Struggling to nail that CELPIP score? It can feel like a tough grind, right? And if you're struggling with multiple attempts at getting the CELPIP score you need, but you just can't seem to nail it, well...that can be downright discouraging!

But here’s the deal: if you keep doing the same thing, expecting different results, you're probably just going to wind up in the same stuck spot where you are now.

It’s crucial to stop and evaluate your approach—what’s working, what’s not, and what changes you can make to your study system.

Today, I’m sharing my 5 (almost 6) year journey of fighting chronic back pain, and the many failed treatment plans I've been trying to follow that seem to work at the start, and then end of as a fail.

The lesson: don't keep doing what you're currently doing if the results you're getting aren't what you need to be getting!

Need help checking on your CELPIP preparation process? Hit me up for a free 30 minute consult. We'll check out your current prep plan, and I'll do my best to help you make sure you're doing the right things, and that you're stopping doing the wrong things to get you the score you need. To take advantage of this offer, just go here. (Yes, it's totally free!)

So before you dive back into that exam, let’s chat about how to revamp your strategy and set yourself up for success.

Setbacks can be tough to navigate, especially when they involve something as crucial as the CELPIP exam. I recently heard about a Reddit user who faced the daunting challenge of taking the exam seven times without the success they were hoping for. Their perseverance is commendable, but it raises an important question: Are we effectively using our time and resources? If you find yourself preparing for an exam over and over again without improvement, it’s time to reassess your approach.

What is your current system, and how is it working for you? In my own experience dealing with chronic back pain, I realized that sticking to the same treatment methods was not yielding any significant improvement. I had to switch from general physiotherapy to more specialized care focused on my specific issues.

This change not only provided relief but also made me reconsider the importance of adapting my strategies based on the results I was seeing. For anyone preparing for the CELPIP exam, this could mean exploring different study methods, seeking specialized help, or immersing yourself in English to build your skills more naturally.

Need help figuring out what might not be working right in your CELPIP prep system? Set up a free 30 minute chat with me, and I'll help you focus on the right things in your CELPIP prep.

As you prepare to take the exam again, I encourage you to pause and critically analyze your preparation strategies. Are they truly effective, or are you simply repeating the same behaviors that led to previous outcomes? If you keep receiving the same scores, it might be an indication that it’s time for a change in your system. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you need assistance in evaluating your current methods. Together, we can identify what’s not working and find new ways to help you succeed.

Takeaways:

1. Persisting through multiple attempts, like our Reddit friend, showcases incredible grit and determination.
2. Before retaking the CELPIP exam, take a moment to reassess your preparation strategies and approach.
3. Changing your preparation system is crucial if you're not seeing improvements in your CELPIP scores.
4. Surrounding yourself, and engaging with English speakers is essential for improving your language skills effectively.
5. Consider seeking out specialized help for your specific challenges rather than general advice.
6. Understand that your current CELPIP score reflects your present level of English, not your potential.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. Cambridge dictionary meaning of system: A way of doing things.
2. Get personalized help with your CELPIP prep. Book your no cost 30 minute consult right here.

You know, I keep thinking about that person that I was talking with you about over on Reddit who had taken their CELPIP exam seven times, and each of those seven times they had not been able to get the result that they were looking for. And I just keep thinking about them.

And for one thing, I totally admire their courage and their tenacity and their grit and their I am not going to give up. I'm going to keep trying. That attitude I totally admire.

And I want to say, if this person ever listens or ever hears this, or if maybe you find yourself in that situation where you've been trying and trying and you just can't seem to get the result that you need, but you keep getting up and trying again. Number one, I want you to hear me saying and encouraging you to keep going. Don't give up. You've got what it takes to be successful here in Canada.

You've got what it takes to, to learn how to use your English effectively. You've got that.

What I do want to encourage you, though, is if you're getting up after failing that seventh attempt at the CELPIP and you're, you know, mentally trying to prepare yourself to try it again, what I want to encourage you with today is that before you go out there and try it again, I want to ask you to pause for a minute and just think for a second about the things that you've been doing up until this point that are giving you the results that you're getting.

