Phrasal verbs are one of the love to hate them areas of the English language, but love them or hate them, they are a vital area to understand before taking an exam, hence this list of phrasal verbs. As you progress through levels of exams, especially Cambridge exams, you’ll notice phrasal verbs coming up more […]
The 120 most useful phrasal verbs list Read More »
“The General” is one of my favourite Advanced (CAE) song activities. The language isn’t especially difficult in itself, but the pace of the song will keep people on their toes. A great activity to use at the end of a word formation lesson or just to practise listening with a twist. You can also take
Advanced (CAE) Song – The General – Dispatch Read More »
Linking words, also known as linkers, cohesive devices, connectors and transition words, are a vital part of writing. Often when we teach English, we feed vocabulary and phrases to students which, if we’re not careful, can start sounding forced. For me, linking words are the exception to that. I find that a solid lesson with
Linking words – How to improve your writing Read More »
The Trinity ISE III Collaborative Task is an expanded version of what you may have seen in ISE II, but with a couple of key differences. As always, it’s a slightly odd task, but has solid reasoning behind it. The Collaborative Task is designed to force Trinity ISE III exam candidates to show that they
20 ISE III Collaborative Task Prompts Read More »
In the Cambridge Advanced CAE Speaking test there are 4 separate but equally important and challenging parts. The topics for the C1 Cambridge exam can be quite abstract and tough to discuss at length. It’s not likely to be the same sort of discussion that you would have over coffee and cake with friends. That’s
Advanced (CAE) Speaking – Sample Tests Read More »
Advanced (CAE) Reading Part 7 is unquestionably one of the most time-consuming and difficult parts of the Reading paper. Even though Cambridge Advanced candidates may have experienced the Gapped Text at lower levels, in CAE it takes on a much more difficult and challenging form. In this post we will examine the task itself and
How to do Advanced (CAE) Reading Part 7 – Gapped Text Read More »
Negative prefixes are possibly the juiciest of word formation affixes at any level. However, once you get to Advanced (CAE), negative prefixes are bound to pop up in Use of English Part 3 and more often than not, they won’t be commonly used words or particularly easy to remember. After teaching them to your students,
Advanced (CAE) Word Formation Conversation Questions – Negative Prefixes Read More »
There are 12 possible topics for ISE III conversation questions: Ambitions Independence Stereotypes Role models Competitiveness Young people’s rights The media Advertising Lifestyles The arts The rights of the individual Economic issues As you can see, the topics at this level start to get quite complex and abstract. This is part of the challenge of
120 ISE III Conversation Questions Read More »
Word formation is probably the easiest part of Cambridge exams to gamify (from the root word GAME of course). Use any of these word formation games as a quick intro or filler for your classes. Most of them require little to no preparation so you can keep them in your bag of TEFL tricks for
Word Formation Games Read More »
Once your students get to a high C1 level, there isn’t much grammar left to surprise or challenge them. It’s often more important to focus on accuracy than to introduce things that are completely new. However, there are still a few nice, juicy grammar points that we can teach our Advanced students. Inversion is one
Advanced (CAE) C1 Key Word Transformations – Inversion Read More »
