How to prepare for ICAO English?
Read books
Any book or English language text helps, but reading about aviation English is especially useful. You get to see the right grammar structures and aviation English vocabulary with a number of professional terms.
You bought English textbook, started reading it, but from some reason, you stopped after the first ten pages?
English learning is not easy and it takes a great deal of time, energy, willpower, and endurance. Purchasing textbook is usually not sufficient.
Listen to English
You can listen to radio broadcast. If the broadcast is too hard for you to understand, you might want to start with something simpler.
One of the good ways is to listen to ATIS broadcast because you can check if you got the message!
Listen to ATC communication
You can use liveatc.net website which provides live radio broadcast from a number of places around the world.
- EDDM (Munich, Germany) - good quality
- KJFK (New York, USA) - might be harder to understand
- KSFO (San Francisco, USA) - might be harder to understand
Aviation English course
Taking part in one-to-one language proficiency training course, you effectively improve your language proficiency.
On-line learning
Many applicants are not successful due to the lack of grammar knowledge. There are several websites and materials available online for free. Make use of some.
Foreign language cannot be learnt in a matter of hours. You can, however, prepare yourself for ICAO English exam.
Expect unexpected
ICAO Englsih language exam allows us to assess your true knowledge only if you don't know the exam content beforehand and you cannot be prepared for specific questions. You therefore have to face events and contexts which might be non-standard or unexpected.
We don't assess the technical correctness of your answer. ICAO English exam is a technical exam, but not focused on writing or standard aviation phraseology. Don't be afraid to say something you're not sure about in the context of aviation.
ICAO English exam is not a license skill test or license proficiency check. Language proficiency examiners don't assess your technical aviation knowledge and skills. Don't be afraid to say something with incorrect content, as long as your ICAO English is perfect, there's nothing to worry!