Prove your knowledge of English
After over a decade in London I've had to take an English test to confirm I know the difference between they're/their/there. Unlike some native English speakers.
“Hello, miss. What can I do for you?” a voice asks before I can locate his owner, a smiley gentleman in a stripey blue polo t-shirt.
“I was wondering if it’s possible to print something here.”
“Of course it is. Go to computer number six and take a seat. All is ready” and with a wave of the left arm, the smiley man magically puts me on the swivelling chair placed in front of computer number six, the only one that is actually on.
When was the last time I was in a place like this?
My memory suggests it must have been at least 20 years.
Back in the day this sort of place was always busy, buzzing with people coming in and out and speaking in all sort of imaginable languages. I remember people speaking to each other while queueing outside smoking, or inside waiting their turn to get on a computer or on the phone, where the diminute cubicles could hardly kept any noise out. Not to mention the people chatting on messenger, with an eye keeping track of how much time they had left before their 30 minutes came to an end. It was out of the question to go over time just for chitchat.
Putting a price (€2) on how long we could speak to someone (usually 15 minutes) forced us to be succinct and go to the point in our interactions and the world was a better place for it. Plans were made in seconds, even at thousands of miles of distance and for a future that was yet to come, because that was your only chance to speak and you had to make the most of it. I blame Whatsapp for the chaos it has brought into our lives with its seemingly free unlimited communication as plans can be made, cancelled, remade and re-scheduled endlessly at any given moment of the day or night provided there’s a double blue tick that confirms you’ve been duly warned.
I’m surprised but glad that internet cafes -or their XXI century equivalent at any rate- still exist. You never know when you may desperately be in need of a printer, which for me is today and right now.
As I wait for my USB file to open, I notice the bones of this place are the same as those of so many others I became familiar with when I first lived abroad, when internet and mobiles phones were not a fixture of our daily lives and internet cafes where one of the few places one could go online for a reasonable price. I can’t help to feel nostalgic for a distant past, one where I sent and received good and bad news in a sort of shared communion with those around me, who were also typing about the highs and lows of their lives abroad, their words traveling digital miles before getting to their destination.
There is however a striking difference with the atmosphere I remember and that is that it’s surprisingly quiet and empty here. No trace of the confusion and high-energy that I associated with stepping into an internet cafe, which to date has only been matched by the chaos I encountered when walking the narrow alleys of the medina in Marrakech.
Today, in this place that is an anachronism in the era of mobile phones, flat internet rates and 5G, there are no other languages to be heard other than slightly accented English, spoken softly and politely, and there’s hardly anyone inside besides me if we exclude the man that has welcomed me and another man, who looks bored and sleepy, behind a money exchange desk.
As I let this image of quietness and stillness sink in, and almost on cue, a man with a strong American accent enters the shop, no doubt a tourist just arrived in London as per the suitcase he carries in tow and his interest in buying a UK SIM card. In times past his clear and loud voice would have gone unnoticed in the chaos but today it tears apart the pristine silence I was wrapped in.
My eyes locate the file I need, “Topic Form B1”, and after I click on the print button a familiar gurgling noise follows quickly. I look up to place the printer and as I do so I realise this place probably makes most of its money these days as a luggage storage facility, judging by the suitcases that are neatly placed behind the space in between the computer’s desk and the printer, one after another, all wearing a small tag with a number to distinguish the anonimity of their shapes and dark colours.
Certainly the shop’s convenient location, a stone’s throw from both King’s Cross and St. Pancras train stations, makes it an ideal spot for tourists to get rid of their bags as they make the most of the last few moments in London before jumping on a train, possibly headed to Europe, the land of the free.
As I collect my printouts and head to the counter to pay, another smiley man, different from the one who has welcomed me, who is now busy explaining different types of SIM cards to the American tourist, asks me if I have everything I need.
“Yes. All done, thanks. How much is it?”
“That’d be £2.80, my love” there’s a striking resemblance between him and the first smiley man and it takes me a few seconds to realise he is a different person. “Do you need your receipt?”
“No, that’s alright, you can keep it.” I realise smiley man two has a parting on the side, and smiley man one didn’t although their hair is the same colour (a greyish black, long sideburns) and he is also wearing a striped blue polo, but the blue stripes are wider and slightly darker than the one smiley man one is wearing. Maybe they’re brothers. “Thank you. Have a good day” I say to him as I give the two smiley men, now side by side behind the counter, one last look that confirms their features, like their hair and polos, are very similar but completely different when you look at them closely.