In other words, I want to ask you to not do the same things that you've been doing, because something in that process, in those steps that you've been following, are giving you the results that you've been getting, which is that those seven failed attempts. And again, I'm not trying to tell you this as a way of discouraging you or throwing shade on you.

I don't know if you know that expression, but I'm not trying to throw shade on you or shame you. I'm trying to ask you to think differently about what you're doing. Because in reality, we all do this. All of us have systems that we follow.

And if you're not sure what I mean by systems, if you go to the Oxford Dictionary Online and I'll include a link to this in my show notes for today. But if you go to Oxford Dictionary Online and you search up what system means, it means simply, and I quote, that it's a way of doing something.

Your system is a way of doing something. So the things that you've been doing to get ready for the CELPIP exam.

Those things make up your system, and your systems are what give you the results that you keep getting. And like what I said a moment ago, all of us use systems in our lives. I use systems, you use systems.

And for better or for worse, they are the things that are giving us the results that we keep on getting in our lives.

And I want to tell you about something that happened to me this week that just has me thinking very carefully and very, with a lot of amazement a lot about how systems work. If you've been a listener to this podcast for any length of time, you've heard me talking about my back. I've got a bad back.

And it's been that way for, like in, in the, the challenging state that it's been in for the last six years or so. And by challenging state, I mean I feel pain on a day to day basis. Every day, every day.

And I've been taking, I've been doing treatments all those six years. I started working with chiropractors, and there's one chiropractor in particular that totally helped me to get back on my feet again.

My back blew up right around when the pandemic was starting and I could not move. I was on my back, unable to go to work for two months.

And it was thanks to visits with this one chiropractor that got me up on my feet again and moving. And because that worked, that initial visit had results, I stayed with this guy, working with him for, oh, probably over a year, maybe even more.

But you know what? There, there got to be a point where the, those initial benefits of working with this one chiropractor seemed to stop going places.

It seemed to stop working.

And instead of me continuing to go on an upward trajectory of getting better and better, it just felt like I was always in this cycle of feeling good, going out of the session with him, and then, you know, sometimes hours later starting to feel that back pain again and having to go back and see him sometimes multiple times during the week. Like, it was just like this cycle of having to go back and get treated again.

So two years go by, or a year, I can't remember how long I stayed with him, but it got to a point where my wife encouraged me, you know, if you keep doing that, you're always going to keep getting the same results. It's time for you to look for something that different. And so I started doing physiotherapy. And at first that physiotherapy it was different.

I was doing exercises instead of only spending time having, you know, my back moved around and cracked and things like that. So I started to do exercises and guess what? Those exercises started to help.

Like I would go sometimes a day without feeling that, that pain that has always been a part of my life. But eventually those same exercises stopped having the results.

Like just like in the last like six months or so, I've started to notice the same things happening. My back wasn't getting any better. I just kept on, you know, I would have moments or pockets of time where my back felt good.

Sometimes that would last for a couple of hours, sometimes that would last for, you know, half of a day or maybe even if I was lucky, whole day where I wouldn't even be thinking about my back. But then the pain would always return.

And I mean just in this, in the past, like two or three weeks with, I don't know if it's weather related or what, but my back has been really raging. Like it has been coming back with a vengeance and letting me know that it's upset.

And I've had a lot of very painful days and it's gotten me thinking again about my process, my system that I am using to treat my back.

I've been going with the same physiotherapist for the past probably year, year and a half and again I'm starting to get the same like diminishing returns. Like I'm doing the same things but I'm not getting the results that I need.

And so that's just like our friend over on Reddit, maybe you that you've been working so hard to try to get the results that you need on your self of exam and, and maybe at the beginning it worked. It was helping you to develop your skills and to maybe achieve better scores. But you're hitting this wall and you just can't seem to get through it.

That's what was going on with me and my treatments. I was hitting this wall. At the beginning they were helping, the treatments were helping.

But now like a year or so into it, with this latest round of physiological, now it's not working anymore. And so I was faced with that. I've got to change my system again.

And one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about, and I feel kind of dumb in saying it, but I realized that the people that I was going to see were professionals.

They were registered and regulated by the government and everything, but they were like generalists, their, their focus of physiotherapy was like, just in general, like general body work. What I have is lower back issues. That's where my pain lives.

