Earlier this month, I took the CAE (level C1) exam. Let me tell you, I was nervous. I thought maybe someone thinks about taking the same exam and would like to know what to expect, so I'm going to share my experience! You'll also get to laugh at some of my stupid mistakes...

Preparation

My high school offers a free preparation class for this particular exam, which I'm really glad I took. If you want to take the exam and have the chance to attend an (ideally free or cheap...) preparation class, I would strongly recommend it! I think they can get quite pricey, though. In that case, honestly, I'm not sure, it would be worth it... You definitely need to do some research, though! There are a lot of helpful videos on YouTube and you can find multiple sample papers with solutions on the official Cambridge website, too. Just make sure, you know what to expect and have an idea of what type of things the examiners look out for.

Speaking

The exam consists of four parts. In my case, speaking was the first part and I had to take it one week before the other parts. I was so nervous!!! You'll have to take the exams in pairs and, luckily, I was with a friend of mine, so we had time to practice together. I really wouldn't want to be with a stranger in that situation.

The speaking part actually went really well! I was nearly pissing myself in the waiting room ngl, but somehow, I managed to be super calm during the actual exam. I could hear my friends' voice trembling a little, but she did really well, too. Those 20 min really flew by quickly. We were both ridiculously relieved afterwards. The examiners were super friendly and definitely helped make us feel more comfortable, but there was an awkward moment after the exam was over where they asked us something (I think?) and neither of us understood what they said, so we both just smiled awkwardly... Yeah, let's not talk about that.

Reading and Use of English

Next up was Reading and Use of English. I wasn't all that nervous about that part. I got quite lucky, it was honestly really easy! Probably easier than the sample papers I did. The 90 min you'll get are really generous, and I'm a slow reader. Reading all these long texts did get really exhausting towards the end, though, especially with the FFP2 masks we had to wear and that was just the beginning of this 3 h 40 min long exam...

The examiners were... interesting. The kept making fun of us lol, but it helped calm us down, I guess? Oh, but we had to take pictures on that day and they'll be on our certificates... I swear, they took those pictures on a freaking potato in horrible lighting and I had to take my glasses off, too... I am not looking forward to seeing that picture again. But I'm digressing.

Writing

That one, I was most nervous for. I hardly practiced and I didn't like any of the tasks in the practice book and sample papers. There's very little time, too. 90 min for one essay and one other text (report, letter, review, proposal or article) is honestly very little. They're supposed to be short texts, sure, but that honestly makes it even harder.

One thing really surprised me: Apparently, when I'm nervous I start using big words :D I fully expected the opposite to happen. I never use formal English and I thought in a stressful situation, it would be even worse. I didn't practice formal writing, either, but my brain suddenly came up with all these weird words I would normally never think to use. Spelling was quite a struggle though... I spend like 5 min trying to figure out how to spell "access" and ended up spelling it wrong anyway ("acsess"?? What's wrong with me????), but I knew spelling was going to be a problem. I only type in English and even with the help of autocorrection it's a struggle. I also accidentally spelled "enough" as "enogh", but that was just because I was nervous. I noticed it the exact second the time was up and the examiners told us multiple times to stop writing immediately when the timer is up and I sat in the very front, so I didn't correct it anymore :( But that really shouldn't make or break it, so whatever.

Listening

I watch even videos on complicated topics on double speed with no issue, so I wasn't very worried about the listening part. Big mistake lol. The audio quality itself was pretty good, but it was a big, mostly empty room and I was quite far from the speakers, so I definitely struggled to understand what they were saying. Here come my two most embarrassing mistakes. Oh boy...

One guy said we did a program because of his interest in ___. I kept understanding "cologene", okay?! I was convinced that dude said "cologene". I had no idea what it was supposed to mean and fairly sure, that that word did not exist, but I wasn't going to leave it blank, so I just wrote down "cologene". My friend later told me, it was "ecology" which makes way more sense, but it's certainly not what I heard. Sigh. But wait, it gets worse. SPEECH WRAPS. FREAKING SPEECH WRAPS. "WHAT THE HELL ARE SPEECH WRAPS" I HEAR YOU ASKING? I HAVE NO IDEA, BUT I WROTE IT. The speaker made a comparison to explain what it's like to photograph wild animals with his special equipment. Speech wraps. It's like speech wraps. I swear that's what he said. I really hope the paper gets corrected by computers only and no actual human reads this... The worst part is that I'll never find out what the real answer was. My friend didn't understand what he said either, but at least she didn't write down freaking speech wraps. God, I hate myself.

As bad as all that sounds, in the end, I think I actually did pretty well. These two gaps were total disasters, but I knew that they were going to be wrong when I filled them. The rest I actually felt fairly confident about. It was definitely harder than I expected, though. The last task in particular was really overwhelming because you had to pay attention to multiple things at once and it went really fast, but I felt good about my answers.

Bonus story

A little bonus story for those who made it this far. You'll get to laugh at me once again, woo-hoo! On the day of the speaking part, my friend and I went by train, as the exam was in a different city. Well, it was a Friday evening and on our way back, some people decided, it would be a good idea to go on the train tracks?? And the police had to remove them, which at first they said would take 20 min. Then an additional 60 min. K, whatever. We were still so relieved, that we didn't care too much. They said, we could go outside since it would still take a long time, so that's what we did about 30 min in. Keep in mind, the train was supposed to stay there for at least another 50 min. We stood right outside the train for a bit, but it was freezing and my friend was thirsty and didn't have any water left, so we went inside the train station to search a vending machine. Spoiler alter: That stupid tiny train station didn't have any. We went downstairs to search further and because we wanted to walk a little. Literally like 2 min later, we go back outside and in that exact moment the train starts moving. We both stand there in silence watching the train leave right in front of our eyes. We were so confused and both looked at each other like "What the hell just happened?" It was so unexpected and honestly perfect comedic timing. Luckily, the next train came like 5 min later. I don't think, we were allowed to take that train with our tickets and we got controlled immediately after entering, but the man didn't say anything, so... Nice.

------

Anyway, those were two wild days. I'll get the results in February. All that stress better have been worth it!!

Did anyone else here take the same or any similar exams? If so, feel free to share your experience! :) And if you have any questions, let me know!