Reddit, I came across this question and I wanted to give my response to it because I think that it happens far more commonly than what people would like to admit, unfortunately, because it's tough and.

Well, here's the question.

I am currently struggling with my SELPIP scores and I seriously need help from y'.

All.

How did you bump it up to score 10 for each component?

I honestly do not know what I'm doing wrong.

My recent results are listening 9, reading 7, writing 8, speaking 9.

My goal is 10.

Last year, on my second attempt, I got listening 11, reading 9, writing 8, speaking 9.

And here's the thing.

I've been living in Canada for 10 years and I'm still struggling.

What do I do?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Well, my friend, you have a couple of things going on that I would like to talk with you about.

Now, first of all, what I want you to do is hit pause on all of the hard work that you've been trying to do for the exam, all the running around that I'm sure you're trying to do to try to get the results that you need for this exam.

It's important to hit pause and look at what's going on in your life.

You.

You said some really important things that I want to talk with you about.

The first one and probably the most important one and the most.

Yeah, the vital one that we need to examine together.

And if we were in a one on one conversation, having coffee, this would be probably the first thing that I would ask you about is take a look at your life.

You've been in Canada for 10 years, according to your message over on Reddit.

And what happens when you've been living in a place for that long a time.

And I know this from my own personal experience.

When I lived in Mexico City, I lived there for 16 years.

And I did this to myself.

Just like I kind of bet.

I kind of have a suspicion, a sneaky Spidey sense, if you will, that Maybe you are doing this to yourself too.

Look at your life and see if you've built a kind of invisible bubble around you that's in your first language, whatever your first language might be.

For me, when I moved to Mexico City, you probably know that the language in Mexico is Spanish.

But for me, I built a language bubble in English around me.

Everything that I did pretty much was in English and in.

It's crazy that I did that.

Now that I look back on it, it's hard to believe that I built this bubble for myself, but it happened.

The people that I lived with all spoke English.

So can you guess the language that we most frequently used when we were working together, talking together, eating lunch and supper and breakfast together?

It was mostly in English, some Spanish, sometimes for sure, but it was just easier and faster for us to communicate in English.

And so we did.

The TV shows that I watched, we had cable at that time, so can you guess the kind of programs that I gravitated to when I was there?

English.

Yeah, I watched Friends in English.

That was probably my top and most favorite show to watch.

It was still, you know, live at that time.

It was still going on weekly with new episodes.

It was right around the time when they actually began writing the ending of the.

That wonderful, fabulous show.

My number one favorite show to watch, and still to this day, my favorite.

But I would watch TV shows in English because we had cable and very little of the programming that we would watch altogether with the people that I lived with would.

Would be in Spanish.

It was mostly in English because like I said before, they understood it.

So once again, that bubble was happening all around me.

And when I went out shopping or when I had to go do something around the town, very frequent, I would go with someone else because this boy did not speak Spanish.

So I needed someone around me to do the talking for me.

So even that avenue of opportunity I shut off for myself because I relied heavily on my friends, the people that were around me, to do most of the talking for me.

Which made it pretty hard for me to build my Spanish skills by actually interacting with people.

So I built that bubble.

I built an English bubble around me.

Even the work that I started doing in Mexico City, I got hired to work as an English teacher.

So, hello.

That's all.

My whole life was basically in English, and I didn't really have to use Spanish, which is pretty crazy when you think about it, because here I am living in a Spanish speaking country in one of the biggest cities in the world that largely, for the most part Speak Spanish.

And here I am going around with this bubble, like this invisible bubble in English every single day with very little need to expose myself to the Spanish that was out around me.

Eventually, once I figured out what was going on, and once I figured out, jeepers, it's taking an awful long time for me to build my Spanish skills.

What's going wrong?

I started to realize that, oh no, I've, I've eliminated Spanish in my life even though I'm living in a Spanish speaking country.

Well, I need to pop my bubble and that's my first offering for you.

Check your life.

If this is you, you've been here for 10 years.

I kind of think that you might have built this bubble around you in your first language.

And it's not throw, I'm not throwing shade at you.

It's something that we all probably do.

It's like a survival mechanism.

You probably miss home.

You probably don't feel very confident in your English speaking or your English communication skills.

So you, you look for ways to protect yourself from embarrassment, from, you know, getting into awkward situations where you don't know what to say.

Nobody, nobody likes that kind of thing.

So of course it's a natural process to try to protect yourself and, but unfortunately that protection works like a double edged sword.

You know, it on one hand, yes, it does protect you.

You will be protected from embarrassing moments, from using the wrong vocabulary word in English, from, you know, mispronouncing things, forgetting what to say in the middle of a very important conversation.

You're going to do, you're going to protect yourself from all of those things because of that bubble.

