Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World

Taking an Exam to Force Your Level up a Notch
In my opinion, the fastest path to reaching mastery in a language is the
opposite of what many of us typically do. We tend to have structured
academic lessons at the start, followed by lots of exposure later on when we
feel “ready” to naturally progress toward perfection.
If you follow the advice in the previous chapters, you will of course be
getting all that exposure and practice in your early stages and you won’t
make it about exams and completing chapters of language learning books.

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But this kind of structure can be precisely what we need in later stages.
That’s why I recommend you consider aiming to take an officially
accredited examination for your language that is one level higher than
where you feel you are now, which will force you to work up to that level.
Find an exam appropriate to your language and see if the exam date set for
the level above your current one is within a realistic time frame for you to
attempt to take and pass it. Then you will typically find past examples and
study materials, and you can focus on becoming more familiar with how the
exam works for your next desired level.
People who enjoy the technical aspects of language learning may even
get great benefits out of taking exams in the earlier stages. I know many
successful language learners who pace themselves by taking each level—
A1, A2, B1, B2, and upward—every few months. This can be a great way
to be absolutely sure of your level, but I find that due to the academic nature
of the tests, I personally get more benefit out of taking exams only in levels
B2, C1, or C2, at the levels where a more academic approach is more
beneficial to my language learning strategy.
A looming deadline forces you to do things you may avoid in the earlier
stages, such as sticking to the kind of material you may not otherwise have
the patience for.
I have prepared to take three C2 examinations—one in Spanish, which I
passed safely; one in German, which I failed by a hair; and one in Italian,
which I prepared for but didn’t take due to travel issues. In each case, my
otherwise fluent level was forced up several notches. I have also met up
with teachers to review written exercises I’ve done. We discuss complex
themes so I can expand my vocabulary and turns of phrase, and they assign
me readings that I will be tested on in the next lesson.
There are people who are structured enough to do this themselves
throughout their learning experiences, but I think most people prefer to use
the language in ways more immediately relevant to them. They require a
little guidance to get them to do exercises or read about and discuss topics
they might not otherwise. Without this extra nudge, most of us would only
expand our language abilities in topics we find interesting, but in the real
world, we have to use our language for more than just this.
This exam structure helps us bring our levels up, and I think it definitely
has its place. It should just be applied less at the start and more near to the
end, when we have the meat of a language and require refining. It can give

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us the sophistication and command we require to use the language in as
many situations as possible.