1 Make sure your students are entering for the right exam. The Cambridge
English Placement Test can help you confirm this. Go online and look at the demo: http://www.democpt.cambridgetest.org
2 Keep up to date with exam changes!
Specifications are available to download from Cambridge English Language
Assessment. For example, First for
Schools is being revised for January 2015.
Visit: http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/ exams-and-qualifications/first-forschools/exam-update-for-2015/
3 Cover all four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking in your classes to give your students the best chance of doing well in a Cambridge English exam.
4 Think about your students in relation to the CEFR levels A1 to C2. Which level have they reached? How do you know?
5 Find out more about the CEFR levels by visiting the English Profile website, where you can watch a short video: http://www.englishprofile.org
6 Use the English Vocabulary Profile to get suggestions of suitable vocabulary at the right CEFR level. Sign up for free at: http://www.englishprofile.org/index. php/resources/wordlists/freesubscription
7 Give your students plenty of practice in writing different text types. From 2015, the First/ First for Schools exam will cover essays (Part 1), articles, reviews, stories and informal letters or emails (Part 2).
8 Encourage your B1 or B2 students to read things in English online, such as short reviews of their favourite music.
9 Vocabulary activity using the EVP
Topic vocabulary for A2
Imagine you are teaching the topic of
Food and drink to an A2 class. Use the
Advanced search facility to select suitable nouns. Then choose six words that may be new for your students, for example: chilli, dessert, garlic, honey, sauce, slice .
Write simple definitions in the style of
Key for Schools Writing Part 6.
This small, thin vegetable is usually red or green and makes food hot. C _ _ _ _ _
10 Suggest that students keep a diary in
English and fix a regular weekly time when they can read out their entries to the class or in smaller groups.
11 Work on understanding paraphrase in class with any students who aim to take the Preliminary for Schools exam. Ask them to think of different ways of saying the same thing in a text or sentence.
12 Make sure that your students can say the alphabet in English, and know how to spell their first and family names.
13 Remind students that in a listening note completion they don’t need to write numbers as words – using figures will be quicker and they are less likely to make mistakes.
14 Join Cambridge English Teacher to have access to online webinars and lots of resources: http://www.cambridgeenglish teacher.org
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15 Give students exposure to common
English words with several meanings, such as take and give . These words are very powerful as they are used so often.
16 Vocabulary activity using the EVP
Phrase building
Get students to make phrases with these verbs. Some nouns can go with more than one verb.
Verbs: give keep reach take wait
…………… a party
…………… a break
…………… a call
…………… a conclusion
…………… an exam
…………… a promise
…………… a bus
…………… a shower
…………… a moment
Which verb is used the most?
17 Introduce simplified multiple-choice comprehension early on in a course, by reducing the number of wrong options.
18 Encourage students at lower levels to say as much as they can when speaking.
They will probably get a higher mark in their Speaking test if they have the confidence to extend their responses.
19 Spend five minutes revising topic words from a previous lesson. Students can brainstorm ideas in teams and then use the language in a written homework.
20 Train students to read more efficiently and explain that they won’t always need to read an exam text word by word. The multiple matching tasks require scanning techniques to find specific information.
21 Use the Cambridge assessment scales to mark written homework. The four sub-scales are Content, Communicative achievement, Organisation and
Language.
22 Remind students that in a Cambridge
English listening test everything is heard twice, so they can check their answers and complete any missing ones.
23 Think about the differences between
B2 and C1 students. One CEFR Can do statement suggests that C1 learners ‘can make critical remarks or express disagreement without causing offence’.
What language will they need to do this?
24 Make sure your students have seen examples of the exam answer sheets.
25 Vocabulary activity using the EVP
Phrasal verbs for B2
Draft a quiz to give your B2 students, using the Dictionary examples in EVP entries to give you typical contexts.
1 What might take off? Give another example.
A
B
C a business a walk a coat
2 why.
Who do you take after? Explain
A
B
C my mother my grandfather someone else
26 Search online for interesting images to use for speaking practice in class.
27 Find ways to activate knowledge of phrasal verbs. Appropriate informal use of these impresses examiners!
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28 Encourage A2 students to give detailed answers to the Key/ Key for
Schools instruction Tell me something about (your family/ your favourite film/ your last holiday, etc.)
