Online exam reports are valuable pointers for teachers preparing candidates for Cambridge ESOL exams.
Examination reports are prepared for each of the General English exams and the Business English Certificates a few weeks after each session of the examination has taken place. The reports feature breakdowns of the overall percentage of passes at each grade for that session of the exam.
An analysis of candidates’ performance in each paper covers each section and looks at how candidates have responded to specific questions. The analysis not only looks at where candidates have been successful, but also gives illustrations of common faults found in that section of that paper.
Teachers can use this to compare the progress of their own students with the overall achievement of all test takers for that paper, and also to help analyse why candidates may have made errors. For example, the report on the Writing paper for the First Certificate in English (December 2006) showed that a number of students used the verb ‘suggest’ incorrectly. This kind of information can help teachers anticipate similar weaknesses in their own students and develop their lesson content to remedy such errors.
For this purpose there are comments on student performance at the end of the analysis of each paper, with recommendations for candidate preparation.
All the exam reports can be found at: www.cambridgeesol.org/resources/teacher