Once your students have covered the basics of reading and writing, and mapped out the grammar and vocabulary, what are the next steps in preparing them for the Reading and Use of English paper? As we progress towards the exam, we need to help students integrate these skills and provide activities to help them engage with texts in multiple ways. In this blog we provide four activities to help students improve their vocabulary, as well as their understanding of context and the relationship between meaning and form.
Exploring beyond the test
When it comes to using practice texts, think of it as a journey into unexplored territory. We can take sample texts with existing tasks and create new tasks to help students get even more out of the text. Take, for example, a text from the new B2 First for Schools Trainer (3rd Edition).
This text is supported with tips and advice, helping learners focus on the Use of English component of the exam. While this exercise is a valuable tool, there are more opportunities for teachers to exploit it.
Try out the following simple but effective activities in class.
Activity 1: More right answers
This activity is designed to help expand students’ vocabulary and understanding of context.
- Divide the class into two or more teams for a collaborative and competitive element.
- Display each question or blank from the text on the board and write the correct answer next to it as a reference.
- Explain that the aim is to think of alternative answers that could also correctly complete the sentences.
- Teams take turns to suggest alternative answers and get a point for each correct and contextually appropriate answer. For example, in gap 23 in the text above students could get a point for saying ’determined’, ‘prepared’, or ‘ready’.
Activity 2: Mining the text for language
This simple activity is designed to enrich students’ lexical resource and engagement with language.
- After reading a text, give students a chance to read the text again and note down any unfamiliar words and phrases.
- Ask students to choose some of the phrases to incorporate into their spoken or written English.
Simply having students read the text, especially ones that focus more on use of English knowledge, can provide lots of opportunities to notice and reuse the language again. For example, in the text above students might decide to borrow phrases like ‘making progress’, ‘capable of’ or ‘handful of’, and make an intentional effort to try them out in their next writing activity.
Activity 3: Analysing and rebuilding texts
In this activity we go deeper into the texts and encourage students to break them up and reconstruct them. This process involves identifying key sentences or phrases and creating new content around them.
For example, in the ‘My polar bear research’ text below, taken from First Trainer (2nd Edition), students might focus on paragraph 3.
- You could ask students to discuss which sentence in the paragraph is the most important and why.
- Ask students to identify the most important word – perhaps ‘marine’. They could work to create a sentence that uses that word in context. Then they exchange sentences with a partner and see if they could build a new paragraph around that sentence.
This activity can help sharpen students’ skills in analysis and creative writing, enhancing their overall comprehension and application abilities.
Activity 4: Understanding the author
Another way to explore texts is to analyse why the author chose certain words or structures. This activity is particularly relevant for higher levels.
The teacher can ask questions such as:
- Why has the author chosen these words?
- Why has the author written in this style?
- Why has the author written in the first person? (in the polar bear text)
- Why would they make this choice? (often discouraged in academic writing)
We could even ask the students to use that text to create a new one, for example a blog post called ‘Three things you might not know about polar bears’ and talk about how the language might change.
Making connections: the interplay of language and skills
As we progress towards exam day, students need to recognise how different language skills are interconnected. By engaging with texts in many ways, they can see the interplay of meaning and form, understanding that these elements are not isolated. This insight is helpful not just for exam success but also for their broader journey in mastering the English language.
More information
Please read our teachers’ guides to developing reading skills for Cambridge English Qualifications for more information on this. They are available at the following levels: A2 Key for Schools, B1 Preliminary for Schools, B2 First for Schools, C1 Advanced and C2 Proficiency.
Example texts in this blog are taken from Trainers. These books provide six full practice tests, expert guidance, and exam tips. The first two tests are fully guided, with step-by-step advice on tackling each paper. New Trainers are now available at the following levels: A2 Key for Schools, B1 Preliminary for Schools and B2 First for Schools.
This blog was adapted from content in the new Exam Preparation Journey hub, which offers teaching tips, classroom activities and expert advice that work alongside your exam timeline and existing course materials.