Until we go live
Tired of feeling stuck at B2? The 4 things that decide your C1 result
A free live workshop for professional adults who need the Cambridge C1 Advanced certificate (CAE) for a higher-paying job, a promotion or a visa. Sixty minutes with me, and you leave with a score out of twenty that tells you honestly which of the four things is costing you the most marks right now.
Save your seat
Your Zoom link arrives straight away, and I'll remind you before we start.
Free · 60 minutes · live with Issy
Four things, sixty minutes, and a number at the end
There are four things that decide your C1 Advanced result, and most people only ever work on one of them. After each one I'll ask you to score yourself out of five. Write the four numbers down. At the end we add them up, and that total out of twenty is the honest answer to the question you came with: am I ready?
You've been studying English, not the exam
Your English level and your C1 score are two different measurements. I'll put a real Speaking Part 2 task on the screen and show you how one word in the question changes what a good answer sounds like. Improving your English takes years. Learning the exam takes months.
You're studying everything at once
A bit of reading on Monday, a bit of grammar on Wednesday, a random video on Saturday. You touch everything and you finish nothing. I'll show you the five hour study week I give to adults with jobs, and how to find out which paper is actually taking your marks.
The mistakes you cannot see
Practice without correction just makes the mistake permanent. You'll see how your writing is really marked (most people lose marks in Content, not in grammar) and the error log that turns a hundred vague problems into five specific ones you can actually fix.
The date
Without a date, English is the thing you'll do properly when work is quieter. And work is never quieter. I'll show you how the plan builds itself backwards from one day in a calendar, and why exam day is a physical thing you have to train for.
Two people get real examiner feedback
I'll put a Speaking Part 2 task on the screen, two of you talk for one minute, and I give you the feedback a Cambridge examiner would give. It will be kind and it will be honest. Watching it is worth as much as doing it.
Your score out of twenty
Four scores out of five, added up. Most people with good English and no system land somewhere between seven and eleven. The gap between your number and twenty is not more English, and I'll show you exactly what it is.
At the end I'll tell you about the programme I run, because some of you will want help doing this properly and it would be strange to hide it. For the first forty five minutes I'm teaching, and nobody is selling you anything.
Sixty minutes now, or another year of guessing which paper is costing you the certificate.
Tuesday 29 September · 6pm Madrid · free
I'd like you in the room for this one
I had a call with a woman in Madrid who told me she had wanted this certificate for five years. Every time she started a new job she said the same thing to herself: this is the year I pass the C1. Five years. She isn't lazy and she isn't stupid. She's a professional with a career. She just never had a date, and nobody had ever told her what the examiner was actually listening for.
I've been teaching for ten years and I've worked with around four thousand students. Almost all of them busy working professionals, which matters, because a busy working professional prepares for an exam very differently from a teenager at school. And the ones who pass are not the ones with the best English. They're the ones who knew the four things we're covering on this call.
So bring a notebook and bring your questions. You'll be able to ask me anything you want at the end, and I'll stay for as long as people keep asking.
Where you are today is temporary. Keep taking small steps and you will get there.
Issy · English with Issy
I know what it feels like to have a language stuck inside your head
I moved to Spain with a degree in Spanish and Portuguese from King's College London, and I still couldn't speak. There were four different days in those first months when I came home and cried, because I had been so nervous about opening my mouth that I had sat through a whole evening without saying what I actually thought. I could order a coffee. I could not talk about anything complicated, or disagree with someone, or explain why I disagreed. People asked my friends if I was mute.
A degree in Spanish from King's College London did not prepare me to speak. That is exactly the gap my programme is built to close, and it is why my students work on speaking from the first week instead of the week before the exam.
Then the pandemic came and my language school let me go. I could have sat on my bum all day waiting for it to pass. Instead I started English with Issy from the floor of my bedroom, so I could finally prepare students the way they actually needed to be prepared, and not the way my school told me to teach them, which was open the textbook and turn the page. Ten years and around 4,000 students later, I teach alongside a team of real Cambridge C1 Advanced speaking examiners, so the feedback my students get comes from people who have sat on the other side of the table in the exam room.
Everything I'm going to say in this workshop comes from watching four thousand adults try to pass this exam, and noticing what the ones who pass do differently.
Come and find out your number. It takes sixty minutes and it costs you nothing.
Live on Zoom · 60 minutes · free
Same four things, different students
Different countries, different jobs. None of them had better English than you. They had different information.
She came to me with practice scores around fifty to sixty percent, sure that everybody else in the class would speak better than her. Afterwards she said: I realised I'm not as bad as I thought I was.
A journalist in Madrid who had been at roughly the same level for years. About six weeks later her reading was close to seventy percent. She stopped studying everything and started studying the thing that was losing her marks.
She needed C1 for a university place and there was a date on the application. She got the certificate and she got the place. The deadline didn't make it harder. It's the reason it happened.
Until we go live
You already know your English is good. Come and find out what's costing you the marks
Sixty minutes, live with me, and you leave with a number and a plan for the next thirty days.
Save your seat
Your Zoom link arrives straight away, and I'll remind you before we start.
Free · 60 minutes · Tuesday 29 September, 6pm Madrid
Your future English starts with what you do today.
Results are not typical. Individual outcomes vary. No pass is guaranteed. Issy Education Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 17142507.
Join Our Free Trial
Get started today before this once in a lifetime opportunity expires.