The CPE blog!

My dear CPEers,

Our classes are about to begin, and this blog is yet another tool for you to practice your writing (and reading!), socialize with your peers and, hopefully (I'm a believer!), have fun!

The CPE - Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English - is the highest language certificate a non-native speaker of English can obtain, and that's not to be taken lightly! Preparing for the exam will invariably involve vast amounts of reading, writing, exposure to authentic use of the language in a wide array of contexts, careful study of lexis and the like. It's no walk in the park! However, despite how tiring and difficult it sometimes gets, preparing for the CPE can also be fun and stimulating, provided you don't let extra work pile up, you really keep on top of your reading and have a keen interest in the language.

I believe successful candidates for the CPE are those with a natural curiosity about the language, those who stumble upon new vocabulary, for instance, or known vocabulary used in a different way, and notice it, take note of it, learn it. I'll start off our endless hours of talking about vocabulary sharing the story behind the last item of vocabulary I learned: "vis-a-vis".

I am now reading Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, and despite how lame I think some of her spiritual ideas are, I think she writes in this absolutely scrumptious way (sorry, but I have a tendency to associate everything that's appealing to me with food!). Reading her book I have come across a great deal of words/chunks/uses I had not seen before, or had seen but had not paid too much attention to. Anyway, in this particularly juicy part of the story she used the term "vis-a-vis", and it hit me that I'd seen it a number of times before but had never had the curiosity to look it up. Obviously, a look at the context gave me a pretty good idea of what it meant, but does having a "good idea of what it meant" enable me to actually use it? Not really, does it? This was why I went to the dictionary and looked it up.

vis-a-vis -preposition - FORMAL
1 in relation to: I've got to speak to James Lewis vis-a-vis the arrangements for Thursday.
2 in comparison with: The decline in the power of local authorities vis-a-vis central government is worrying.

See? Now I know it! :)

To conclude, I have obviously not looked up every single new item of lexis I've chanced on while reading Eat, Pray, Love (or any other book I've read) in a dictionary; and that's OK! Nevertheless, I have seen all of them one more time, or for the first time, and they are now part of my passive vocabulary; this way I'll probably be much better able to recognize and understand them next time our paths cross. But every now and then (and preparing for the CPE, regretfully, it has to be more often than just every now and then), we chance upon a truly remarkable or interesting word, and we just feel this itch to find out more about it. Presto! That's how you pass CPE!

It is that, then. Whatever you need from here on in vis-a-vis the CPE (ha!), count on me! It'll be a pleasure to help out.

Let the games begin! :)

Higor
August 5, 2009.

PS: The curious reader will have noticed a variety of ways of saying "come across" in the text above. I hope you're one of them.

PS2: If you want to be the next one to write a post for this blog, email it to me: higor@sevenidiomas.com.br.