CAE READING AND USE OF

ENGLISH PART 1
Part 1 is about vocabulary with some grammar. You are given a text with
some words missing - you must rebuild the text by choosing the correct word
from a choice of 4. To make it even more fun, the 4 choices are usually quite
similar.

Tips
 Nothing prepares you for the Reading test better than reading. Read a
lot. Candidates who often read in English (for work, for fun) find this part
of the test manageable, while those who never read tend to find it very
hard.
 If you are 100% sure that two of the 4 choices are completely identical,
then neither can be the answer. There is always only one word that fits
grammatically and has the right meaning.
 Remember not to waste time thinking of the answer to the example!
The missing word is shown right above the headline (in the grey box).
 Double-check every sentence for prepositions that might link to the
missing word. For example: some verbs are always followed by 'for',
others are never followed by 'for'. If the word 'for' is in the sentence, it's
likely to be important. Note that the prepositions sometimes come a little
bit further along the sentence, not just after the gap.
 It’s possible you might not know the right answer but you do know that 3
of the answers are wrong. Train yourself to eliminate wrong answers! If
you can only eliminate 2 wrong answers, you’re still giving yourself a 50-
50 chance to get a point. (There are no penalties for wrong answers.)
 A great book that helps with this part of the exam is CAE Testbuilder. It
has 4 exams inside, but the best part is that it explains why the right
answers are right, and why the wrong answers are wrong. Very, very
useful.
CAE READING AND USE OF
ENGLISH PART 2
In part 2 there is a text with words missing. Whereas in part 1 you pick from a
choice of words, in part 2 there is no such help. You have to use your
knowledge of grammar to produce the right word.

1. Tips
Write only one word. One! Only! Cambridge consider contractions like 'won't'
to be two words (will not), so that will never be an answer in part 2.

Start by reading the title, then quickly read the whole text. This will help tell
you if words should be positive or negative.

Sometimes more than one word might be possible - for example if 'whereas'
fits, 'while' might also fit. Either answer is okay, but don't write both.

This is one part of the exam where looking at the answers you get wrong
while preparing is a goldmine. In fact, the whole next section is about that.

2. An Incredibly Detailed Analysis of Part 2

I went through every 'open cloze' test in every Cambridge book I could find
and made an Excel spreadsheet of all the answers (which you can view here
if you’re interested). The results were very interesting and a little bit surprising.

The most common answers were (in order of frequency):

to - being - which - for - with - one - not - as

Do you know the grammar rules behind those words? What sort of sentence
uses the word 'to'? If you're reading a book at the moment, would it be useful
to take a page and see how many times the word 'to' is used, and maybe
study those sentences? Yes! I like the way you think!

Here is a graph showing all the data rather beautifully:

3. Some advice based on the data
a) If the missing word is at the start of the sentence, ask yourself if a gerund
fits. Many answers were -ing forms - having and being were very frequent.

b) Of the relative pronouns, the most common by far was which. Study
defining and non-defining relative clauses!

c) 'With' came up frequently, but so did 'without'. That's why you should read
the text as a whole before you start thinking of the answers.

d) Similarly, 'if' was very common, but so was 'unless'. Unless means 'if not',
so again, reading the whole text to get the writer's opinion is vital!
e) While 'to be' was, naturally, the most common verb and has its own section,
other verbs were quite common. Mostly they are verbs which are useful in
some advanced grammatical structures. For example, 'have' (and has, had,
etc) are useful for making perfect tenses. Do is useful for emphatic language.
Take is used in many phrasal verbs. (Did you know I made an online course
about phrasal verbs?)

f) Linking phrases! You need to know these for the writing and speaking parts,
but if you have mastered the words whereas, although, however, despite,
spite (in the phrase in spite of), there are many easy points to collect in this
part of the exam. Also but, so, while, and such things.

g) Prepositions. Everyone's least favourite part of English. Except Cambridge.

Cambridge LOVES prepositions. Look for uses of in, of, by, out, before,
after, and all the rest.

h) These words aren't the most frequent, but there will be 3 or 4 in your text -
no, there, once, even, such, since, it, myself (or themselves etc), what,
either, and these.

i) The! I was amazed how many times 'the' was the answer. Poor little 'a' was
much less common.

Try typing those words into dictionary.com - it will give you some example
sentences of how the word is used in normal English.

CAE READING AND USE OF

ENGLISH PART 3 TIPS
This is a Word Formation task which will be familiar to students who did the
First Certificate. Word Formation activities test your ability to change one type
of word into another, your ability to use prefixes and suffixes, your spelling,
and your reading comprehension.
Step 1 - Understand how to do the task
* It's not one of those tasks where you have to match the left column to the
right column:

At the end of every line with a word missing you'll see a word in bold, capital
letters. That is the word you must transform to be used in that line. Do not
use that word to fill in an answer elsewhere on the page!

* You need to read the whole text to get the writer's opinion on the topic.
That's because you'll have to change some of the words into negative forms,
and you can't do that if you only read the sentences containing the missing
words.

* To do it well you need to understand how sentences are built in English -

that means understanding the function of verbs, nouns, adjectives, and
adverbs. That sounds hard, but it's really not so bad when you get the hang of
it.

* Then you need to learn all the different forms of words. This is the hard part!

* You must change the word in at least one way! There is never a ‘trick’
question where the word can go into the sentence unchanged.