But the cutting side of the sword, the one that's going against you and what you're feeling right now, that you're working so hard to try to boost your score, what you're feeling right now, is that the opposite of the protection.

You know, it's also isolating you from all the opportunities that you desperately need in order to build your English skills.

You need to be outside of that bubble as much as you can, like all the time.

Especially now that you are living here in Canada.

You are literally surrounded, just like I was, I was surrounded by Spanish 24 7, or at least I could be.

And you, my friend, are in the same situation.

You are also surrounded by English.

And it requires a conscious choice to begin pushing outside of the confines of that bubble.

If you've built that around yourself, and I'm kind of vetting that you have, and, and it really does take conscious effort.

Like this is not just like a light bulb switch type of a thing that you just turn on in the morning and it's going to stay on all day and you're going to be outside of your English, your Spanish or whatever your first language bubble might be.

It's not that it's really hard work, work pushing yourself outside of that safety, of that comfort zone that you've built for yourself.

And, and I would encourage you deeply to look at your life, the 10 years living here.

I bet that you've built some sort of comfort zone around you in your first language and that is what is holding you back.

That is what is keeping your scores at an average of 8 when you need an average of 10.

That's the major problem here.

That needs to be worked on now.

It needs to be worked on immediately and daily in order for you to start seeing your scores go up.

Now.

I've read some of the advice that people were sharing with you on the Reddit column.

Some person was saying you just need to study harder for the exam.

And no, no, it's not about studying harder, not yet.

What needs to happen first is using your English skills harder, like on a more frequent regular basis.

That's what needs to start happening.

And my guess is that you probably aren't using it enough and that's why your scores are kind of stagnant at that 8 level.

And they're going to stay there unless you start using your English more on a day to day basis.

That's what 17 plus years of teaching English has taught me.

And that's what three, almost four years of being a certified SELP up trainer has taught me about helping people increase their scores on the self of exam.

It's not usually about studying.

Yes, it's good to learn some strategies which I'm good at helping you with.

But more than anything, when you're stuck at a certain level, it's because you aren't using your English enough.

So that's my first option or idea for you.

Check and see if you have a first language bubble around you and begin purposefully leaning in to popping it.

And number two, my second idea leans heavily into what I was just sharing with you.

You need to not only look at your life, you need to look at your day to day routines.

That's my second piece of advice for you.

Look at what you do on a day by day basis.

How much of it involves you actively communicating in English, be it speaking or writing or listening.

I know that's not really communicating or reading.

That's not really communicating.

But how much of your day by day, your day by day, your day to day, your daily life is actually using your English skills with people who only speak English.

That's the second thing you got to look at.

Are you going through your weeks and your months without really having to use your English skills?

If so, that's the second thing that you need to start looking at.

And yes, it's tightly related to that bubble I was talking about.

It's part of that process of popping your bubble.

You need to look at what you do each day in a different way.

And I've talked about this on previous episodes, but I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is they see the exam as being like the CELPIP exam as being something oh there apart from you.

Like something that you have to go to and prepare for out there, like in a class somewhere.

But my idea is the CELPIP exam and getting ready for it is directly related to your day to day life.

Like what you do every day can have a direct impact on the performance that you'll have on the exam.

In other words, increase your usage and participation in the English that's happening all around you daily and you are daily engaging with it.

And I guarantee you you're going to start seeing your CELPIP scores start to climb.

It won't happen tomorrow.

That's something important to keep in mind.

It's not going to happen next week.

That's also very important.

Like this is not a quick fix type of a solution, but it is the way to go.

You need long work on this, especially if you are at an 8 and you need a 10.

We're not talking about just a weekend of studying here.

The in order for you to jump from like a strong intermediate to upper intermediate level of English, which is what it seems that you have in order for you to go go from an 8 to that's the strong intermediate, upper intermediate level to attend that is like almost advanced speaking and usage of English that my friend can take a year or more of really hard focused work.

And I don't say that to discourage you or make you break down into a pile of tears, although I know it probably feels like it.

But what I am trying to do is try to help you to have a clear and sober view of what you can expect with this.

Like it is hard going to get from that score the 8 to a 10.

It's just, it's not just two numbers is what I'm trying to say.

That represents in many cases a year or More of really hard work.

Okay, so check your daily and weekly routines.

Are you using English?

If not, look for ways to start doing it every single day.

Like don't let a day go by without you using your English skills.

This is super, super important.

My next question for you is, you said that you were, you said that you don't know what you're doing wrong.

Well, my next question would be what are you doing to practice?

Talk to me about what your practice routines are and have you ever.

This might sound like a weird question to ask yourself, but have you ever stopped and, and taken a look at the way you are practicing, like to, to kind of stand outside of yourself and look down at the process that you've been following.

