Are you new to Cambridge and just starting your journey with Cambridge English Qualifications? This article guides you through the key benefits of the exams and offers insights into effective classroom strategies. You will also find tips on how to communicate the value of these qualifications to parents, school leaders and other teachers.
Key benefits of Cambridge English Qualifications
- Clear progression: Learning a language can be a long journey, so it’s important to have regular milestones to aim for. Each Cambridge English Qualification targets a particular level – such as A2 Key, B1 Preliminary, B2 First, etc. This means learners can progress from one level to the next, keeping them motivated as they reach each milestone along their language journey.
- Real-life English: Our exams are based on real-life situations and help learners improve all language skills – reading, writing, listening and speaking. They give learners the skills and confidence to achieve their goals.
- International standards: Each exam is aligned to one level of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), the international framework that measures a learner’s language ability. This allows for in-depth assessment of candidates’ performance across all four language skills.
- Highly recognised: 25,000 universities, employers and governments around the world recognize our English language tests. A Cambridge English Qualification can open doors to higher education, improve employment opportunities, and increase one’s choices for study or work.
- Digital or paper-based: You can either take our exams digitally or as a traditional paper-based exam – the qualification at the end is the same. Both tests are taken at an authorised exam centre or at your school and include a face-to-face Speaking exam.
Starting the journey
The start of the year is the perfect time to tell parents about the benefits of Cambridge English Qualifications and for your teachers to discover all the support we can offer. We have a range of materials that you can use to:
- communicate with parents through a face-to-face event
- help you choose the right exam for your students
- support teachers who are preparing candidates for our exams.
Go to our welcome pack and start of the year pages to access and download leaflets, posters, presentations for parents and more.
Getting to know the exam
If you have just started preparing your learners for Cambridge English Qualifications, the first thing you need to do is become familiar with the exams. You can use the handbooks for teachers to:
- Get an overview of the exam
- Find information on each skill
- Read tips and advice for the exam tasks
- Access sample tests, answer keys and assessment scales for speaking and writing.
Preparing for the exam: Vocabulary lists, flashcards and classroom warmers
While focusing on exam strategies and task familiarisation is important, it’s essential to develop and expand your students’ vocabulary through every step of the journey, which in turn will help them with the skills tested in the exam.
Alongside the Handbooks for Teachers, you can access wordlists for the young learner exams, and vocabulary lists for the A2 Key and B1 Preliminary exams. These lists include high-frequency words, expressions and topics, covering both receptive (understood) and productive (used) language.
Here are two ideas to practise vocabulary from the lists. They come from our classroom warmers activity booklet, which includes exercises for primary, lower secondary and upper secondary students:
- Kim’s game: Display 10 objects on a tray or show these flashcards (Pre A1 Starters, A1 Movers or A2 Flyers) on a screen. Make sure your students know what the objects are in English and can see them clearly. Say: ‘Look. Try to remember.’ Give students one minute to look at them. Help them with the words, if necessary. After one minute, hide the objects or flashcards (e.g. show a blank screen or cover up your tray with a cloth), and see who can remember the most.
- What’s missing?: Repeat the same steps as the previous activity, but this time, remove one or two of the objects (secretly!) and show the remaining objects again. Say: ‘What’s missing?’ Show learners the missing items when they guess correctly.
And here are two other activities to practise vocabulary:
- Pronunciation: Use the images on the flashcards (Pre A1 Starters, A1 Movers or A2 Flyers) to practise specific phonemes, e.g. /s/ for Snake. Pronounce the /s/ emphatically like ‘sssssnake’. Then get students to spot words which begin with the same sound (e.g. stairs, station).
- Sequencing images: Choose a topic and get some images from the flashcards, e.g. animals: Jellyfish, Hippo, Zebra, Giraffe. Ask students to put them in order from small to big according to their original size (e.g. Jellyfish, Zebra, Hippo, Giraffe). Ask students to put the images in alphabetical order (e.g. Giraffe, Hippo, Jellyfish, Zebra).
You can also refer to the Pre A1 Starters Digital and A1 Movers Digital wordlists as an additional resource for the activities above.
Preparing for the exam: posters and classroom activities
If you are preparing students for A2 Key, B1 Preliminary or B2 First, there are a number of classroom activities and posters available for you to practise vocabulary, grammar and language skills with your learners. The activity below, which uses the Our planet poster, is a good example of how you can integrate language (environment vocabulary, questions) and skills (speaking, asking about and describing preferences).
(page 12)
The posters and classroom activities for level B2 focus on phrasal verbs. All the posters are available for download here under the ‘Teacher essentials’ section.
Enjoy the journey
Getting started with Cambridge English Qualifications is a rewarding journey for you and your learners. Make the most of our resources above. They are designed to help you plan your school year with confidence and provide you with all the support you need at the right time. Visit our exam preparation page for all support and preparation resources.
Learn more
For more resources about preparing for Cambridge English Qualifications, register to receive our monthly teacher newsletter. You can also watch the full teacher event on this topic below: