Practice Tests For The Certificate Of Advanced English

Practice
Test: Certificate of Advanced English

Getting the
CAE is a big step on the road to success for many people, whether it is for a
job, for study, or just for a sense of personal achievement.  Most people
see the Certificate of Advanced English as the gold standard of English – in
other words, if you’ve passed the Certificate of Advanced English it is a clear
sign that your English is really good.  Some people go on to take the CPE
as well, but for many people CAE is the point at which they have proved their
English to be of a high standard.
So, how can
you make sure that you pass the Certificate of Advanced English?  Well,
one way of course is to do practice tests.  To see what you need to do, an
obvious thing is to look through past papers, and see what kinds of questions
come up again and again.  The best place to start is the Cambridge
Practice Test books – if you look at these, you can see authentic past papers
from previous exams, which therefore show you exactly what previous candidates
had to do.  Try a practice test of reading and Use of English from a
practice test book from Cambridge, and you’ll be able to see exactly what
collocations, fixed phrases, grammar structures and patterns, and phrasal verbs
are in the Use of English, and what types of reading question you have to
answer in the reading section. 
One tip with
practice tests for the Certificate of Advanced English is that when you have
finished a test, and you’ve seen your score, you can then go through the
practice test in detail, and make a note of all the phrases and grammar you’ve
missed.  Take Use of English part one of CAE, for example.  You can
look through your answers, and where you’ve made a mistake, you can note down
the correct collocation or phrase.  But also, with CAE, it’s a good idea
to look at the other possible answers in the multiple-choice and see why they
were not the correct answer, and what is the difference between the four
options.  These slight differences of meanings are worth recording, and
later on, you will come across some of them in parts of the exam.  That
way, you really get value from a CAE practice test, and you get to learn more
English as well as being tested.
Of course,
you can also do an English course in the UK, where you can learn English in
England, and prepare for CAE at the same time as using your language in a real
setting.  A lot of the material tested in the Certificate of Advanced
English is based on real, spoken English, and so you will get to hear, and use,
the language you study in your CAE lessons outside of the class.  Pick a
school which has CAE specialist teachers, and you’ll find that your chance of
passing is much much higher.  Your range of language will increase, as
will your ability to use language confidently and accurately.

So, use CAE Practice Tests well, to get the most out of them,
and learn from them, along with some lessons from an experience professional,
if you have the chance, in order to give you the best chance of success in
passing the Certificate of Advanced English.