Dealing with clock anxiety and distractions during the CELPIP speaking exam can feel like navigating through a maze, but today I'll dive into practical strategies to conquer these challenges.

First up, let's tackle clock anxiety, that nerve-wracking moment when the timer starts and your mind goes blank. I suggest a simple yet effective practice routine: time yourself as you respond to speaking tasks and record your answers. This way, you’ll become familiar with the pressure of the ticking clock, allowing you to keep your cool on test day.

Next, I address the common issue of noise interference, where external sounds can disrupt your focus. Incorporating background noise during practice sessions can simulate exam conditions and enhance your ability to concentrate despite distractions. By putting in the reps and practicing these strategies, you’ll walk into your CELPIP exam feeling confident and prepared.

A Deeper Look

Diving into the world of CELPIP exam preparation, today I discuss two crucial topics that often plague test-takers: clock anxiety and distractions during the speaking exam. Many students experience that moment of panic when the timer starts—their minds go blank, and they struggle to articulate coherent thoughts.

To tackle clock anxiety, I emphasize the importance of practicing under timed conditions well in advance. It’s not just about knowing the language; it's about getting comfortable with the pressure of time.

I recommend using your smartphone's timer to simulate exam conditions. Set a timer for 30 seconds for brainstorming, followed by 60 or 90 seconds to deliver your response. This practice helps you become accustomed to managing your thoughts while keeping an eye on the clock, thus reducing anxiety significantly.

I also suggest wrapping up your responses in the last ten seconds to ensure you make a strong conclusion and finish within the time limit. This method not only calms the nerves but also enhances your overall performance on test day.

Shifting gears, I address another common challenge: staying focused amidst distractions. Many candidates report losing concentration when they hear others speaking or environmental noise during the exam.

To prepare for this, we recommend practicing your speaking tasks in noisy environments. Instead of avoiding noise, embrace it! Play talk radio or a TV program in the background while you practice. This strategy trains your brain to filter out distractions, allowing you to focus on your speaking task, even when it gets chaotic.

The goal is to create a cognitive load that prepares you for the real exam scenario. By continuously working with distractions, you’ll build resilience and improve your ability to concentrate, ensuring you deliver your best performance when it counts.

The essence of both strategies lies in repetition; the more you practice, the more natural it becomes to handle the pressure of the exam. It's all about building familiarity with the conditions you’ll face. As you integrate these practices into your study routine, you'll find that what once seemed daunting becomes manageable. Remember, the key to conquering the CELPIP exam lies in preparation and practice. With dedication and these practical tips, you’ll approach test day with confidence and clarity, ready to tackle any challenge that comes your way.

Takeaways:

• Practicing against the clock months before your exam helps reduce clock anxiety effectively.
• Use your phone's timer app to practice CELPIP speaking tasks in real-time conditions.
• Incorporate noise into your practice sessions to prepare for distractions during the exam.
• Focus on keeping your ideas flowing while glancing at the timer to manage your time well.
• Set aside time to brainstorm before speaking; it's crucial for organizing your thoughts.
• Utilize background noise during practice to build resilience against distractions on test day.

Links I mention today:

My previous podcast episode: How do I overcomer distractions on my CELPIP exam day?

Today we're going to take a look at two of the hottest CELPIP practice topics that I've come across with my students over the past few weeks, as well as what I've seen in online discussion forums. The first one that we're going to look at is how to deal with clock anxiety.

You know that moment when the timer starts ticking away in your CELPIP speaking exam and suddenly your brain goes utterly blank in response?

If you struggle with this in just a few moments, you'll have a practical strategy to try that will help you be ready the next time you face that clock. The second hot topic comes from Reddit, where this common question, or a variation of it was posted.

I was just about to start my speaking task response when the person next to me started talking and giving their response. The noise completely threw my concentration and I couldn't stop hearing what was going on around me. It ruined everything.

If your struggle on the CELPIP is staying focused when it gets noisy, then please stay tuned because today you're going to come away with a simple practice routine that will help you get ready for any noise you might encounter on your exam day. Hi, I'm Aaron. Welcome to the Celpip Success Podcast.