29 Look for evidence of Communicative achievement in your students’ writing – have they used the right register and tone? What is the effect on the reader?
30 Browse the list of functions in the
Preliminary/ Preliminary for Schools
Handbook and think of ways to elicit this language in class. As an example, for
‘expressing degrees of certainty and doubt’ you could put a set of phrases on the board and ask students to order them from most certain (1) to least certain.
31 Develop your students’ vocabulary by getting them to record word families and add to the sets. There are word formation tasks on First/ First for Schools , Advanced and Proficiency .
32 Vocabulary activity using the EVP
Word formation
Choose two words from an EVP Word family panel and give students sentences where one word is missing. For example:
The person who directs a film is the
…………….. . (verb and noun)
Word family:
Nouns: direction , directions , director
Verbs: direct
Adjectives: direct , indirect
Adverbs: directly , indirectly
If there is a difference between two things, they are ……………. from each other. (noun and adjective)
33 Work on any particular sounds that your students find difficult in English – their pronunciation will be assessed in the Speaking test.
34 Revise basic grammar points with B1 and B2 students so that their accuracy improves – errors in simple structures like present simple 3 rd person singular form –s really shouldn’t be happening!
35 Vocabulary activity using the EVP
Idioms for C1 and C2
You can search for idioms relating to a topic or word. Which idiom with take fits in the text below?
One of these nouns features in the idiom - make idioms with take using the others. board breath eyes heart plunge way
I’d wanted to move to a place of my own for ages but living at home with my parents was just so easy. Not only that, the apartments I could afford were either way out of town or really tiny. Eventually I found one at a reasonable rent and I loved the place as soon as I walked through the door. So... I
………………………… and went for it. I moved in the same day.
( take the plunge is at C2 in the EVP)
36 Focus on Organisation in some of your homework feedback. Is the order of ideas logical? Have suitable linking phrases been used? Does the piece of writing require more (or fewer) paragraphs?
37 Give A2 students the chance to ask questions with what, where, when, how much, etc., as training for Key/ Key for
Schools Paper 3 Part 2
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38 Suggest that B2 students use more adverbs in their writing. Words like apparently, eventually, generally, highly, and surprisingly show a good range of language and add interest for the reader.
39 Ask students to record themselves at home regularly, so they can see they are making progress. They will then become more confident for their Speaking test.
40 Make sure students can spell the days of the week correctly. The learner data in the Cambridge Learner Corpus shows that
Wednesday is a particular problem
(Wensday, Wednsday, Wedensday).
41 Focus on word order in sentences and questions. Students often make mistakes in this area.
42 Remind students that in an open cloze task ( Key/ Key for Schools Paper 1 Part 7,
First/ First for Schools Paper 1 Part 2), each answer is only one word.
43 Revise vocabulary for previous topics regularly, or students won’t be able to recall all the new words.
44 Vocabulary activity using the EVP
Topic vocabulary for B1
Select 4-6 words from three topics in the
Advanced Search menu and put them on the board mixed together. Ask students to sort them by meaning. For example at B1: ant, athlete, button, coach, collar, frog, goalkeeper, heel, penguin, sandal, tiger, tournament
Animals Clothes Sport ant
Students could then include the words from one topic in a written homework.
45 Make sure students can start and end letters and emails accurately. A common mistake at B1 and B2 is ‘I look forward to hear from you’ (needs the gerund form).
46 Encourage students to improve their range of language, especially with regard to adjectives – instead of using great all the time, they can use words such as awesome, fantastic, lovely, wonderful, etc.
47 Consider having a selection of graded readers’ titles that students can choose.
Extensive reading gives students more confidence in their language knowledge.
48 Work closely with teachers of other subjects if your school has introduced
CLIL – you need to focus on functional language needed for defining, describing, evaluating, explaining, etc.
49 Draw students’ attention to words with similar spelling – for example, to, too and two. Exam candidates frequently make mistakes with these simple words.
