An Interview with Experienced FCE teacher

- How would students know if they’ve got the level to take the exam?
- What advice do you have for students who are preparing for FCE at home?
- What areas do students typically find difficult?
- Which grammar points do your students typically have problems with?
- Which self-study books and materials would you recommend?
- What’s the Pass rate in Gill’s experience?
- Other tips and advice for FCE students.

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An Overview of the Listening Paper. Tips and Advice

The listening paper has 4 parts and lasts for about 40 minutes.

- In part 1 you listen to 8 short dialogues o monologues and choose an answer from 3 possibilities; a), b) or c).
- In part 2 you have to complete sentences. You have 45 seconds to read the questions and you should use this time to try to predict the answer to each question.
- Part 3 in the listening is called Multiple Matching, and you hear 5 different people speaking for about 30 seconds. The 5 people speak about the same topic.
- The last part in the listening, part 4, is another multiple choice type exercise, but this time you hear an interview, or a conversation, which lasts about three minutes.
Your job here is to answer seven multiple-choice questions. Each question has 3 possiblities; a), b) or c)

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An overview of the Reading and Use of English paper.

Do you know how many parts there are in this paper? There are 7 parts altogether.

- Parts 1 to 4 test grammar and vocabulary (the Use of English exercises). Parts 5 to 7 have reading comprehension tasks.
- Part 1 is a Multiple-choice Cloze. You have to complete a text containing 8 gaps by choosing 1 word from 4 possibilities (A, B, C or D).
- Part 2 is called an Open Cloze. You need to complete a text containing 8 gaps by choosing one word for each gap. So, parts 1 and 2 are similar. You have texts with gaps and you have to complete the texts with a word in each gap. But there are 2 main differences.
- Part 3 is called Word formation and there are 8 questions to answer. You have a complete a text that has 8 gaps, and you complete it by making a new word from a given ‘root’ word.
- Part 4 is the Key word transformation part. There are six separate questions. There are 2 sentences in each question.
- Part 5 takes us on to the first full reading-based task. Although parts 1, 2 and 3 have complete texts, parts 5, 6 and 7 have longer texts and they focus more on your reading skills.
- Part 6 is a text with gaps in. It’s called the gapped text exercise. You read a text from which sentences have been removed and placed in jumbled order after the text.
- The final part in the paper is Part 7. It’s called multiple matching and you read a text or several short texts, preceded by multiple-matching questions.

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A Full FCE Speaking test.

1. Compare
2. Answer the question
3. Personalize
Keep speaking until the examiner stops you
Let’s listen to Tatiana and Nacho
In this part of the test, I’m going to give each of you two photographs. I’d like you to talk about your photographs on your own for about a minute and also to answer a short question about your partner’s photographs.

Let’s move on to Parts 3 and 4 which are about 7 minutes altogether
Give your opinion and ask your partner’s opinion.

Remember that after 2 minutes you have about a minute to decide something. Let’s see how Tatiana and Nacho do the final parts of the test.
Examiner’s transcription
Now I’d like you to talk about something together for about two minutes.
Here are some modern inventions and a question for you to discuss. First you have some time to look at the task.

Now, talk to each other about why these inventions are important in our everyday lives.

Thanks so much to Tatiana and Nacho for agreeing to be recorded for this podcast. We hope it will help you prepare for the speaking.
Remember, although many students get nervous about the speaking, it is often the easiest part of the FCE exam to pass.

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An Overview of the FCE Writing Paper.

There are two parts to the writing. Part 1 and part 2, and you have 1 hour and 20 minutes to answer both questions.

PART 1

AN ESSAY. An essay is always written for the teacher. When you write your essay, answer the question given by writing about both content points in the notes and providing a new content point (idea) of your own.

PART 2

AN ARTICLE is usually written for an English-language magazine or newsletter, and the reader is assumed to have similar interests to the writer.
AN EMAIL/A LETTER is written in response to the situation outlined in the question.
A REPORT is usually written for a superior (e.g. a teacher or a boss) or a peer group (e.g. members of an English club). A report should be clearly organised and may include headings.
A REVIEW is usually written for an English-language magazine, newspaper or website.

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