This is the podcast where motivated English learners just like you learn how to speak English fearlessly and learn practical tips and strategies to conquer the CELPIP exam. As I mentioned in the opening, one of the hottest topics that I come across is that of dealing with clock anxiety on the celpip.

And by clock anxiety, I mean that when the timer on the cellphone begins to tick away at the start of your answer, you suddenly find that every word you know in English vanishes into thin air. You totally freeze up and can't get two thoughts that make sense come together.

And if you do somehow manage to start getting words out to answer the first question, you find it nearly impossible to focus on what to say next because your eyes are locked on that timer that seems to be ticking away so freaking fast. It's all you can think about and well, you get stuck and before you know it, your time is up.

Here are my top two suggestions for you, and they're directly related to each other. The first Start practicing against the clock. When you practice your speaking task responses on your own, remember, record yourself and time yourself.

This might surprise you because it surprises me, but I frequently hear back from clients that their very first experience practicing their speaking task responses against the clock came when they started working with me again. This shocks me every time I hear it if you've been a regular listener of this podcast, then you've heard me talk about this a few times.

You must practice against the clock so you can get used to how it feels. This means you actually need to time yourself as you give your speaking test responses.

This might sound complicated, but fear not, you likely already have everything that you need in your hand or your pocket right now. Your cell phone. Here's how to do it. First, you need to start now.

The best way to deal with clock anxiety is to begin facing it months before your exam day, not a week or a few days before. You also need to use your cell phone's timer app. You'll need three different times.

You need to set up a timer for 30 seconds for brainstorming and 60 and 90 seconds for speaking. The only speaking tasks that are 90 seconds long are task one, where you're giving advice, and task seven, where you're expressing opinions.

All the rest are 60 seconds long, and the last thing that you're going to need is your cell phone's voice memo app to record your answers. But before you begin, make sure that you don't leave out time to practice brainstorming.

Every speaking task will give you at least 30 seconds to quickly come up with what you'd like to talk about. Except for task five and task six, which will give you a whole 60 seconds. You need to use this time, my friend. And yes, you should practice using it.

The folks at Celpip are giving you this prep time for a reason. Be sure to take advantage of it by practicing how to use it well before your test day and during your practice.

Make sure you're actually working against that clock as you're recording your answer. Keep an eye on your timer. Remember that timer I told you about a few minutes ago?

Before you start talking, hit start on that timer and start watching it as you're giving your answer, my friend. Don't overlook this. This is a skill in and of itself. It takes practice to get used to keeping your ideas flowing while watching your time.

The trap is to pay attention to only one thing or the other.

Either you're laser focused on the clock, which has the tendency to mess you up as you speak, or you forget the clock altogether to concentrate on what you're going to say next and the result is that you're probably going to go over your time limit.

Like I said, you need to practice keeping your eye on the time, not watching it every second, but glancing at it every few seconds is important so that you know how much time you have left. And then you also need to make sure you have time to finish.

Well, make it your goal to finish giving your answer in the last 10 seconds of each time limit. And here's a hint. Use the last 10 seconds to give a quick conclusion statement.

And always try your best to be completely done talking before your time is up. And that's it. Now I bet you're thinking, dang it, Aaron, that's a lot to take in. And that doesn't sound very simple to do.

But I promise you, once you get into doing it, you'll find it's not really as hard as it sounds. But don't neglect this kind of practice.

It's something that you need to actually do if you want to feel calm and confident against the clock on your test day.

And before I go on to hot topic number two, let me just repeat myself here because I know for a fact there's popular opinion out there on the web that claims I don't need to work against the clock. I'm a great speaker. I talk every day in English. There's no need to waste my time doing this kind of thing. It's a piece of cake. Here's the truth.

Even if you are a great English speaker, I promise you that if you're not ready for it, that clock on your exam day is going to come for you. Why? Because it's totally unnatural. It's unnatural to be answering a random, unexpected question with a 60 or 90 second time limit attached to it.

We simply don't do this in real life, do we? For this very reason, the clock is the downfall of many test takers.

And if you don't believe me, start hunting through threads on Reddit or in Facebook study groups. You'll quickly see that it's a topic that comes up a lot. And not being prepared to face this ticking foe has cost many people many points.

And you know what's even worse? Clock anxiety is totally preventable. All you need to do is get your reps in while timing yourself with each practice answer.