Outside the day is painted in a grey that has become the staple colour of London since the beginning of the year. I call it “London sky”, a unique blend of dirty grey and spots of white that manages to convey the meaning of miserable with astonishing accuracy. Just one look and you know it’s going to be another shit day. I wonder when and if we’ll get a glimpse of spring this year. It then occurs to me that maybe spring has better places to be and I don’t blame her.
I check the time and I feel relieved as I finally hold not one but two copies of the topic form that I need to fill out and present on arrival at the examination centre where my English will be tested in 40 minutes.
Who knows if it’ll be the last time I need to get through this in my lifetime.
Experience tells me that English is a jealous lover that lives in constant doubt of my loyalty, no matter how many years I’ve spoken it or that I have actually chosen it as a university degree and have lived in three different English-speaking countries. Mind you, it is the language in which I have decided to write. And yet, it is never enough. English always demands you prove your devotion and shower it with tokens of your love, and the way it request you to do so is through an English test. Another, that is.
Which I guess it’s the way English makes sure you’re not a linguistic slut, but still, after all this time a bit of blind trust every now and then would be appreciated. No wonder I dream in French sometimes, that dark object of linguistic desire. Truth be told, French is such a generous lover in comparison considering the neglect I submit it to. Never a reproach when I go back to it after a long pause. Only excruciating grammatical exceptions and irregular verbs. But after all French it’s the language of the Marquis of Sade, so pain and pleasure are to be expected in equal measure when you get involved with it.
And yet here I am outside an official English testing centre near King’s Cross, holding a paper sheet with a few hurriedly scribbled words that I learned I needed just minutes before leaving the house and which has sent me on a wild chase for an internet cafe as I get ready to pledge my endless love to a language that I have been studying with a dedication that my native Spanish has never witnessed.
These are the ways of the Empire, I tell myself, and now that I’ve decided I want to become a British citizen and be part of the system so it doesn’t kick me out in this post-Brexit reality that we live in, I need to comply with the rules that govern it. And testing my English -and apparently my patience- is one of them.
I walk into the building and I’m directed to the fourth floor, where a few people are already undergoing the necessary security checks prior to being admitted to the exam room for their test.
While this is not the first time that I take an English test -there’s been the TESOL in the US, the joke of the Spanish School of Language exams back home, another test I took in Italy years ago, not to mention all the exams as part of my studies- it is the first time where such a thorough security checks are carried out. A bit excessive in my opinion bearing in mind this is a B1 exam that consists only of a speaking part that lasts about ten minutes, as per the detailed information I was provided after booking my appointment.
A blonde woman comes up to me and confirms my name and time of exam and then asks me to keep my ID with me as well as the topic form I have printed out minutes before.
“Does anyone actually try to cheat?” I ask her after having put all my belongings inside a locker in a separate room, phone switched off as instructed.
“Oh, you’d be surprised” the woman who is now conducting the security check tells me without losing focus or getting distracted as she asks me to empty my pockets inside out, lift my arms, roll up my sleeves, show my palms, turn around, lift one foot, then the other, show the behind of my ears, one, then the other. This is no doubt a dance she’s already memorised after countless hours of practice.
“A colleague once caught someone carrying a tiny headphone in their ear. People go to great lengths to pass” she says putting the metal detector she was using on top of a table. “You’re good to go. Follow me please” and with that she ushers me in to a bigger room where the people who were going over the security tests before me are now seated and speaking to a member of staff to complete their registration for the test.
“Hello, how are you today? Is it Maria Cristina, right?” a tall man wearing a velveteen blue suit and his curly hair up in a manbun has appeared out of nowhere and is now looking down on a paper sheet her security colleague has just handed him, presumably with my full name and exam booking confirmation on it.
“Actually, it’s Cristina. I never use Maria.”
“Oh, right, that’s why you have a pendant with a C. Got it” This catches me by surprise as my pendant is hardly visible under the layers of clothing so I tell myself this must be the cheater spotter, the one who found that tiny headphone the others surely missed. “Now if you’d like to take a seat, please. We’re going to register you for your test and then your examiner will be ready for you”.
“You guys are quite thorough” I say as I enter yet another room that looks tiny due to a a disproportionately massive desk placed in the middle of it with a gigantic computer screen on top.
“Well, these are Home Office rules, so we have to stick to them” the cheater spotter informs me. I don’t recall any other exam in which I’ve gone through so many steps, or rooms, before actually being in front of the exam content, but since this is one of the official centres that issues English language certificates for the British citizenship application everything must be checked, double checked and triple checked before I am allowed to join a zoom call with my examiner.