It just lives in the lower part of my spine and it is there and it hurts and it's always angry. It feels like. And yet I was always going to someone that worked with all the parts of the body.

So I started looking around to see if there were specialists in my area and I, I realized that, boy, that's a long time over, you know, five years of working with generalists to realize maybe I need to zero in and focus on, you know, what I really need help with. And sure enough, there were specialist clinics in my area.

I looked one up, I set an appointment, like last week, I went to see them and the visit was very clinical, very professional, very medical oriented. And the guy was nice enough. I mean, he wasn't, you know, rude or condescending in any way.

He, he quickly looked through my, my X rays and all my medical history and then he just went right into education.

He pulled out, you know, a life size model of the spine and he started to walk me through what was going on with my spine as some of it wasn't new information for me, but there were some things that, that were. And I walked out of that initially with this message. There's nothing that you can do to change the way your spine is because you're 50 years old.

I am, I'm 50 years old. And your spine has grown into the shape that it's in and you can'. Change that shape.

So that pain that you're in, well, there's not too much that we can do about it.

And I walked out thinking, okay, that was new kind of information for me that, you know, I'm 50 and maybe by now my spine has molded into that shape and there's nothing I can do to change it around. And initially, like I said, I just took that information.

I mean, this was a doctor, this was somebody who knew what they were talking about and they were giving me this scientific information. And I just took it, I received it and I thought, well, that must be the way things are.

And this happened on a Friday afternoon last week, last Friday.

And at first I was happy with the results, thinking, I finally know why, you know, why my treatments keep ending up over the last five years, keep ending up in pain. Like it's not resolving the issue. Maybe it's that my spine just can't shift out of the, the shape that it's in right now.

And, but as that, as Friday wore Into Saturday and Sunday, I kept thinking about it, and it started to bother me. Instead of helping me, it started to bother me that I was getting. I felt like I was getting boxed in.

And I know that the guy, the doctor, was not trying to be that way. He was just trying to be honest and give me his professional opinion. But I felt unhappy with what information I was given.

And so I spent the greater part of Sunday googling and using AI, like feeding it some of my, you know, my X ray results and just asking, could you help me to find an alternative person to go and see in my area? This is my situation. Are there other per people that I could talk to?

And sure enough, it surfaced like three or four different clinics that I could approach and look to.

And they highlighted several different therapists and several different, you know, professionals who were focused in on exactly the issues that I was dealing with. And so to make this long story a little bit short, yesterday I had my first session with this new person, and it was amazing.

It didn't solve my issue, but number one, there was like this immediate. I felt an immediate connection to this person. It was like they understood where I was coming from. They spoke my language.

They understood my language of pain, like talking about where it was hurting and how it felt and where it was. And they took the time to really listen. And then they started to give me some treatments.

And in fact, the guy made me this promise as we were starting. He said, you are not going to leave this room in pain, or at least in the same level of pain as when you came in.

And yesterday, let me tell you, was a horrible pain day for me. On a scale of 1 to 10, I was probably at an 8.

And when, when I was in that room, he asked me what my level of pain was before we started working on my back. I told him, yeah, it's at about an 8. And then we got to work and we did a couple of exercises.

Well, one, it was just one exercise, but with several different levels to it. And by the end of that 45 minutes that I was with him, the pain in my back lessened considerably.

I would say to down about a three, which was quite amazing to me. And so the way that I was working on my back, the system I was following needed to change. And that's what I'm getting at with you today.

What I want to share with you today, I need to change the way I'm working on my back. I now have new exercises to follow, completely different from what I was doing before. And so Far, this is just, you know, day one.

So far my back has been quite happy and by now I would have been already starting to feel my back starting to get painful again. So I'm using a new system. I know it's early.

I know that, you know, my back has this history of responding well to initial new treatments and then, you know, weeks or months later, it, it just kind of starts to ignore it. So I'm not saying, you know, I've found my answer. No, not at all. But what I'm trying to say here is that I realize I need to do something different.

And if you, my friend, now let's talk about you and your celpip.

If you are the one who are, who is struggling with multiple attempts at this exam and you just can't seem to get the results you need, my first encouragement for you is to learn from, from me in the sense of not doing the same thing over and over and over again.

