📙 Part 2: Forgetting something important
Rory shares a hair-raising story about almost missing a crucial teacher's exam! Hear how our native expert panicked, ran late, and still managed to ace it. What would you have done in this stressful situation?
This episode’s vocabulary
To be supposed to phrase) -#nbsp;to be intending or expected to do something.
Too look forward to (phrase) - to feel happy and excited about something that is going to happen.
To wind up (phrasal verb) - to find yourself in an unexpected and usually unpleasant situation, especially as a result of what you do.
Due to (phrase) - because of; owing to.
To compound (verb) - to make (something bad) worse; intensify the negative aspects of.
Scenario (noun) - a description of possible events, or a description of the story of a movie, play, or other performance.
Frankly (adv.) - used to emphasize the truth of a statement, however unpalatable this may be.
Hair-raising (adj.) - extremely alarming, astonishing, or frightening.
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Questions and Answers (Part 2)
Maria: Rory, now I'm going to give you a topic and I'd like you to talk about it from one to two minutes. Before you start, you have one minute to think of what you're going to say. You can take notes if you wish. And here's your topic. I'd like you to describe a situation when you forgot something important. You should say: When it happened, What you forgot, What was the result of your forgetting and explain why it was important.#nbsp;Could you start speaking now, please?
Rory: Yes. So I'd like to talk about the time that I forgot my one... Well, forgot an exam, actually. It was my TKT three module's exam. And I should say for people who don't know what TKT is, that's the teacher knowledge test, it's a test of teacher knowledge, I suppose, and there are three parts to it. I was supposed to take it earlier this year in March and I'd been looking forward to it for ages, actually, which makes it all the more surprising that I actually forgot about it. It's not the most important thing for teachers to have, but I prepared for ages for it. And like I say, I was really excited to actually finally sit down and do this exam, but I wound up forgetting about it. I think it's due to a combination of factors. The most obvious is because, well, first of all, we had the pandemic to worry about, and that was just when it was starting to hit Moscow properly. And then I was going to a language camp with one of my friends. So I needed to get prepared for that. And sort of, these two things were also compounded by the fact that I was very busy. So I misread the times on the email that was sent by the exam board. Once I discovered that I actually misjudged the times and I was running really really late I panicked and imagined the worst possible scenarios. But then I managed to calm myself down and I very quickly phoned the person at the exam center and explained the situation. And frankly, if it hadn't been for their flexibility, I would have failed and it would have been a complete waste of money. So I'm really glad that they decided to help me out with that. I got there twenty minutes into the test and that left me with about another 20 minutes or so to continue. And I managed to actually get through it. And then I got my results back a few months down the line, and they were all band 4s. So it was very successful, but it was still a bit of hair-raising experience.