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A Hot Date and a Cold Beer

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On Thursday last week, if you happen to have been* in the cafe getting a bite to eat at around 6pm, you may have witnessed a slightly unusual event.  To be precise*, you may have seen twelve nervous FCE and CAE students getting ready to bare their souls* to each other in a round of Cambridge Exam-style speed dating, with five or six teachers supervising to ensure that they each got a date!

The students were, for the most part, paired up with someone from another class as this was the point of the get-together: for all the Cambridge exam students to get to know one another so that they can offer each other advice, moral support and, if push comes to shove*, a shoulder to cry on.  Each pair was then given roughly* two minutes to find out as much about each other as possible before moving on to the next person.  They even had a speed dating scorecard each on which to make comments about their  dates (don’t worry: the comments were invariably* good!)  The speed dating lasted around half an hour and to reward them for their hard work, they were each given two tokens for free drinks at the White Hart – this news was naturally welcomed with a huge cheer.

When the noise died down*, we all set off for the pub where the tokens were enthusiastically swapped* for a pint of beer or cider here and a large glass of red or white wine there, after which the conversation started to flow.  We had originally scheduled about an hour in the pub, thinking that everyone would want to go home early as they had lessons the following day, but later I heard that some of the students had stayed as late as midnight!  So I think it’s fair to say* that not only did everyone have a good time,  but we also achieved what we had set out to do.

Written by Sarah M

Vocabulary

if you happen to do sth, you do it by chance

if you are precise, you are exact

if you bare your soul to s/o, you tell them all your secret thoughts and feelings

if push comes to shove, the situation gets really bad

roughly (pron: /r^flI/: about

invariably: always, without exception

if the noise dies down, it gets softer

swapped: exchanged

it’s fair to say: it’s reasonable to say

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