Resources for Cambridge English: Advanced

I thought I’d share the list of resources I’ve put together for preparing students for Cambridge English: Advanced.  I shared many of these with teachers at my seminars in San Sebastian last week on this exam.

There are so many resources available and new ones appear all the time, so this is really a snapshot of what I’ve found.

Resources on the Cambridge English webpage

45 resources listed on 08/01/2017

Of these, highly recommended are:

1   Teaching Tips from Cambridge Examiners

This pdf document is packed with tips for each paper and each part.   Well worth reading and revisiting from time to time.

http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/images/167863-cambridge-english-advanced-cae-from-2015-teaching-tips.pdf 

2   Assessing writing performance

The writing scales with explanation.  Sample tasks and answers for teachers to practise applying the scales.  Very thorough.

http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/images/cambridge-english-assessing-writing-performance-at-level-c1.pdf

3   Assessing speaking performance

The speaking assessment scales with explanation.  Applying these to assess two candidates doing a sample speaking test.

http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/images/168620-assessing-speaking-performance-at-level-c1.pdf

The related video for this document:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPF0zUMXpl0

4   Lesson plans – overviews

There is an overview document to work on with students for each paper in the Lesson plans section of the website.  Very useful if your students are new to the exam.

http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/teaching-english/resources-for-teachers/

5   Lesson plans – individual parts

There are also lesson plans to work on the different parts of each paper.  Link the same as above.  Here’s a screenshot of some of the Use of English lesson plans and the areas they work on.

Learner activities

At present, there are 15 activities for Proficient level, which covers C1 and C2.

http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/learning-english/activities-for-learners/?level=proficient&rows=12

Resources for different skills, grammar, etc

Write and Improve

https://writeandimprove.com/

English Profile

Grammar Profile

http://www.englishprofile.org/english-grammar-profile/egp-online

Vocabulary Profile

http://vocabulary.englishprofile.org/

Useful resources from other websites

University of Surrey essay writing

http://www.surrey.ac.uk/library/learning/academicskills/

Academic wordlists

http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist/