Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[ClarissaMach]

Dear friends,
I'd like to share with you something very interesting that happend to me today.

Driven by curiosity, I decided to do an online proficiency test in my native language, Portuguese (all I had to do was to search for the words "Portuguese" and "proficiency" at google).

I did the test and although I was able to answer all the grammar questions without commiting any mistake, I couldn't help noticing that there were some dubious questions in which more than one of the given answers would fit.

What is more unbelievable is that I failed in two questions of Portuguese reading comprehension . . .wow! I always thought my Portuguese was impeccable! Should I be ashamed? Or that whole test was too ambiguous?

To make things worse, I noticed two grammar mistakes in the text we were supposed to read and comprehend. I even send an e-mail to the owners of the website asking them to correct it. They already gave me a reply, believing I was someone trying to learn Portuguese. . . .

Well, all this blah-blah-blah was to ask a simple question: what do English native speakers have to say about the English proficiency exams? Do you find it hard to do? Ambiguous and so on? Please tell us!
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Stormy Weather.

[ieltsinsider]

I wouldn't worry about it, Clarissa. First, everyone makes mistakes. Second, yeah, some of the questions in tests are ambiguous. Third, sometimes you might not be thinking the same way as the person who wrote the test.

I'm a native English speaker and have taken some Cambridge practice tests. Sometimes I got 100%, but not always. Some English tests are really difficult for native speakers, particularly if they haven't been to university.