About Pre-A1 Starters Digital Reading and Writing Part 3

What is Pre-A1 Starters Digital Reading and Writing?

Students will do Pre-A1 Starters Digital Reading and Writing Test after the Pre-A1 Starters Listening Test.

What do students have to do in Part 3 of Pre-Starters Digital Reading and Writing?

In Part 3 of the Pre-A1 Starters Digital Reading and Writing Test, there are five questions.

The first two questions will focus on one topic, and the final three questions will focus on a different topic.

Questions 1 & 2

For each question, a picture will appear on the screen and below it, some of the letters to spell the word.

There could be one line, or two, to represent the missing letters.

Below the picture and lines, there will be four little boxes with the possible missing letter(s). Students click on the box which has the missing letters to complete the words.

It’s important for students to know that they can change their answer as many times as they like, but once they’ve clicked on OK, their answer is submitted and they can’t change it.

Questions 3-5

In questions 3, 4, and 5, the three questions will be on a different topic.

A picture will appear on the screen. Below the picture, learners see all the letters they need to spell the word, but they will be jumbled, in the incorrect order.

To answer, learners click on the letters to spell the word.

They can delete letters by clicking on the cross symbol.

They can change their answer at any point until they click on ‘OK’ and their answer will be submitted and they can no longer change it.

Is Starters Reading and Writing Part 3 digital like Starters Reading and Writing Part 3 paper test?

It definitely is. In questions 3, 4 and 5, learners see a picture and have to unjumble the letters to write 3 words from the same topic, just like they do in the questions in the paper-based test.

Of course, they click on the letters, rather than write them on the lines.

Questions 1 and 2 in the digital test work on letter patterns. Words with similar letter patterns are also tested in Part 1 of the Starters Reading and Writing paper test. They see a picture of a dog, for example, and the sentence says: This is a frog.

How can I prepare students for Pre-A1 Starters Digital Reading and Writing Part 3?

Practise showing pictures of words with similar letter patterns, like bat, cat, hat or boy, toy. You can download the Cambridge flashcards for Starters here.

In Puzzle your way to Starters, we have lots of puzzles that can help your students notice and use spelling patterns.

In 13 Starting and Ending, learners explore words that start and end with the same letter, like eye, window.

In 19 Add letters, find words, learners add letters to make a longer word, for example: he > + d,a = head. Or they find a word inside another word, like bat in bath.

In 26 Change a letter, they change a letter to make a different word, for example: big > bag.

Puzzle your way to Starters is available for purchase on Amazon here.

And if you’d like more help with spelling and preparing for the Pre-A1 Starters Digital or Paper Tests, check out my other posts on this webpage by clicking on the Young Learners tab at the top of the page.