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Tanit Posted 18 years ago
Software & Reviews

Fixed phrases - 2

Choose the correct item.
(Same warning as here Emotion: smile)



From: Evans, V. (2002) CPE Use of English 1 for the Revised Cambridge Proficiency Exam: Student's Book. Express Publishing.
  

Top answer

As a (British) native-speaker of English, I found both this exercise and the previous one relatively straightforward, but I'd imagine that learners of English will find both of the tests a considerable challenge. However, I don't think they should be too discouraged if they score poorly in these tests; I reckon you'd need a near-native fluency in the language (or a lottery winner's luck ) to get all the questions right. That said, I guess the tests do at least provide a useful gauge for advanced learners of English, to measure themselves against a native-speaker's fluency (although I guess too that we have to allow for some degree of Anglo-American cultural bias in the fixed phrases; I suspect that some of them are not universally used in other parts of the English-speaking world).

— Yizhivika

  • As a (British) native-speaker of English, I found both this exercise and the previous one relatively straightforward, but I'd imagine that learners of English will find both of the tests a considerable challenge.
  • However, I don't think they should be too discouraged if they score poorly in these tests; I reckon you'd need a near-native fluency in the language (or a lottery winner's luck ) to get all the questions right.
  • That said, I guess the tests do at least provide a useful gauge for advanced learners of English, to measure themselves against a native-speaker's fluency (although I guess too that we have to allow for some degree of Anglo-American cultural bias in the fixed phrases; I suspect that some of them are not universally used in other parts of the English-speaking world).
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11 Answers
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As a (British) native-speaker of English, I found both this exercise and the previous one relatively straightforward, but I'd imagine that learners of English will find both of the tests a considerable challenge.

However, I don't think they should be too discouraged if they score poorly in these tests; I reckon you'd need a
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Hi Yizhivika,

I agree with you on all counts!

As for the difficulty (as I wrote in the other post) these exercise are meant for students who are sitting for the Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English (CPE). This exam is made up of five papers (reading, writing, En
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Hi Tanit,

I'm glad to find that we are both singing from the same hymn sheet (there you go, yet another English idiom to bemuse learners of the language ).

Anyway, thanks for providing some background to the CPE exam, which I found interesting reading.

I look forward to testing myself against Tanit's Fixed
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This was difficult you"re right.
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I got 6 out of 7. Although English is technically my second language but I've been learning from the age of 4. That combined with the exposure to international media does the trick I guess
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i like it. please update more.
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You scored 1 out of 7

Emotion: sad Oh... It's been for sure a big challenge for me. I didn´t know my English was that bad.
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I also scored 1 out of 7, and yet i think mine is not so bad! Emotion: wink
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Shouldn't question 7 use the word 'practise' instead of 'practice'?
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Hi,
AnonymousShouldn't question 7 use the word 'practise' instead of 'practice'?

If we consider the verb, 'practise' is the British spelling and 'practice' is the American one (look it up here: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.as
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