Getting ready for the CELPIP exam can really mess with your head, right?

Let's dive into the common struggle of feeling like you need perfect conditions to practice, because guess what? That’s a total myth.

I share how I turned an everyday routine—like grinding my morning coffee—into an effective practice opportunity without needing hours of uninterrupted time.

We will explore how even the smallest moments can be transformed into valuable practice sessions, allowing you to weave preparation into your busy life seamlessly.

It’s all about recognizing those everyday experiences and using them to boost your skills for the CELPIP, so let’s jump in and start finding those chances to practice!

Takeaways:

- Preparing for the CELPIP exam often involves battling the doubts and fears within yourself, especially regarding your practice conditions.

- We often convince ourselves that perfect practice spaces are essential, but we can actually practice effectively in our everyday environments.

- Embracing our daily routines as practice opportunities can transform mundane tasks into valuable preparation for the CELPIP exam.

- Short bursts of practice, even just two to five minutes, can be incredibly effective and fit easily into our busy lives.

- Familiarizing ourselves with the specific speaking tasks on the CELPIP exam allows us to recognize and seize practice moments throughout the day.

- Including practice into existing activities without requiring extra time can lead to a more productive and less stressful preparation experience.

Get even more helpful strategies to get ready for your CELPIP exam - grab my free weekly newsletter here 👉 https://www. celpipsuccess.com/

I think one of the most difficult things about getting ready for the self help exam is what's going on inside of your mind.

Like you are battling a lot of different things at the same time.

But one of the biggest things that I think that you're facing is thinking that I have to have perfect practice spaces, long uninterrupted spaces, and, and I just don't have time for that.

That's what we tell ourselves.

We tell ourselves that if it's not perfect, if I don't have everything the way it needs to be, then I, I don't have the conditions right to practice.

And I just want to take you with me right now as I, I've already ground up a lot of my coffee.

But just for dramatic effect, I, I wanted to, to grind a little bit of my coffee with you and show you something that I am doing as a regular part of my day.

I love my morning coffee.

It's part of my, like I said a moment ago, it's part of my regular morning routine.

Do you have a regular morning routine?

Something that you do every day without fail, something that is an important part of how you go about your day.

My invitation and challenge for you.

If you struggle with the idea of I don't have time, I don't have perfect practice spaces.

Like, maybe you don't say that out loud, but on the inside you, you kind of think that, you know, you think that unless I have these perfect practice conditions, then, then I shouldn't practice or I, I don't have the opportunity to practice unless I'm like behind closed doors in my room, nobody's bothering me, I've got an hour or two of perfect space to devote to this practice time.

Then if that doesn't exist, if those conditions don't exist, then I don't practice.

If that's what you're struggling with, then these next few episodes, I hope will be an encouragement for you.

Because I want to talk about how to use everyday things, our routines, and to turn them around into opportunities for effective practice for the CELPIP exam that don't take hours, that don't take perfect conditions.

Like, if you could see the room around me, I am literally sitting in our messy home.

It's not clean, you know, I've got, just after breakfast, the table is still full of, you know, leftover things that I need to put away.

And I did that on purpose.

I just wanted to leave everything out in the middle of a busy day.

And if my wife ever watches this, dear, I'm so Sorry.

It's for a good cause.

Please just close your eyes.

You don't have to.

You don't have to see any of this.

I love you and I will clean this up.

But I wanted to show you that this is mess.

And I'm making this for you in the middle of my mess.

I'm not waiting for a perfect space to record.

I'm not waiting for everything to be all together the way I've done it for the past, you know, two plus years I have waited for perfect spaces.

You know, I have locked myself in my room and recorded for hours on end without any noise, without any, you know, regular things going on around me.

And sometimes, sometimes those lack of good recording opportunities, those.

Those moments where everything is the way I. I want it to be, have been excuses for me to put off making a podcast.

And I know that those things happen to you when it comes to yourself with prep.

So back to the coffee.

I just ground it.

I'm going to go ahead and get it ready.

All right, so I poured the water in and I use my left hand.

I never pour with my left hand.

Maybe it's going to taste differently, but let's just wait for that magical sound, the magical sound of the coffee maker as it's beginning to percolate.

Can you hear that?

Oh, man.

You know, that's one of my absolutely favorite sounds in the whole wide world, is when I hear that coffee machine start to percolate.

That is even when I was a kid, not that we drank coffee, but whenever I went to visit my.

My grandpa's house, my grandpa would always start his day drinking a cup of coffee.

And when I was small, I was, I mean, I was, I was too young to drink coffee, but I just loved the sound of his coffee maker making that coffee making sound, you know, and I love the smell of it.

And now it's one of my favorite things to do is to listen to that.

That coffee maker.