50 Suggest students contribute to a class blog in English, taking it in turns to post something that interests them.
51 Vocabulary activity using the EVP
Verbs in the passive
There are 34 verbs listed up to B2 level that are often used in the passive in one or more meanings (this is a search available in the Grammar menu). Use some of the dictionary examples in a matching activity:
1 I was hired by
2 The meeting has been scheduled for
3 She is regarded as
4 Motor vehicles are prohibited from a driving in the town centre. b the first company I applied to. c tomorrow afternoon. d one of the greatest singers this century.
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52 Tell students that if they use American
English vocabulary and spelling in the exam, they should use it consistently throughout their answers. Mixing British and American spelling shows a lack of control and would be marked down.
53 Find out about the revised specifications for Cambridge English
Advanced via this web address: http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/ exams-and-qualifications/advanced/ exam-update-for-2015/
There will be four papers not five from
January 2015 and the exam will be about
45 minutes shorter than it is now.
54 Train students to look for specific information across texts and to recognise similar or opposing views. Paper 1 Part 6 of the 2015 Advanced exam is new and requires comparison and contrast across texts - a relevant sub-skill for reading academic texts, critical reviews, etc.
55 Vocabulary activity using the EVP
Prepositional phrases
Select the category ‘phrases’ and enter a preposition in the word box. For example, the results for at up to B2 include:
A2: at least
B1: at all, at least, at first, at the same time, at once, at present
B2: at least, at all costs, at fault, at risk
Give B2 students sentences illustrating the three uses of at least and ask them to explain the differences in meaning. The
A2 meaning is more ‘concrete’ – at least
£500 – whereas the B1 and B2 meanings can be used to emphasize or lessen the effect of what someone says.
56 Tell students that they must give a story a clear beginning, middle and end.
From 2015, the story task option in Part 2 of First for Schools will ask for two things to be included. If these are omitted, the mark given for Content will be lower.
57 Introduce useful prepositional phrases to students every few weeks, grouping them by preposition. These can often be indicators of above average range in a Speaking test (see uses of at least in the next activity).
58 Check that students can spell the pronoun which – which is commonly misspelled as wich at most CEFR levels!
59 Encourage students to look at reviews for books, films, video games, etc. online, as this will help them in writing their own reviews. A positive review will normally recommend, so elicit ways of expressing recommendations.
60 Work on the gapped text task - First/
First for Schools Part 6 has missing sentences, while Advanced and
Proficiency gapped text tasks have missing paragraphs. Students need to read through the whole text once they have chosen their answers, to check it makes sense.
61 Advise students not to make a rough version of their written answers, as they will not have time to do this in the exam.
If they need to make changes to what they have written, they can do this neatly.
62 Make students aware of stressed syllables in words from A2 level upwards.
63 Consider joining Cambridge English
Penfriends as a school, to give your students opportunities to communicate with other students in English: http://penfriends.cambridgeenglish.org
64 Introduce students to informal phrases that they can use in their writing or speaking. You can search for these in the English Vocabulary Profile .
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65 Vocabulary activity using the EVP
Informal phrases for B1 and B2
Select ‘phrases’ in the Category menu and then select ‘informal’ in the Usage menu.
You will get 17 matches for B1 and 24 for
B2. Write some phrases on the board and ask students to suggest when they might be used in a conversation. For example, at
B2:
Fair enough (accepting an opinion or decision)
Keep your mouth shut! (to warn someone)
Don’t ask me! (expressing surprise when you don’t know the answer to a question)
Pretty much (meaning almost everything)
Remind students that informal language will not always be appropriate for use in the exam.
66 Give students some practice in writing in capital letters, which they may have to do in certain parts of the exam – for example, in First/ First for Schools
Paper 1 Parts 2, 3 and 4 and Paper 3 Part
2.
67 Build students’ confidence in listening to longer recordings by giving them the scripts to begin with.
This will help them to follow a discussion or a monologue.
68 Tell students to include a clear conclusion in the final paragraph of an essay, where they sum up their opinions.
69 Remind students that they cannot add an –s to uncountable nouns. The
Cambridge Learner Corpus shows that students at most levels make mistakes with words like advice, equipment, information, knowledge, research, work.
70 Check well before the exam date that students know how much time is available for each paper, and discuss likely timing issues with them.
71 Consider putting students in for
Pretesting – they will gain practice in answering exam tasks in a set amount of time and a mark is given, which will help you to identify any weaker students.