The more you repeat this process, setting the right time limit and recording your response against that time limit, the better and more comfortable you will become. And that leads me to point 2 in this answer you must put your reps in. Reps are repetitions.

If you've been following me on LinkedIn, then you might have noticed that I've started sharing videos along with mostly text posts. I've had several goals with my video posts, and one of them is to practice sharing helpful but concise messages in A minute or less?

Well, actually my first goal was just to create and publish a video in the first place, which is me facing my fears and breaking out of my comfort zone. My second goal was to speak for three minutes or less on a topic, which has been relatively easy to do.

But my next challenge has been that one minute or less challenge I mentioned a moment ago. That has been rough actually though now that I've actually achieved it.

But at the time of when I was preparing this podcast episode, I still hadn't done it yet. All my videos were at least a minute and 20 seconds, or a minute and 30 seconds a minute and you know, five or six seconds.

It was always over that minute. Even though I was trying to reduce the time. I just couldn't make it be under that one minute mark. But I finally was able to do it.

Here's how I have noticed is that with each video recording I make, my talking time has started coming down, because that's what I was paying attention to when I was preparing this episode. My most recent video was just 14 seconds over my one minute goal. But guess what?

I've been putting my reps in one or two videos a week and now I've gotten a few one minute or less videos under my belt and I even have a couple that are right on the 32nd mark. For me, that's serious progress. And it's all because I've been putting my reps in the lesson for you.

You need more reps against the clock in order to beat it. When I'm making my video recordings, I'm not just mindlessly yapping away, I'm talking and watching my timer.

This takes a lot of practice, but the more you face that clock, the less intimidating it will become and the more comfortable you will feel working with it. Now let's talk about dealing with noise on your exam day. This one comes up so frequently that I want to address it here with you. Again.

I've talked about dealing with distractions on test day before on a previous episode, so I'll be putting a link to that in my show notes today so that you can check it out if you'd like to go a little bit deeper on this topic. But today I want to share a fresh idea with you.

Previously, In a quick 2 second summary that I'll share here, I shared that to deal with noise on your test day, you need to actually practice in noisy environments instead of avoiding them.

It doesn't have to be all the time you practice, but if you find that noise like other People talking messes you up, then you need to put yourself into situations where that is happening as you practice. This is vital. Don't avoid it. Here's a new idea that you can try. Turn on talk radio and have it playing in the background or a talk TV show program.

Let it play in the background as you're practicing your speaking task skills now. It shouldn't be blaring loud, but just loud enough that you can easily make out what people are saying next.

Set your timer, pull out your voice memo app and go for it. Time yourself. Giving your responses in the middle of the noise. I guarantee you this is going to be a challenging practice session for you.

You'll likely screw it up the first few times and that's a good thing. The stakes are zero. You want to get all the screw ups out of the way when it will cost you nothing more than your time.

Just like putting in your reps against the clock will help you not get tripped up by it on test day, putting in your reps in the noise will also help you give your responses on test day and not be thrown off by it. Here's why you need a special kind of noise Cognitive load. That's the simple two word answer. Here's what it means.

Cognitive load refers to the mental effort it takes to process information. When too much information and from multiple sources comes in at once, it becomes harder to actively pay attention.

I'm pulling this quote from the BBC and it's by a writer named Christian Jarrett. Extraneous cognitive load.

It means the demand on your working memory capacity imposed by distractions that are not directly relevant to what you're trying to do. This could be a basic secondary task in the background, such as trying to listen to a news bulletin while you're working at the same time. End quote.

Having someone else talking in the background either on the radio or on a podcast or on a TV show can be a great practice activity for you because you need to learn how to tune it out so you don't get distracted by while you speak. And remember, these distractions don't need to be loud and overpowering. Keep them as gentle background noise the first few times.

You might suck at this, but keep going. Repetition will help you get better.

And best of all, if distractions on test day are your nightmare, this kind of pre work can take you far to get ready for your big day. I hope you'll give these ideas a try. I promise you that they work, you just need to do them.

What I like most you don't need anyone else to help you to do it. You can totally do these on your own. They are simple but powerful. And I know they'll make a huge difference for you.

Give them a try and let me know how they work. That's it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you back here again in two weeks. Bye. Bye.