This course is aimed at hard working, motivated adults who would like to prepare thoroughly for CAE and maximise their chance of succeeding in the exam.

The course is a highly intensive but broad programme of language development, focusing on all of the main skills that are required in the CAE exam. A lot of attention is given to developing the different forms of writing tested in the exam, and to achieving a high degree of grammatical accuracy. Vocabulary development is another extremely important aspect of the course. Listening and speaking are also significant parts of the course.

As part of the course, you will take a full mock examination to give you an idea of what to expect, and to get you used to working under examination conditions. You will also concentrate on developing good exam techniques and practice with past examination papers.

Throughout the course, you will be regularly set a wide variety of exercises for homework, which will enable you to identify the areas that you particularly need to focus on improving. You will receive a great deal of individual feedback, correction and advice.

A full online practice CAE exam is included in the course.  Some of this will be used on the course, but it can also be used by course participants in their own time to prepare for the exam.

The course benefits

By the end of the course you will be able to:

• take the exam with greater confidence
• approach the five different components of the Cambridge CAE exam (Reading, Writing, English in Use, Listening and Speaking) with greater confidence
• handle the language more effectively and with greater confidence
• understand what you read and hear more easily
• speak and write more accurately
• speak more fluently
• use a wider range of vocabulary in your written and spoken English
• understand the areas you need to work on the most.

The examination consists of the following five components and types of questions and tasks:

• Reading – you will practice reading a variety of different texts, such as newspaper/magazine articles, journals, leaflets, brochures and non-literary books. You will practice multiple-choice questions and work on developing the key reading skills tested in the exam.
• Writing – you will practice writing formal and informal letters, notes and messages, articles, contributions to leaflets, reviews, competition entries, instructions, memos, reports, and proposals.
• English in Use – you will practice all of the task types in Paper 3 of the exam, designed to test the candidate's understanding and control of the formal elements of language in context: the multiple-choice cloze, the open cloze, word formation, gapped sentences, key word transformations.
• Listening – you will practice listening to a variety of different texts, such as announcements, radio broadcasts, telephone messages, speeches, talks, discussions, interviews and lectures.
• Speaking – you will practice all of the task types in Paper 5 of the exam which are designed to test your ability to use social, transactional and interactional language.