Want to make sure your Christmas speaking activities have value for your students? By using an exam style activity, you can add some festive spirit to your lesson AND your students can practice their exam skills. The following Christmas speaking activities have been designed to look like Cambridge First (FCE) and Advanced (CAE) Speaking Parts […]
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Passing a B2 level Cambridge exam is a big deal and only the best First Certificate books will get you there. For lower levels you may have been able to rely on materials you found online or your natural ability in English learnt at school, but for most people the Cambridge First (FCE) exam is
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Writing Part 1 of IELTS: Academic features writing a 150 word description of a graph or a process. To succeed in this writing task, you have to give precise and clear details about the graph that you are provided. This is very specific language, but once you’ve done it a few times, you can rinse
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The essay task at Cambridge B2 First (FCE) level might be one of the first times learners encounter a truly formal writing task. At the previous level, B1 Preliminary (PET), all the writing tasks are relatively casual and informal. This is where the First Certificate writing forces candidates to prove they really know how to
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You need to describe pictures at almost every level of Cambridge exams, but not just any pictures. It’s important to practise with pictures that are similar to what you will find in the exam. In FCE Speaking Part 2, you’ll see pictures connected to a variety of topics which are considered standard at B2 level.
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Whenever I look for a song to do with a class, I look for something that has a story behind it. With this FCE song activity, you’ve got just that. Fast Car is a beautiful song released April 6, 1988 by Tracy Chapman. Spanning a lifetime of hardship, it tells the story of a couple’s
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Are you looking for something to do with your classes before the Christmas break? Whether it’s an exam class or just a normal one, you can never go wrong with a lively Christmas songs listening activity. These have been designed to look the same as a Cambridge exam listening, but the content all comes from
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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
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By B2, learners taking an exam should be comfortable using conditionals, which is why we’ve designed 10 First (FCE) conditionals transformations. The key-word transformations activity, Use of English Part 4, is one of the likely areas that where you may encounter conditionals (they could also pop up in Use of English Part 2, the open
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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
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