Today’s post will be of interest to all the teachers teaching exam preparation classes, in particular the Cambridge FCE, CAE and CPE exams. Having said that, though, many of the ideas presented today are versatile and can be applied in any classroom provided your students are B2 level or higher.
Of course our first priority as exam tutors is to develop exam awareness and strategies and provide students with plenty of practice and rehearsal opportunities so they can excel during the actual test. However, as many of you will probably agree, exam preparation classes can get tedious and repetitive if you only stick to exam papers and rote learning.
The truth is, though, that we can make exam preparation classes fun and effective at the same time. Here are some techniques you can incorporate to help your students maximize their learning while keeping them engaged and curious.
1. Start with a powerful warmer
Fun warmers should be a regular feature in every class, whether it’s exam preparation, general English or business classes as they let the students ease into the lesson smoothly. Now, in exams, particularly in the speaking part, students are often faced with alternatives, asked to make a choice and justify it. A great way to help students practise giving reasons is the Would You Rather game. It provides countless alternatives that you have to choose between. Once you’ve decided, click the option and see how many people voted the same way. Remember to ask your students to provide at least two arguments for each choice. The questions might include ones like:
Would you rather be cruel in a kind world or be kind in a cruel world?
Would you rather be stranded in the jungle or be stranded in the desert?
Would you rather live in a world without the internet or live in a world without music?
Would you rather own a private island or a private jet?
Would you rather see the future or change the past?
You will find the rest of the questions here:
Would you rather?
If you find a question that is inappropriate or boring, simply skip it. The website provides so many questions, it’s impossible to run out.
2. Word formation with a difference
We are all familiar with the standard word formation exam task, fill in the gaps with words derived from the words given. Why not make this into something more meaningful by turning this into a speaking activity. In the worksheet below the students are asked to do two things. Perform a word formation task as well as answer the questions. This allows them to practice each newly formed word further and foster learning. Plus the task itself stops being just a mechanical filling of gaps but becomes a practical activity students can relate to. Feel free to help yourself to this resource or craft one that suits your needs in a similar fashion.
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3. Get the students to do the work
Still on the topic of word formation, here’s another hack that will get your students to rack their brains. Ask your students to prepare word formation speaking questions, like the ones featured above, or a word formation exam task in the form of a text for their peers. You might want to make this theme-based, depending on what you’ve been discussing in class. This technique is great for two reasons. It is fully prepared and executed by the students, which gives you a bit of a respite, but it also provides an opportunity to assess how adept your students are at this exam task. To make it more fun, get your students to sit in groups at different tables and prepare the task for another group.
4. Jeopardy labs
Jeopardy Labs is my old-time favourite filler. I use it for revision and consolidation, trivia quizzes, grammar and vocabulary extension practice and more. The greatest thing about it is that it’s free to use, either for accessing existing games or creating your own. The students love Jeopardy games and the reason is simple. Friendly competition sparks excitement as well as engages students. Try it, but beware. There are a looooot of quizzes on there, so be selective. You might be better off crafting your own.
If you want one for the CAE use of English specifically, check out these ones I put together for my students:
Jeopardy Labs
5. Advanced vocabulary – Call my bluff
At the higher levels of language proficiency, what distinguishes the mere good users of the language from the excellent ones is their range of vocabulary and collocations. We can aid our learners in taking their English vocabulary to another level by deliberately providing opportunities to expand their range of lexis and here’s one idea how. Simply divide your students into groups, cut out the vocabulary cards and put them face down. The students pick a card and have to come up with two false definitions for each word. They then read out three definitions for each word (the correct one and the two made up ones) and try to trick each other. Once they’ve had their fun, they look at the cards again and discuss the questions provided because the more practice we provide, the higher the chances the new words will be remembered.
Need more vocabulary cards? Our Teacher’s First Aid Kit features another 45 of them plus a ton of other ready-to-use activities. You can check it out here:
Teacher’s First Aid Kit – Three Wise Kangaroos
6. Guess the collocation
When it comes to the writing part of any formal examinations, I find that the hardest thing for higher level students is not so much coming up with the arguments as organising them into a coherent whole while incorporating advanced vocabulary and structure. Here we can also give our learners a little boost by introducing them to collocations – chunks of language that make you sound natural. Here’s the method.
Let the students match the adverbs with the adjectives they collocate with. Go through the answers. Now get the students to work in pairs and ask them to come up with examples of things that could be described using the said collocations, e.g.
‘Private gun ownership’ for something highly controversial
‘Life 50 years ago and modern life’ for something dramatically different
‘Drink driving’ for something strictly forbidden
The students must write down their ideas in the circles without mentioning which collocations they had in mind. Once they’ve done it, they swap each other’s circle sheets and try to guess the collocations. You might want to extend this activity and allow the students to discuss the ideas they wrote down further.
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7. Talk for a minute about
One of the assessment criteria for any formal English test is pronunciation. I always make a point of incorporating pronunciation practice into my classes and you can do it in a way that is fun and beneficial for the students- even as a filler. Simply think of a set of words that your students keep mispronouncing and turn them into mini conversation topics. Display the words on the board. Challenge individual students to pronounce the words correctly. If their pronunciation isn’t spot on, they have to talk for a minute about a given mini topic and mention the word at least once.
Here are some ideas for mini topics:
If you need more mini topics with tricky words, you will find 45 of them in our Teacher’s First Aid Kit:
Teacher’s First Aid Kit – Three Wise Kangaroos
8. Share your favourite things
I like sharing with my students my favourite things like favourite quotes, books, websites, YouTube channels, films, podcasts, etc. but I also like it when they share their favourite things with me. Here is how you can get each student to tell you something they feel passionate about and get everyone else involved.
Introduce your students to the podcast called The Unbelievable Truth (featuring one of my favourite comedians – David Mitchell) in which contestants compete by giving mini lectures on various subjects. The lectures should be completely false save for five true statements which the contestants must attempt to smuggle past the other players. Points are scored for lies identified as truths or truths which go unnoticed.
Listen to the podcast in class to give the students an idea of how it works before you run the classroom version of The Unbelievable Truth. Now it’s time for your students to give their mini lectures. Do they have their favourite singer, football player, city, country, sport, tv series, etc. they could talk about? To make the task extra challenging, ask the students to do it without using the internet. Make sure you keep track of the scores to see who won at the end.
If you’re wondering what is the correlation before exams and this task, during the speaking part students are often asked to give a mini speech and expand on a given topic. Doing this activity is a great opportunity to practise just that.
Here is a link to some of the funniest episodes about animals:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3dwlL3NPfkwPxx2Dj8NCWSh/eight-unbelievable-truths-about-animals
You can find heaps more episodes on YouTube, if you’re keen.
9. Spelling championship
Spelling is always something worth practising as it will help the students maximise their score in their use of English, writing and listening involving gap filling. One way to do this is to introduce dictation as a regular classroom activity. Get the students to work in pairs and give them a set of sentences each to dictate to each other. Make sure the students go over each other’s lists at the end and count how many words/sentences they got correctly. Don’t forget to announce the king/queen of spelling at the end!
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So which of the activities did you like best? Which one do you think your students would enjoy the most? What are your go-to activities to make exam preparation engaging and constructive at the same time. Feel free to let me know in the comments.
Till next time.
Gaby