And here’s the other thing I learn while speaking to the cheater spotter: after covid the speaking tests are no longer in person, which means I’ve paid a ridiculous amount of money to have a video call with someone who is not even in London. Something which wouldn’t bother me that much were it not because speaking to people through a screen is what I do every single day of the week for work. Which means I’m the one being paid, not paying, for having a chat.
The whole English test process is a bit of a joke, if one looks at it objectively.
Since arriving at the centre I’ve already spoken to three different people who could perfectly assess I can indeed communicate in English without the need for the test, or the £180 I’ve paid for it, but there’s nothing I can do to change the process so I may as well embrace it.
Which is what I do in this not so tiny but weirdly arranged room I find myself in as I’m asked to provide my ID, my topic form -so glad I found the internet cafe around the corner-, to remove my glasses for a picture so that they can check that I’m in fact myself, to put them back on, to sign on the topic form and to finally be informed of when and how I’ll be notified of the exam results and how I can challenge them (“Don’t think that’ll be necessary”, I add) or how they can be invalidated if there are any security concerns (“Don’t think that’ll be the case”, adds the cheater spotter after having conducted another check to ensure I don’t have any devices hidden in or behind my ears).
Once that I’m cleared for the second time in less than 10 minutes, I’m asked to take a seat outside the room I came from and next to the room where my test will be taking place. As I’m near the door I can hear a woman with an Easter European accent speak about her favourite family traditions.
Is this that kind of test? The one where you need to talk about your favourite celebrations, what you did over Christmas, and where you plan to go on vacation? Is this really how these people justify stealing almost £200 from me? Can’t the endless hours spent on excruciating chitchat at the office over the years be used to prove I am already well versed and fluent in the language of the insubstantial? Apparently not.
The funny thing, I tell myself as the Easter European lady proceeds to explain how she misses big family lunches back home on the other side of the door, is that I shouldn’t be here.
Not because I think my linguistic skills or myself superior to any of these people, British or not, at this point I don’t make distinctions, but because the only reason I am actually taking this test is because people in this country failed to inform themselves on the consequences of their acts.
And as a result everyone lost the freedom to come and go in peace as they pleased on 31st January 2020, when Brexit finally kicked in.
I remember the date very precisely as I was at the Royal Opera House attending a performance of La Boheme with a very good friend from Belgium. He was seated next to a girl from Germany who had decided to come to London all the way from Berlin to see the Italian tenor playing Rodolfo and she was flying back the following day. “I thought this might be the last time I could jump on a plane to London without needing a visa, who knows what’ll happen now” she said with a tinge of sadness that both my friend and I didn’t find difficult to relate to.
The onset of the pandemic only accentuated that breakup with the rest of Europe as travelling rules were different in the UK and we were subjected to extra restrictions and quarantine periods when visiting and returning from Europe. With my family spread across Spain and France it wasn’t the easiest of times as we had to navigate conflicting norms and for the first time in all the years I had been living abroad the concepts of isolation and abandon were no longer abstract but rather tangible.
Having a British passport back then wouldn’t have made things any easier as British citizens were often held at interminable queues in a sort of vendetta that the French particularly enjoyed while I, once in mainland Europe, found that my Spanish passport was a golden ticket to anywhere I wanted to go, provided it wasn’t back to the UK because the French didn’t make distinctions in that case and really took pleasure in keeping people waiting. Aside from that, it felt nice to experience again the freedom that had been the norm in the pre-Brexit days.
As Brexit and a global emergency slowly faded away in our collective memory, another daunting reality emerged after the war in Ukraine broke up and the cost of living crisis and the housing emergency in the UK materialised. The London I came to 15 years ago is a distant memory and the flame of possibility that sustained the dreams and warmed the hearts of many like me was put out a long time ago as the hope to build a future in this country was slowly but surely crushed with every new crisis.
What if, I asked myself recently, my future is no longer in this city or in this country? What if all the things that are hard and difficult here could be easy and achievable somewhere else? What if there is a place where I can not only survive, but thrive without all the sacrifices and restrictions that I am bound to just for being in London?
In what may seem a counterintuitive thought, after so many years battling with the emotionally charged decision to acquire the British nationality, this year logic and detachment have taken the steering wheel and I’ve begun the process to apply for the British citizenship. Which I’m doing not to be able to stay in this country but to regain something that was taken away from me: My freedom to come and go as I please because we can only choose when we act out of freedom, not fear.
That is what I try to keep in mind while my frustration at having to take this English test grows.
I help companies set up in London and create jobs here, I have a degree in English, I’ve lived in three different English-speaking countries, I can distinguish between they’re, their, and there even though many native English speakers, born and raised in the perfidious Albion, can’t. For what is worth I write two newsletters in English! And yet, none of that is enough to prove my knowledge of the language. So here I am waiting for someone on the other side of a screen to ask me about my favourite food or music or tradition so they can confirm I indeed speak and understand English to a good standard based on answers about my personal taste while I’m charged £180 for the privilege.