It's important that you do that, like try to write it out.

This is what I am doing to get ready for this help of exam and start writing it down.

Look at the specific things that you are practicing and how you are practicing and also write the results that those, excuse me, that those processes, those steps have been giving you.

Write down what you're doing and then write down the results they seem to be giving you.

Because if you're wanting to start to make changes happening in your process, like in your, in the results that you're getting, you need to examine the things that you are doing to change the result of your process.

You need to change something inside of your process to make or to create a different result.

Like we know this instinctively.

I think if I keep doing the same things, I'm always going to keep getting the same results.

Yet in our day to day lives, so often, and I'm guilty of this too, so often we just blindly do the things that we normally do just because we're used to it, we're, we're comfortable with it and we just keep getting those frustrating results without realizing, oh, I need to change something in my formula, you know, in my process in order to start seeing something different.

So that's my next idea for you.

Look at what you're doing, like actually map it out on paper and figure out what your process is and see if you can start spotting you yourself where one of your processes might be broken so you can begin shifting it next.

What are you focusing on in your process of practice?

Have you been noticing that you are spending more time in your comfort zone, like in your area of strength is what I should say.

That is actually a very frequent thing that people have happen and it's something that I do too.

But I've talked to clients before who Say that their biggest weakness, for example, is in speaking.

And when I asked them about their prep process, they'd speak to me about working heavily on writing skills and listening skills, on reading skills, but they don't mention anything about speaking.

And I get it.

The speaking part or whatever your weak area might be, it's scary.

It doesn't feel good to be in those weak areas.

We like to spend most of the time where we're feeling strong already.

Right?

I mean, I do that too.

But if you're wanting to see something change in the way that you're in your.

In your results, you need to change what you're doing.

And one of the things that you need to check is, am I focusing my preparation time on my areas of weakness so that I can make those changes or see those improvements begin to happen?

Because the only way you're going to see those improvements happen is if you pay attention to where you're weak and learns new ways to practice them and actually practice them.

That's how you get stronger, not by avoiding them and leaning into other skill areas.

So that's my other idea for you and my friend to close.

If you're still not sure what you're doing wrong, Sometimes it's really good to get outside eyes, someone to look at your process, someone who's not, you know, enmeshed in your life like you are and like I am.

I'm enmeshed in my own life.

And I can only see what, you know, what these two eyes can see.

And a few weeks ago, I shared that I started working with.

With a business coach because I felt trapped.

I felt stuck in the things that I've been doing to try to grow my business and trying to grow this podcast.

And I have been doing this podcast for three plus years or so, and I've only ever looked at the problems and the challenges and the victories with my two eyes, and I could only see what I could see.

And sometimes you need perspective from someone who's outside of you and outside of what you are doing.

And when I started working with my business coach and I shared this before in our very first session, and each session has been so helpful.

It's like enlightening.

It's like something turning on a light bulb in a different.

In different ways that you never would have imagined before.

And in my very first session with my.

With this business coach.

But Elena, you have been such a big help for me if you ever hear this.

You have been such a big help in, in helping me to notice things that I stopped doing that I needed to start doing.

And if you listen to this episode, you'll hear it at the very beginning.

You'll hear my introduction with the music and me telling you, like, introducing myself to you.

For some strange, weird reason, like, a few months back, I decided just to drop that and go right into my episode.

And that was one of the first things that she pointed out to me.

Why did you drop that?

Like, it seems it's.

It's very important for people who are deciding if they're going to listen to your show to know if this is the show for them.

And one of the ways that they can find out is by listening to your introduction to find out if this is the show for them.

And how can they find out if you don't have that introduction?

So that was one of the big light bulb moments of that very first episode.

And there's been many other ones as we've been working together.

But I never would have figured that out, at least quickly, without the help of somebody outside looking in.

And that's the last thing that I want to offer you.

If you are looking for someone to look at your processes, your practice routines, and help you to see if there are things that you're doing that's broken or are missing or that are excessive that you don't need to be doing, then I would like to offer myself for that process.

And in my show notes today, there'll be a link where you can set up a call with me for an hour and we'll dig into your process.

We'll talk about everything that you have been doing, all of your frustrations.

I'll listen.

Gladly.

I'll listen.

This will be your chance to vent and tell me everything that you've been doing, everything that you're feeling frustrated about.

And then we'll look part by part at everything that you've been working on up to this point for your SELPIP exam.

And I'll help you to build a strategy, a practical strategy that you can begin using now that will help you to move in the right direction.

So check out my show notes today.

There'll be a link where you can set that booking up.

Thank you so much for listening to today's podcast.

I hope that you'll come back again next week.

Bye.

Bye.