Montevideo
CPE
Syllabus 2016
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Background information
The Level of CPE
As well as being at Cambridge Level Five, CPE has also been placed at Level Five of
the ALTE framework. The ALTE framework is one example of the way in which the
Council of Europe Common European Framework has been put into practice, and
ALTE Level Five can be seen as corresponding to Mastery in the Council of Europe
framework. A brief description of ALTE Level Five is given below. This description is
not a specification for the examination content, but refers to language activities in
real-world, non-examination contexts. The CPE examination contains some tasks
which are likely to be more suitable in content for candidates who have achieved a
certain degree of maturity in their handling of abstract ideas and concepts.
A
Listening / Speaking
Reading
Writing
Level
Summary
CAN advise on or talk
about complex or
sensitive issues,
understanding
colloquial references
and dealing
confidently with
hostile questions.
CAN understand
documents,
correspondence
and reports,
including the finer
points of complex
texts.
CAN write letters
on any subject
and full notes of
meetings or
seminars with
good expression
and accuracy.
Social &
Tourist
statements
summary
CAN talk about
complex or sensitive
issues without
awkwardness.
CAN (for example,
when looking for
accommodation)
understand a
tenancy agreement
in detail, including its
main implications.
CAN write letters
on any subject
with good
expression and
accuracy.
Work
statements
summary
CAN advise on/handle
complex, delicate or
contentious issues,
such as legal or
financial matters, to
the extent that he/she
has the necessary
specialist knowledge.
CAN understand
reports and articles
likely to be
encountered during
his/her work,
including complex
ideas expressed in
complex language.
CAN make full and
accurate notes
and continue to
participate in a
meeting or
seminar.
Study
statements
summary
CAN understand
colloquial asides and
cultural allusions.
CAN access all
sources of
information quickly
and reliably.
CAN make
accurate and
complete notes
during the course
of a lecture,
seminar or tutorial.
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Course Description
CPE is a course for students who want a qualification which indicates that their
English is at the most advanced level internationally, either for work or study purposes. A typical CPE candidate will already use many of the structures in English
fluently and will be able to respond appropriately and naturally to a wide range of both
predictable and unforeseen situations. A strong command of sophisticated expressions and structures will be essential.
Lessons are held twice a week for two hours per class. Furthermore, during the last
three months of the term students are given the opportunity to attend (free of charge)
extra classes which will give them practice in all the skills required to achieve a satisfactory performance in the final examination (Cambridge CPE)
Suggested Course Materials
• Expert Proficiency with March 2013 exam specifications - Coursebook, Pearson
• Proficiency Testbuilder 4th edition for the 2013 exam - Macmillan
• Language Practice for Advanced 4th edition - by Michael Vince. Macmillan
• Proficiency Practice Tests – Book 1 (For updated exam from March 2013). CUP
• Set books: Family Album by Penelope Lively and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Course aims
• To ensure that students are totally aware of the ways in which register affects
their choices of grammatical structures and vocabulary.
• To ensure students are able to express accurate and pertinent opinions, take part
in sophisticated discussions and adjust their language according to the social or
work situation in which they find themselves.
• To ensure they are able to produce very accurately written texts in a variety of
genres showing considerable sensitivity to register and structure.
• To ensure their reading abilities are at a level at which they are able to read and
understand, in comprehensive fashion, a wide range of both factual and fictional
material.