Just because you're used to doing it that way, just because it's maybe convenient for you, because that's the way that you're used to working to get ready for your exam. Think carefully about this. The things that you are doing are giving you the results that you're getting.

And working harder at doing those same things is only going to give you the same result better. You know, it's not going to help increase that level of English that you need.

It's not going to help you to get that score that you need on this lpip. So before you rush into trying to do the exam yet again, pause and look at the things that you are doing.

Are the things that you are doing really helping you move in the direction that you need to be moving? Or is there something that, that you're doing that is keeping you where you are stuck? That's the first thing.

And, and if you need some help looking at that system, because sometimes you need an outside perspective from someone, I would like to offer myself as that person. I've been an English teacher for almost 18 years now. I'm a certified SELP UP trainer. This is what I do.

I would be more than happy to look at your system of preparation to see if you can change something that you're doing to help you to get better results. If you'd be interested in doing something like that, check out today's show notes. I'll put a link in there for you to follow.

That will help you to be able to set up a quick, a quick session with me totally free. We can talk about what you're doing and how it's working. So check your system. Don't immediately go into trying to do the test again.

Examine really carefully how you're getting ready because something in there isn't working right. The last thing that I want to offer you today is that, and I've shared this before, I've talked about this before.

If you keep getting the same results on your self with exam, you've been doing this seven times in a row, eight times in a row, and you just keep scoring the same, the same score each time. It might just be that the CELPIP exam is trying to tell you that that is your current level of English. It's not something negative on you.

It might feel negative because you, you want that higher score. But you have to bear in mind that this ELPIP exam, it's, it's designed to tell you what your current level of English is. That's it.

So it's not an exam that if you study harder you'll get a higher grade. It's not, doesn't really work like that.

Like learning how the exam works and learning different strategies to do this exam definitely can impact your score.

But ultimately, ultimately, if your, if your current level of English isn't at that 9 or 10 or 11 or 12 that you're, that you're aiming for, if that, if your level isn't there, no amount of hard work in study and preparation for the exam is going to get you that high score. What will get you that higher score is if you maybe take a step back from the exam. If you can.

I know that many of you, maybe, maybe you, maybe you're facing, you know, an immigration deadline and your score kind of depends on it.

That case, maybe you can't take a step back and I'm so sorry if that is your situation, but if you can step back from trying to take the exam again and instead spend several months just working on your general English skills. And the best way that you can be doing that isn't necessarily by going to English classes. Those can help.

But I think the best way that you can be building your English skills is by, if you already live in Canada, throwing yourself into day to day conversations with native English speakers, throwing yourself into reading things in English that you don't normally read. It's in listening to things in English as you're doing your day to day things like exposing yourself to as much English as you possibly can.

That's happening all around you all the time. It's not like you have to Go somewhere special in order to be exposed to the English that's happening around you. You already live here in Canada.

It's happening all the time, all around you.

But if you're isolating, if you are only surrounding yourself with people who speak your first language, then that is the thing that you need to really push hard against and change. You need to reverse that and make it that English is what you're surrounding yourself with all the time.

And if you do that over the next several months, depending on what your current level of English is, you can begin to see your CELPIP score start to go up as a result. Now, if that gap between what you're getting right now, your CELPIP scores now, and the score that you're.

You're needing to achieve, if it's like a two point gap or something like that, you might be looking at a year or more of this kind of practice in order for your English level to, to increase to that point.

But if it's just like a minor thing, maybe a couple of months of just intensive immersion in the English that's happening all around you every day will be what you're looking for. That's what I wanted to share with you today. Thank you so much for listening.

And again, if you want some help looking at your system the way that you are getting ready for the exam, if you're not sure if you're doing it the right way, hit me up. I would love to help you.

There'll be a link in the show Notes today that you can follow that will set up a free session with me and we'll look at what you're doing and I'll give you some solid advice that will help you to be preparing for your exam. Thank you so much for listening to the Celpip Success podcast. My name is Aaron. I just realized I never.

I've been talking to you for the past 20, 22 minutes or so and I haven't introduced myself. Hi, my name is Aaron.

I hope that you found today's video to be helpful, today's podcast to be useful, and I hope that you'll come back again next time. Bye bye.