72 Encourage students writing a report to include an introduction, where they say what the report will cover. (This task will remain on Paper 2 Part 2 for First and Advanced in 2015).
73 Visit the Cambridge English TV site, which includes examples of Speaking test performance, on: http://www.youtube.com/user/ cambridgeenglishtv
74 Find Cambridge English Language
Assessment on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/
CambridgeEnglishItaly
75 Look at the English Profile Word of the Week archive, where you will find interesting facts about 120 common words in English: http://www.englishprofile.org/index.php
/resources/word-of-the-week
76 Vocabulary activity using the EVP
Words with several meanings
Look at the entry for make. There are 62 matches between A1 and C2, including a lot of phrases. Choose six at the right level for your class and put them on the board. For example, suitable for B2: make up your mind make a face make the best of make a big difference make fun of make sense
Read out the definitions one by one, or explain what each phrase means by giving your own example. Students then work in pairs, each creating a short conversation that uses one of the phrases.
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77 Set regular writing tasks for homework, but brainstorm ideas in class so that students know what to include.
78 Explain why the other options are wrong in a multiple-choice reading task.
79 Remind students who are taking the
Computer-based exams that they will see a timer on the screen. This will help them to complete all the tasks within the time.
80 Encourage students to think carefully about why they are writing something, and who they are writing to – this will help them produce appropriate language.
81 Advise students not to leave any answers blank in the exam – they might guess correctly and there are no points deducted for wrong answers.
82 Suggest that students skim a reading text to get a general idea about its content before they start answering its questions.
83 Vocabulary activity using the EVP
Topic vocabulary for B2
Students will already know the core vocabulary for many topics by B2. Use the topic search and ‘B2 only’ to prepare ‘odd one out’ sets, which students can discuss and explain. Include one lower level
‘known’ word in each set:
Animals: paw, species, tail, wing ( species is not a body part)
Natural world: aluminium, copper, element, silver ( element describes the other three metals)
People: appearance: elegant, smart, unattractive, well-built ( unattractive refers to a negative aspect of appearance)
Sport and games: lead, qualify, score, tackle ( qualify means ‘reach a particular stage’ so does not apply during a match)
84 Remind students to write in a consistent style throughout an answer.
85 Vary the ways in which you give feedback on students’ writing, perhaps just commenting on one aspect of the assessment scale, eg Organisation.
86 Revise uses of modal verbs that are relevant for Key and Preliminary
87 Remember to give students some positive feedback to build confidence.
88 Encourage students to keep calm in the Speaking test. If they are relaxed, they will be able to give a better performance.
89 Explain what happens on the day(s) of their exam, so students arrive prepared.
90 Brainstorm ways of adding suspense or drama into a First for Schools story.
91 Vocabulary activity using the EVP
Phrases for essays
Search for phrases that are likely to be new at C1 (choose level ‘C1 only’) and add ‘in*’ to the word box – this yields 53 phrases, including: in the event of speculating in the form of exemplifying in the region of estimating in respect of linking in no way emphasising (not) in short summarizing
Put these phrases on the board with the functional clues, and ask students to suggest appropriate use in an essay.
92 Tell students what they can and can’t take into the exam room – no phones or tablets are allowed, obviously!
93 Give students practice in completing the exam Answer Sheets in pencil.
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94 Elicit fuller ways of describing colour, such as dark blue, rich red, pale green.
95 Vocabulary activity using the EVP
Word formation for B2 and C1
Select words with negative prefixes
(Prefix menu) but give students the
‘positive’ versions and elicit the correct negative prefix. For example: approve (dis-), legally (il-), realistic (un-)
These prefixes are very relevant to Paper
1 of First/ First for Schools and Advanced.
96 Suggest that students revise tense formation so that they can write about past and future events confidently.
97 Remind students to make a paragraph plan before they start a piece of writing.
98 Refer to the Cambridge English exams
Handbooks if you are in doubt about any task - downloadable from the website.
99 Don’t forget to wish your students the very best of luck for exam success.
100 Find a comfortable chair and relax with a cup of coffee – if you’ve read all of these tips, you deserve a break! Enjoy your teaching for Cambridge exams.
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