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Calendar - 2016
ASSESSMENT
HOLIDAYS
PARENTS MEETING
SPECIAL EVENTS (KIDS TO CH3)
LIBRARY
March 7th – 8th
March 21th – March 27th
April
April
April 18th
May 16th
May 18th – 19th
May 25th – 26st
June 2nd
June 6th / 10th
June 27th to July 2nd
July 18th
August 6th
August 13th
August 10th - 11th
August 17th – 18th
August 25th
August 29th / September 2nd
September 19th - 24th
October 10th
October 28th
November 2nd
October 1st - November 18th
November
December 2nd – 3rd
December 7th – 8th
December 12th – 16th
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Start of classes
Easter
Use of the Library begins
IH Club
National Holiday
National Holiday
May Oral Assessment
May Written Assessment
Theatre Play: D’Artagnan
1st parents’ meeting
Winter Holidays
National Holiday
Cambridge Mock Exams: FCE, CAE, CPE
Cambridge Mock Exams: KET, PET
August Oral Assessment
August Written Assessment
National Holiday
2nd parents’ & International Exams meeting
Spring Holidays
National Holiday
Halloween Celebration
National Holiday
Open Classes – Kids to CH3
Use of the library finishes
Final Oral Assessment
Final Written Assessment
3rd Parents Meeting
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Course Assessment
• Written assessment will be held in May and August (mock exam). The final written
exam can be taken at international level (Cambridge English: Proficiency) or the IH C2
level one. All written assessments will include the following sections: Reading and
Use of English, Writing and Listening comprehension.
• Oral assessment will be held in May, August and December. The main emphasis of
these evaluations is on communication. Students will take this examination in groups
of two or three. The assessment will consist of four parts: interview (answering basic
personal questions), describing pictures and a task involving negotiating skills among
them. The last one is a follow up of the third task, discussing and giving opinions on
more general questions related to the same theme dealt with in the individual long
turns. Providing plenty of practice in class is essential.
• Class work and homework: will be taken into account as part of the course for
teachers to judge their work throughout the year.
• Reports: teachers will write a report after both examination periods. In them, they
will include the speaking and written papers results (in marks out of 80 for Reading
and Use of English and 40 for each of the other papers, with a grand total of 200), an
overall percentage with the corresponding concept (see chart below) and a comment
for the student about his/her performance.
• Promotion: Promotion will depend on the mark of the final assessments. On the
whole, both written and oral assessments will result in a total of 100 marks. The
marking scheme for that scale will be:
Oral assesment criteria:
Grade A
Grade B
Grade C
Council of Europe Level C1
Fail
80 - 100%
75 - 79.5%
60 - 74.5%
45 - 59.5%
0 - 44.5%
Students who do not achieve a passing mark in the final assessment will
be given a chance to sit for it again in February.
Attendance Policy
In order to fulfil attendance requirements, students should attend at least 80% of the
total number of lessons.
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CPE Exam Content: an Overview
• Paper 1: Reading and Use of English
Timing: 1 hour 30 minutes
Content:
- Part 1: Multiple-choice cloze – a single text with eight gaps, with a set of four
words or phrases to fill each gap
- Part 2: Open cloze – a modified cloze test consisting of a text with eight gaps
- Part 3: Word formation – a text containing eight gaps, each of them
corresponding to a word (stem) that must be changed to form the missing word
- Part 4: Key word transformations – six discrete items with a lead-in sentence
and a gapped response to complete in 3-8 words including a given ‘key’ word
- Part 5: Multiple choice – a text followed by six 4-option multiple-choice
questions
- Part 6: Gapped text – a text from which seven paragraphs have been
removed and placed in jumbled order after the text
- Part 7: Multiple matching – a text, or several short texts, preceded by ten
multiple-matching questions
Test focus: Assessment of candidates’ ability to demonstrate knowledge and control
of the language system by completing various tasks at text and sentence level;
assessment of candidates’ ability to understand the meaning of written English at word,
phrase, sentence, paragraph and whole text level.
• Paper 2: Writing
Timing: 1 hour 30 minutes
Content:
- Part 1: Compulsory essay question (question 1) – 240-280 words
- Part 2: Candidates answer one from a choice of four questions (including
the set book option, question 5) – 280-320 words
Test focus: Assessment of candidates’ ability to write specified text types with a
range of functions.
• Paper 3: Listening
Timing: 40 minutes (approx.)
Content:
- Part 1: Three-option multiple choice - three short unrelated texts lasting
approximately 1 minute each, consisting of either monologues or exchanges between
interacting speakers, with two 3-option multiple-choice questions each
- Part 2: Sentence completion – a monologue lasting 3 to 4 minutes, with a
summarised written text with nine gaps to fill in with a word or short phrase
- Part 3: Four-option multiple choice – a text involving interacting speakers
lasting 3 to 4 minutes, with five 4-option multiple-choice questions
- Part 4: multiple matching – five short themed monologues of approximately
35 seconds each, with two multiple-matching tasks, each requiring selection of the
five correct options from a list of eight.