2 - Nounspotting
This quick guide is no substitute for getting a proper grammar book, but here
are a few tips. These things are nouns - names (Captain Jack Sparrow);
concepts (time, information); names of jobs or types of people (skiiers,
doctors, scientists); things (cheesecake, flowers).
- Sometimes you can't spot a noun based on its ending, but sometimes you
can. Look out for: -eer; -tion; -ment, -age, -al, ance, -hood, -iety, -ness, and so
on.

- If you have a word which can be made plural or into a possessive form, it's
a noun. (Two solutions/ the solution's result = solution is a noun.) Read the
part 3 text carefully to check if you need to make your noun plural! You get no
points for writing car if the answer is cars!

- If you have a determiner in a sentence, look for a noun. If you can't find one
that goes with the determiner, the missing word is a noun. Determiners
include the, my/your/their (etc), whose, another, other, a/an.

Their ___________ was very clever. SOLVE

The ____________ was more dangerous than they had expected. PURSUE

An incredible number of ___________ failed to understand the significance of

the study. SCIENCE

(Answers: solution/pursuit/scientists.)

3 - Adjectives describe nouns

Adjectives are the most common answers in part 3, slightly ahead of nouns.
Look at this:
Red/old/fast are adjectives - they tell us about the noun 'car'. (Notice that
adjectives sometimes follow 'to be' - that might be good to remember.)

In the Cambridge exam you won't have such easy words, of course, and it
might not always be so clear which noun the adjective refers to.
These collocations are typical of the English used in part 3:

low temperatures and changeable weather

artificial oxygen and local guides

great benefit

personal point of view

They are all adjective-noun combinations. The best tip to check if a word is an
adjective is to quickly transform the sentence so that the word follows 'is'.
Example:

The great is benefit. (Ugh! No!)

The benefit is great. (Yes, sounds good. Great is an adjective.)

Or:

The artificial is oxygen. (Please don't! It hurts my ears!)

The oxygen is artificial. (Ah, that's better... artificial is an adjective.)

COMMON ENDINGS FOR ADJECTIVES:

-able; -ible; -al (careful! this works with nouns too); -ial; -ant; -ate; -ative; -ive; -
ing; -ed; -ous; -ly (not always an adverb!); -y; -ful; -ness; -ic; -ary; -ory.

4 - How to use an adverb

Your grammar book will deal with advanced usage, but this guide will cover a
lot of situations. Adverbs describe verbs, other adverbs and adjectives.
View fullsize
Adverbs used frequently by Cambridge are increasingly, progressively,
dramatically and others which describe the rate of change. Also, they're fond
of adverbs that start sentences, such as alternatively, surprisingly, etc.

5 - Essential verbs
Do you know how to change words into verbs using 'en', 'under', and 'out'?
My sleeves are too short - I need to lengthen them.

The thrilling music heightened the tension of the final scene.

The Prime Minister undertook to find a solution to the crisis.

The actress underwent surgery on her nose.

The new album outsold the old album by two to one.

Red crabs outnumber blue crabs.

(After you've learned those, you can start work on verbs formed with over-,
down- and up-. !!!)

NOTE - If you need to use a verb, make sure you use the right TENSE.
Present simple? Past continuous?

6 - Positive or Negative
When you've decided if you need a verb/adjective/etc in a space, and you've
got an answer, always read the paragraph again to make sure the meaning is
correct. A few words on every test will be negative.
Here's an example from a Cambridge text about climbing Mount Everest:

"During the month of May, ............................. weather presents a number of

safe opportunities to make the climb." FAVOUR

Because the text was about Everest, students will quickly fill in
'UNFAVOURABLE'. On careful reading of the sentence, better students
realise the word 'safe' is key. The answer therefore should be FAVOURABLE.

The next sentence is:

"As a result, the sheer number of climbers has brought an .............................

problem - overcrowded conditions." EXPECT

An EXPECTED problem? But the last bit of the sentence - overcrowded

conditions - is the last thing you'd expect on Mount Everest. So here we need
the negative form, UNEXPECTED.

COMMON NEGATIVE PREFIXES:

dis-; in-; im-; il-; un-; il-; de-; mis-
7 - Spelling
There’s normally one word per set of 8 where the answer needs a big spelling
change IN THE MIDDLE.

For example, LONG becomes LENGTHEN.

Again, make sure you learn things like high > height > heighten and
strong > strength > strengthen.

CAE READING AND USE OF

ENGLISH PART 4 TIPS
Alarm! Alarm! Some students think this is the hardest part of the whole exam.
And they might be right! It tests a wide range of grammar, vocabulary, and
you need to be able to change informal language into formal, active into
passive, and more! Can you do this one?

1. Basic Tips
 The instructions say 'you must use the word given.' It doesn't mean the
actual word 'given', it means the word provided!
 Use between 3-6 words. Most contractions are 2 words (won't, don't =
will not, do not). It might be possible to complete the sentence in a
grammatically correct way with 2 words, or with 22 words, but you won't
get any points for that!
 Don't change the word. If the word given is 'TO' you can't use 'INTO'. If
the word is 'GO' you can't use 'WENT'.
 As I said, this section is very hard because there's so much you need to
know. But each question is worth 2 points. You might not know the
whole answer but sometimes one correct word will give you a point.
 Try to keep the same meaning - If the first sentence says 'Tom said...'
then don't write 'He said...' in the second sentence. (Write ‘Tom said’.)
 Check your tenses - if the first sentence is in the past tense, the second
should be, too!
2. Time Management Flowchart
In the introduction to the Reading and Use of English test we suggested you
START the exam by doing part 4, and don't spend too long on it.

Use this flowchart to help you determine how much time to spend on each
question: