FCE - How to study for Reading and Use of English

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FCE Questions

When is it? The written exams are planned on April 15, the Speaking is usual a few days before this. 

Webinairs? See next slide

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FCE reading exam

The exam has 7 parts and takes 75 minutes 

Today we are going to look at:

 

Part 7 - Multiple Matching Questions (page 50/ex 1 t/m 6) in your Gold Experience book) - We will work on these exercises today and tomorrow. 

Reading & Use of English Part 7

1. MULTIPLE MATCHING QUESTIONS - what do I have to do?
2. The 3 most difficult things about this part of the exam?
3. Tips & strategies

What do you have to do in part 7?

Multiple matching. You get a text which is broken up into 4-6 parts and ten questions. Your task is to match each question to the part that gives you the answer to the question. The focus is on reading for detailed information.

In this example there are four parts, but as mentioned above, you might see up to six in the text. Next to each of the four paragraphs you can find a letter A-D which you put in the boxes next to the questions.

Reading & Use of English Part 7 tests your ability to find specific information and detail in a text. 

The three most common issues with part 7

1.  Candidates don’t analyse the questions
2. Candidates don’t know how to deal with the task
3. Candidates have problems with time management

1. Candidates don’t analyse the questions

One thing that I see all the time is that students start the task without knowing what exactly they need to look for. Spending a minute or two on the analysis of the questions can help a lot. Not only does it help with finding the correct answers, but it also saves you some valuable time for other, more difficult, tasks.

2. Candidates don’t know how to deal with the task

Part 7 of Reading & Use of English is tricky because it is difficult for students to find a time-saving and effective strategy to complete the task. With ten questions and 4-6 paragraphs to look at I have seen many students get confused, nervous and, therefore, they make too many mistakes. Preparation is the key to success here and on the following slides you will see how to go through it one step at a time.

3. Candidates have problems with time management

This is probably the most general problem in Reading & Use of English. As there are only 75 minutes for all seven parts you have to know how much time to spend on each task so you can through the exam without heart attacks and mental breakdowns. Follow my tips to prepare yourself and be ready for FCE.

Tips & strategies

Rule number 1 in your practice for Reading & Use of English is to have a regular reading habit. You have to read a lot in this exam paper (around 2,200 words) so get used to it as soon as you can. Start with 5-10 minutes of reading per day highlighting new words and expressions. Later you can look up everything in a good online dictionary.

Tips & strategies

For Reading & Use of English Part 7 I recommend reading reviews and articles where you find different opinions on one topic. Try to look for the details that make the difference in those texts because that is exactly what you are required to do in the task itself.

Follow this plan, you will minimise the risk of making mistakes and maximise the time you have to work on the text.

• Analyse the questions
• Go through the text paragraph by paragraph
• Double check your answers

1. Analyse the questions

DON'T jump straight into reading the text and matching the paragraphs to the questions. Instead, the first thing you want to do is look at the questions. Read them carefully and underline the key words that tell you what exactly to look for. Be aware that there will be similar information in the different paragraphs of the text so you have to get it 100% right, not just 80%.

For question 43 the underlining could look like my example above

Focus on the most important pieces of information so it becomes easier for you to find the correct answer.

2. Go through the text paragraph by paragraph

In Reading & Use of English Part 7 NEVER waste time trying to answer question by question. Imagine you start with question 43 and you read the whole text to find the answer. Then you go to the next question and, again, you read the whole text to find the answer. If you repeat this process for each question, you have to read the text close to ten times, which takes forever and is absolutely inefficient. 

What you really want to do is to go paragraph by paragraph. 

That means you read the first paragraph and check which of the questions are definitely answered there before you move on to the next one and repeat it. Remember my previous example where you would have to read the whole text around ten times? Now, if you go by paragraphs, you read the text once or maybe twice until you’ve got it right. It takes much less time and gives you the exact same result. Let’s look at an example.

In this example you can see how you can analyse a paragraph and find the information which gives you the answer to some of the questions. Here, paragraph A answers numbers 43 and 48.

Why this is a good tip!

Apart from saving you a lot of time, going paragraph by paragraph also makes it easier for you to complete the task because with each step the number of questions becomes smaller and smaller. Above, there are only eight questions left when you move on to B.

Word spotting

One last thing that you need to be very careful with is what we call ‘word spotting’. In the FCE exam you will often see that some words that you can find in the questions are also somewhere in the text. However, these same words are very often placed there to confuse you. Don’t fall into this trap and scan the text slowly so you actually find the correct piece of information. The best way to help you with this is to underline the part that answers the question the same way I did in the example.

3. Double check your answers

After you have matched the different questions to their answers you should always double check one last time just to be on the safe side. We get sometimes caught up in details and believe in a wrong answer. Just take a deep breath, look at the whole part again and correct mistakes if you have to.

Exam Tip: Multiple Matching

1. Read the questions first this will help you know what you are looking for when you read.
2. REMEMBER YOU DON'T NEED TO UNDERSTAND ALL THE WORDS IN THE TEXT. 

Practice Part 7

Today and tomorrow: 

Wednesday 20th of January

Gold Experience Page 50

 exercise 1 up to and including exercise 6

Put your answers in Google Classroom. 

Use the next two slides to practice for FCE Part 7 of Reading and Use of English

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