Test focus: Assessment of candidates’ ability to understand the meaning of spoken
English, to extract information from a text and to understand speakers’ attitudes and
opinions.
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• Paper 4: Speaking
Timing: 16 minutes
Content:
- Part 1: conversation between the interlocutor and each candidate
with a focus on general interaction and social language - 2 minutes
- Part 2: two-way conversation between the candidates – candidates
are given instructions with written and visual stimuli, which are used in
decision-making – focus on sustaining an interaction; exchanging ideas, expressing
and justifying opinions, agreeing and/or disagreeing, suggesting, speculating,
evaluating, reaching a decision through negotiating, etc - 4 minutes
- Part 3: individual long turns and follow-up discussion on topics
related to the long turns – candidates are given a written question to respond to;
interlocutor leads a discussion to explore further the topics of the long turns – focus
on organising a larger unit of discourse, expressing and justifying opinions,
developing topics - 10 minutes
Test focus: Assessment of candidates’ ability to produce spoken English using a
range of functions in a variety of tasks.
Topics
A range of topics aimed at the educated general reader may be covered by the
examination material. This includes:
Archaeology
Architecture
Biology / the body
Business / commerce / industry
Education / study / learning
Entertainment / leisure
Health / fitness
History
Language
Lifestyles
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O F
T H E
Psychology
Relationships
Science / technology
Social development
Society
The arts
The media
The natural world / environment
Travel / tourism
Work
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CPE COURSE OBJECTIVES
Exam
Practice
Grammar
Functions
Reading and
Use of
English
Present & Past tense
review; state verbs
Future tense review
Multiple-choice
lexical cloze.
Part 1
Lexical
knowledge, in
particular idioms,
collocations,
fixed phrases,
complementatio
n, phrasal verbs,
semantic
precision
Passive forms General
verb phrases; phrases
with have;
prepositional phrases
Open cloze.
Part 2
Awareness and
control of
grammar with
some focus on
vocabulary
Word formation.
Part 3
Vocabulary, in
particular the use
of affixation,
internal changes
and
compounding in
word formation
Key word
transformations.
Part 4 Grammar,
vocabulary and
collocation
Multiple choice.
Part 5
Understanding of
detail, opinion,
attitude, tone,
purpose, main,
idea, implication,
text organisation
features
(exemplification,
comparison,
reference)
Gapped text.
Part 6
Understanding of
cohesion,
coherence, text
structure, global
meaning
Conditionals tense
review Introductory and
emphatic it and there;
inversion
Making
recommendations
Giving opinions:
agreeing and
disagreeing. Asking for
opinion
Turn-taking
Modals: obligation,
necessity, advice and
criticism Modals:
ability, possibility,
probability and
deduction
Organising a larger unit
of discourse;
comparing,
describing, expressing
opinions, speculating
Words with a similar
meaning; confusable
words; homophones
Interrupting politely
Cleft sentences;
nominal relative
clauses; noun
collocations + of
Reaching a decision
through negotiation
Present subjunctive;
past subjunctive and
unreal past Emphatic
phrases with whether,
however, whatever, no
matter what/how
Relative clauses;
reduced relative
clauses with participles
and to infinitives;
reduced non-defining
descriptive clauses
Clauses of time and
reason, result,
concessionmeaning;
confusable words;
homophones
Adding information
Selecting and ranking
options
Comparing and
contrasting
photographs
Encouraging
interaction
Paraphrasing: what to
do when you don’t
know the word in
English.
Fillers, hesitation
devices
Rounding up
discussions
-ing form Infinitive or
-ing form?
Expressing personal
points of view
Sentence adverbials;
modifying and
intensifying gradable
and
Speaking about
personal experiences
M E M B E R
Ways of speculating
Sustaining an
interaction; exchanging
ideas
Multiple
matching. Part 7
Understanding of
A
Speculating, evaluating
and suggesting
alternatives in a
themed discussion.