So we're talking about everyday things that we do every day that I think that we.

That you can use to turn it into a perfect celpip practice opportunity.

And all you need, you don't need, like I said in a previous episode, you don't need more time, you know, studying course books.

You don't need more time listening to podcasts.

You know, I hope that you keep listening to this one.

You don't need more time in front of YouTube trying to take in more information.

You need more time practicing and more time using everyday things going on all around you as the perfect Opportunity to practice.

What you do need to know is in order to make full use or full advantage.

To take advantage.

Did I say make full advantage?

No.

In order to take full advantage of these practice times, you should know what.

Like if you're getting ready for the speaking section of the exam, you should know what the eight different speaking tasks are that you're going to face on the examination.

And you don't need to memorize what those eight things are, by the way.

You can just write them down.

Like what I did here.

I just wrote in my notes what the eight different speaking tasks are.

And maybe carry it around with you during the day.

You could have it on your phone.

Even like make, make a little.

A memo on your phone.

I can't remember a note.

Is that what you call it?

Yeah.

Use your note taking app on your phone and write down what the eight different speaking tasks are.

And then you could also.

You should also write down how long you're going to have to speak about each one on the exam just so that you know how much time you should be aiming for when you're practicing each one.

And then go about your normal day.

Become familiar with what those eight speaking tasks are.

Again, you don't have to memorize them.

That doesn't matter.

Just get a become familiar with them so that when something happens to you during the day, you can use those everyday things and turn them into practice.

Like what I was just trying to do in making my coffee.

I didn't just make coffee.

I created a personal experience and I even began telling you a story that was a personal experience for me.

Do you remember?

I was talking to you about my grandpa and I was talking to you about how much I loved listening to him make his morning coffee.

And I loved how that coffee smelled.

It was one of my favorite things, even though I couldn't drink the coffee because I was.

I was too young at the time.

That experience, I think, shaped for me one of the reasons why I love drinking coffee so much today and why I love the.

The ritual or the, the routine of grinding up my coffee.

I'm holding in my hands my coffee grinder that my wife gave me for a birthday present.

I think it was many, many years ago.

You put the coffee in the top, the coffee beans, then you, you close the lid and then it, you just turn this little crank around and around and around and it grinds up the coffee.

And that's one of my favorite morning rituals.

I love doing that.

And I got that love, I think, in part from that experience.

That I had with my grandpa.

So that everyday experience, that everyday ritual that I have isn't just an everyday ritual.

And your everyday rituals that you have aren't just everyday rituals.

They are, if you think differently about them, they're wonderful opportunities for you to practice.

You just need to capture them.

And by writing down what those, those eight speaking tasks are that you're going to be dealing with on the exam, it will give you more of an opportunity to remember.

Like when one of those events happen during the day, like, oh, this, this connects to maybe making predictions, you know what I mean?

Like, see how you can take something that goes on for you on a regular everyday thing and see if there's a way that you can work it into practicing for the Celpip exam.

One minute, I just got a cup of this coffee.

There you go.

Now I think that I'll start to make more sense because I haven't had my coffee and I'm just busy making it so I can make this video.

So what I was just trying to say is don't miss those opportunities that happen all the time all around you.

And you can start tapping into those opportunities by just knowing what the exam is going to be all about.

And again, I've already said it twice, but I'm going to say it a third time because repetition is really helpful for learning.

But you don't have to know or memorize all the different speaking tasks that you're going to face on the exam.

Write it down somewhere so that you have a point of reference, so that you become familiarized with what this exam is going to be asking you all about.

So that when you see an everyday opportunity, you'll be able to much easier see a connection between what you're already doing and how that applies to the exam and turn that into an opportunity of practice.

Like what I just did in talking about a personal experience, in talking about my grandpa and his coffee.

And what about giving advice?

I mean, that's one of the other speaking tasks that you could talk about.

And what I'm going to try to do here is to say, don't just limit yourself to Let me backtrack.

I'm not going to edit this out.

I'm going to show you what you should be doing.

Like when you realize that you make a mistake when you're giving your answer on this, help it.

Don't let that stop you from pushing forward.

Realize you made the mistake and start again and keep going.

Don't, don't stop.

Don't let it make you Think, oh, I suck at this.

No, push your way through it because that's what we have to do in everyday conversations.

What I, I really wanted to say to you is, after you, you like when you have it all written down.

Yeah.

No, Yeah.

So you need to be looking for everyday things that are happening all around you and learn how to use those everyday things as opportunities to practice.

They don't have to be long.

That's something else that's important.

I talked to you about my grandpa and it probably took me about a minute or so, maybe a little bit less, maybe a little bit more.

But in, in talking to you about my grandpa, I just gave you maybe like a small glimpse of what a moment of practice could be.

