Preparation for English Exams
Most Popular Official English Certificates
The official English exams that our students most frequently request preparation for are as follows:
★ Cambridge Certificates: Preliminary (PET), First (FCE, high intermediate level), Advanced (CAE), and Proficiency (CPE, near native), Aptis, Linguaskill.
★ TOEFL and IELTS, commonly required for university applications.
★ SLP: Standard Language Proficiency, especially levels SLP2222 and SLP3333.
★ Also: Trinity, school and access-to-university exams, etc.
We can help you choose the certificate that best fits your goals and to prepare yourself for all tge parts of the exam, from grammar and vocabulary to reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
Grammar and Vocabulary. Use of English.
In order to prepare for grammar and vocabulary exercises, like the Use of English part in Cambridge certificates, we will review lists and exercises of connectors, collocations, and phrasal verbs, since these are the most common errors. Since January 2015, Use of English has been grouped with the Reading part of Cambridge exams, although the type of exercises is virtually the same.
Reading
In exam exercises with long texts, it is essential not to lose track of time, so you should follow a specific sequence to avoid reading the questions, possible answers, and the main text too many times. We will guide you through the process, practice in class, so you can continue on your own afterwards. Cambridge exams usually contain journalistic and literary texts, whereas TOEFL or IELTS are more technical or academic, so we recommend readings relevant texts to have more exposure to this type of writing.
Writing
We will correct your writing exercises using Skype's chat box, so that you can see corrections and explanations in real-time. This way, you will receive much more feedback than with just written corrections. It is a great method for finding errors that hardly ever appear in spoken language, give that written language is more formal and uses longer sentences and complex grammatical structures.
Listening
The most feared part for many students. Our work in the speaking and reading parts will help you to expand and recognize advanced vocabulary. We will listen to plenty of listening activities and note down transcriptions. We will discuss the peculiarities of oral language, more colloquial than the written one, and familiarize ourselves with the most common accents.
Speaking
We will use the same method as in our conversation classes but following our numerous sample exams. We will engage in conversation and provide with numerous corrections and feedback, with special attention to pronunciation.
