Practising under real-life conditions
Working through a set of questions at a leisurely pace, looking for the answer elsewhere and going back over your work, does not prepare you for the exam: it prepares you for revision. These are two different activities, both useful, but they must not be confused.
Here’s what ‘real-world conditions’ actually means, and why each constraint is in place.
The timer keeps running, even if you close the tab
Each set is timed: 30 minutes, and 60 minutes for sets of 60 questions covering an entire subject area.
The timer is a wall clock: it runs on the server’s clock, not in your browser. Closing the tab, switching off Wi-Fi or changing devices will not stop it. This is exactly what happens on exam day, when leaving the exam room does not pause the timer.
Practical advice: don’t start a set ‘just to have a go’ before a meeting. Start it when you have time to finish it.
You can’t go back
You can’t go back to the previous question. This is the constraint that candidates hate the most, and it’s the one that’s most valuable: it forces you to make a decision. In the exam, time spent mulling over a question is time taken away from the next ones.
An abandoned set counts as a failure
If the timer runs out without you submitting, the attempt is still marked, based solely on the answers recorded before the deadline. It counts towards your average, your number of attempts and your progress, just like any other attempt.
This is by design, and it’s tougher than most platforms. The reason is simple: if abandoning a set deleted the attempt, the temptation would be to abandon any set that got off to a bad start to protect your average. You’d end up with a nice average but no useful information. A dashboard that lies to you is worse than a poor score.
However, as long as there’s time left, you can pick up your session exactly where you left off, with your answers and the original timer. A network outage or an unexpected phone call won’t cost you the attempt.
The formats you’ll encounter
Practice isn’t limited to multiple-choice questions:
- Exam-style sets, which follow the official structure.
- Practical scenarios in the form of client dialogues, where you respond as you would in a real-life meeting, not as you would in a classroom.
- Role-plays and fill-in-the-blank exercises, which check that you have a firm grasp of the exact vocabulary, not just the general idea.
This variety isn’t just for show. A candidate who has only practised using a single format will be caught off guard by the others.
After the practice set, the real work begins
The score is merely the starting point. What matters comes next: the answer key breaks down your answers, and the revision plan highlights the chapters you need to go over again based on your actual mistakes, with a direct link to the relevant study material.
Taking another practice test without going through this stage is like measuring the same thing all over again.