Hi Chall77, thanks for asking.
Well the whole day started off on the wrong note. The test centre was at Greenford Campus in Greenford, London; literally a 5 minute walk from the station. The actual address is 890 Greenford Road, UB6. Anyway, because I didn’t know the area, when I came out the station, I used the sat nav on my phone, but it ended up taking me to the other side of Greenford! I am such an idiot because I kept thinking, “this can’t be right, I have been walking/running for close to 30 minutes and I have still not reached the venue”. I was following my sat nav looking for 890 Greenford Road but the number on the buildings were going doing down, 548, 546, 544 etc. Yet I defied my own logic and kept thinking my sat nav can’t be wrong. I ended up at the very edge of Greenford about 2 miles from the venue. I literally was having a panic attack running round like a headless chicken trying to find this place, cursing my phone ready to throw it on the ground and stamp on it, thinking “I have paid all this money, taken time off work and I am going to miss the fricking test!” At that point I got a bus back to the station and then walked in the opposite direct from which I had been blindly following my sat nav and eventually got to the venue at 9:10am, 1 hour 10 minutes after I had arrived at Greenford station. And it was only 5 minutes from the station. What a start! So my advice to anyone doing the test at the Greenford campus, don’t use your sat nav (I was not the only person this happened to), just turn left out the station, take the first right, walk to the end of the road, turn left and the college is about 200 meters on your left.
Anyway, the actual test was far less dramatic. It looked like I was the only English person there, there were about 50 of us in total. The listening was easy up until the last 10 or so questions. I think I may have got a few wrong towards the end. The reading test was easy. The writing I am not so sure about. The first 150 word piece was easy, but the second was writing about whether you thought the decline of international travel was a positive or negative development. Don’t think I answered the question particularly well, but demonstrated a good use of English in my answer. So not sure how they will mark that. The speaking test was fine and would be surprised if I scored less than a 9.
So, overall, I would expect to score myself:
L7.5 R9; W8; S9
So no idea what band score that would leave me with.
Results out on 28 February 2013 so fingers crossed.