Writing
Lexis
Words connected
with the
performing arts
Music and
entertainment
Describing music
Compulsory essay
240- 280 words
Part 1
Summarising and
evaluating the key
ideas contained in
two texts of approximately 100 words
each (Question 1)
Word formation:
verbs nouns
ending in –ion;
animal sounds –
figurative use;
phrasal verbs
Food production
Environmental
issues
Compound nouns
with self-; word
formation: prefixes
(inter-, mis-, non-);
suffixes (-ment,
-tion, -ness, -sion)
Animal idioms
Ways to relax
Use of metaphors;
collocations; word
formation: words
with multiple
suffixes;
prepositional
phrases; phrasal
verbs with up and
down; compound
words
News and
information
Optional
280-320 words
Part 2
Contextualised
writing tasks, each
specified in no more
than 70 words.
Writing an article, an
essay, a report or a
review (Questions
2-4) OR
Writing an article, an
essay, a letter, a
report or a review
based on reading
one from a prescribed list of two set
books (Question 5)
Literary devices;
expressions using
head, face, brain,
mind and wits;
phrases from
Shakespeare;
word formation:
multiple affixation
Careers and
language use
Topics ( based on
Proficiency Masterclass)
Performing arts: Have
you got what it takes? –
It’s live!
The natural world: Wild
experience – Closer to
home
Surviving and thriving:
Who’s in control? – Mind
and body
Information: Too much of
a good thing? – Open up
your world
Language and literature:
It’s all in a word! – An
open book
Travel: Sense of adventure – The conscientious
traveller
The way we live: Communities - Lifestyles
Changing fashions: A
question of style –
Everything under the sun
Fitness and nutrition:
How far can you go?– A
question of balance
Broadening your
horizons: Professional
concerns – Learning:
where do we go from
here?
Describing places;
the travel
experience; travel
and transport
collocations;
expressions with
sight; describing
remote places;
phrasal verbs with
set; verbs of
movement
Travel choices
Collocations;
expressions with
O F
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CPE COURSE OBJECTIVES
Exam
Practice
Grammar
detail, opinion,
attitude, specific
information
Listening
Three-option
multiple choice.
Part 1
Gist, detail,
function,
purpose, topic,
speaker, feeling,
attitude, opinion,
etc
Sentence
completion.
Part 2
Detail, stated
opinion
Functions
ungradable adjectives;
common adverb +
adjective collocations
Adjectives +
prepositions;
prepositional phrases;
mixed prepositions
Reporting verbs; ways
of rephrasing and
summarising;
impersonal report
structures
General verb phrases;
phrases with come, go,
make and take; nouns
from phrasal verbs
Four-option
multiple choice.
Part 3
Opinion, gist,
detail, inference,
agreement
M E M B E R
place; purpose and
intent; derivatives
of social and prefix
inter-Social life
Architectural and
design features;
phrases from art
and architecture;
collocations:
adjective and noun;
prepositions
Collecting and
collectibles
Fashions
Adjective and
adverb
collocations; words
of endurance;
expressions with
keep; phrasal verbs
with get; idioms
with get and keep;
use of prefixes
over- and underFood and nutrition
Topics ( based on
Proficiency Masterclass)
On-line
resources.
Grammar:
http://www.oup.com/elt/
http://www.clarity.com.hk/
program/studyskills.htm
http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/
http://www.CambridgeES
OL.org/teach
Vocabulary:
http://www.oup.com/elt/
http://www.lextutor.ca/test
s/ http://www.englishlearnin
g.com/en/8in1.html
http://www.vocaboly.com/
http://www.easyesol.com/
http://www2.rosettastone.
com/en/ http://iteslj.org.cw/
http://www.lingonet.com/
http://www.vocabster.com
http://www.pearsondigital.
com/ellis/
Communication skills:
http://www.tesol.net/penp
als/
Phrasal verbs;
collocations;
proverbs/idioms;
word formation: inor un-?
Thinking and
learning
Multiple
matching. Part 4
Gist, attitude,
main points,
interpreting
context
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Writing
Lexis
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