“Cristina, your examiner is ready for you. If you can please take a seat in this room everything’s ready for your test to begin” the voice of blonde woman who was doing my security check brings me back from my tribulations and into the room where I am about to have my English -and possibly my personality- tested.
As I walk in I see a tablet already placed on a table, the screen showing the face of a man with kind eyes and frameless glasses. He has a gentle expression, one that screams he must be a teacher as well.
“Hello and welcome. How are you today? My name is Nigel. Can you tell me your name, please?” he asks in a very formulaic kind of way that defies the flow of normal conversation. That is if your English is already beyond B1 level.
I respond accordingly and he soon moves on to what topic I have prepared. I look at my topic form and list the points I have written only for Nigel to spend two minutes discussing them. Seriously? Was it necessary to mention this piece of paper was compulsory and essential to be allowed into the exam when I could have simply said out loud the same thing and spare myself the mini panic attack I’ve had when realising I needed to bring a paper copy along?
Our conversation then moves through the motions of what I suppose are the B1 assessment markers in order to prove that I can:
Understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure - which is why I presume he asks me about my topic, which is linked to work and my life here.
Deal with most situations likely to arise whilst travelling - we speak briefly about where I am from (No, not from Italy or Argentina, as he believes, although I do speak Italian and have lived there. “Oh, really? My wife is Italian” “Whereabouts?” “Campobasso” “I had a flatmate from Campobasso, she was a great cook and made fresh pasta for us a couple of times”)
Produce simple connected text on topics which are familiar or of personal interest -and here he asks me a random question on traditonal celebrations back home, which I have to admit I’m not keen on and probably the reason I left in first place.
Describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes and ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans - I believe we have covered most of that in the bits when I've gone off-script and made an effort to speak normally.
Time flies and before I know it Nigel is wishing me all the best wherever life takes me, which at present is out of this room and back into the miserable and eternal London greyness.
It was obvious from minute one that despite my attempts at having a proper conversation, Nigel wouldn’t be swayed easily as he kept going back to the corseted question-answer formula of the test. I’m sure Nigel -who lives in Brighton and has made it very clear that he doesn’t want more people from London relocating there as I mentioned that I was recently looking at flats in the area- is a lovely person able to have fully formed conversations beyond B1 level restrictions, but not today and not with me.
As I’m taken back to the locker to retrieve with my belongings, it dawns on me Nigel was examining the Easter European lady and he is now also examining the person that has gone after me, as the moment I was out the security woman came in to tell him the next student was ready. Not a second of pause. I wouldn’t want to do this job for a living as I would find it very alienating and I’m sure Nigel probably does as well as he spends his days communicating with people without really connecting with any of them. B1 is a heartless, soul-sucking piece of shit, I decide.
On second thoughts all Nigel has to do is have a 10 minute chat in his native language from the comfort of his Brighton home, which I’m sure he owns, and where he lives with his lovely Italian wife from Campobasso who probably cooks delicious fresh pasta for him regularly which they eat under a blue sky. Plus he doesn’t have to pay £180 like I’ve done to leave the house and talk to a screen.
By the time I’ve put on my coat and checked my handbag’s contents are all there I’ve suppressed any traces of empathy towards Nigel’s working conditions.
The following morning, as anticipated, I receive an email before 9 am with my preliminary test results. Pass with merit. Hardly surprising. This was a B1 after all, perhaps the easiest English test I’ve ever taken over the last 20 years. Still I’m elated at receiving this validation on my linguistic skills. Hopefully after this English, that jealous lover, will be pacified for a while and I will be able to spend a bit more time with French without raising suspicions.
Now I only have to deal with the Life in the UK test, another beast of impossible high standards. So high in fact that it demands I know things British people have probably never cared to learn, such as how many members has a jury in Scotland, which is different from how many members it has in England and Wales in case you were wondering; or which king escaped battle -and probably a sure death- hidden inside an oak tree only to return from exile a few years later to be crown king of England.
Luckily the handbook where all these fascinating facts as well as other equally useless random shit are contained informs me that the Life in the UK contents and test have been written in a way that anyone who can read English at ESOL Entry Level 3 or above should have no difficulty with.
I only hope that’s the equivalent of a B1 because I’m not taking another bloody English test anytime soon.
Abroad is an independent publication about identity and belonging, living in between cultures and languages, the love of books, music, films, creativity, life in London, and being human in the age of artificial intelligence.