All it took was a minute or two for me to make that, for me to tell you that story.

And that's all you need when you are practicing.

You don't need to think.

I have to have an hour of practice in order for this to be effective practice.

All you need is just two to five minutes.

That's something that's super important for you to take in, for you to believe when I'm telling you this.

All you need is two to five minutes at a time.

And yesterday I had a session with my physiotherapist and he was telling me the same thing with an exercise that I've been doing that he got me going on in my previous visit with him.

That has been making a big difference.

It hurts like heck when, like, after I do it, my back, it's just throbbing with pain after, for sometimes hours.

But the result after is that I can go a whole day almost without even thinking about my back.

Like, I forget that it's there, which is the way it's supposed to be.

You know, your back is just supposed to be this passive part of you that brings you through, through your day.

Excuse me, I'm going to have another drink of coffee.

So after I do those, those exercises, it does hurt.

But the result is that afterwards, like, after the pain kind of goes away, I forget that my back is even there.

Which is amazing because before that, I was very much aware of my back on a daily basis.

And what he said to me yesterday was, I need to keep doing those exercises more often.

Like, each of the exercises, each time literally is for two minutes at a time.

That's something very doable for me.

Like, I can fit it into my day multiple times during the day.

And I do.

Like, if I have a moment in between an activity that I'm doing at My workplace.

I will lie down in my office, turn off the lights, and I will quickly do that exercise.

Two minutes, that's all it takes.

Then I get back up and I go back to doing what I was already doing.

And then a couple of hours later I can come back and do it again for another two minutes.

And that's what he was telling me yesterday.

Keep up doing those little two minute spurts.

It's not that you need to have long exercise, you know, long duration exercise moments during your day.

You just need to scatter those little tiny ones throughout the day.

Which was what he was telling me to do with that stretch that he was, that he was teaching me.

He says he, he told me that those little tiny moments of stretching during the day are what's helping to release the pressure in the lower part of my spine.

So the more times I do it, the more helpful it will become.

And what I found interesting about my back is that he said that if you do it for too long all at once, you can end up inflaming your back.

So don't go too long.

Instead, scatter those little tiny bits.

Bursts of practice or bursts of stretching throughout your day, Aim for multiple times doing it.

And that's what you need to be doing too with your practice.

Don't be aiming for these long marathon practice sessions and you know, feel discouraged when you don't have those long blocks of time because for everyone, that's hard to find these days.

You're busy, you're working hard, and it's easy to feel defeated in thinking that I don't have that much time today, so maybe I just shouldn't even bother practicing at all.

No, do it.

I mean, in my very confused sort of example about my grandpa, I told you or I gave you an example of what sharing a personal experience is all about.

And it didn't take me too long.

I mean, this, this episode, yes, it's going on now for like 17 minutes.

But, but that if I were to just isolate that little bit, I would see that my story probably didn't take longer than a minute.

And that's all you need for practicing for your SELPIP exam.

Know which, know what the eight speaking tasks are, know how much time each one is, and again, write those down.

You don't need to memorize those things.

And when you see one of those opportunities happen during the day and you will start to notice them, you will start to notice them.

Take time right in the moment.

Like one of the reasons why I showed you this, why I'M doing this in the middle of my messy kitchen table, my dining room table is because I'm doing it in the moment.

I'm doing it in the middle of an already busy day.

I'm not trying to make special space for it.

Maybe I should.

I'm having another cup of coffee.

Another drink.

Sorry, but I'm trying to do it in the middle of my mess.

Which is what you need to do too, with your cell.

Put practice in the middle of your busy life.

Don't try to add to your already full plate.

It's just not going to work and probably you're going to end up not practicing at all, which it's not going to help you.

But if you find ways to turn what you're already doing Making my cup of coffee into a way of talking about a past experience, that is a great way to practice for the exam.

I didn't add to my day, I just included it in something that I was already doing and I feel like I've been repeating that over and over again through here.

I hope that didn't bore you.

And I did it again.

Hi, my name is Aaron.

Thank you so much for listening to the Selpip Success Podcast.

If this is your first time here, I hope you'll come back and I appreciate you stopping in on this podcast.

We talk about things that will help you to get ready for your self up exam, and I've started a mini series around how to include practice into your already busy life.

In the next episode, I'm going to be talking to you about how to link practice opportunities together so that you can turn one of those things that happen in your life where you notice oh, this is the perfect opportunity for me to talk about a past experience that doesn't have to be in isolation of the other speaking tests on the exam.

If you think about it a little differently, it can also open up opportunities to talk about other speaking tasks.

Come back again for the next episode to hear how to do that.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode again.

My name is Aaron and I hope you come back again for the next episode of the Celpip Success Podcast.

Bye Bye.