Changes in the Cambridge English First exams as of January 2015

Changes to Cambridge exams (as of January 2015)

Cambridge English: First

Description

Current version

Revised version (2015)

Format

Five papers

 

Four papers

(Reading and Use of English have been combined)

Timing

3 hours 59 minutes

3 hours 29 minutes

Number of Parts

17

17

Number of questions

104

84

 

Reading and Use of English
  • The Reading and Use of English papers have been combined.
  • The revised paper takes 1 hour 15 minutes, which is 30 minutes shorter than the current Reading and Use of English papers.
  • All the task types from both papers have been kept but the number of items in each task has been reduced.
  • From 2015, there will be 7 parts and 52 questions.
  • Use of English tasks come before Reading tasks so that there is a clear progression from a focus at word and sentence level to a focus on whole text.
     
Writing
  • The compulsory Part 1 question is now an essay rather than an email or letter.
  • The word count for both parts has increased to 140–190 words.
  • In Part 2, candidates now choose from three questions rather than five, and candidates can decide to write an article, a report, a review or an email/letter.
  • There will no longer be questions on set texts.
     
Listening
  • All the current listening tasks are retained.
  • In Part 1 the options are now not read out.
  • In the Part 3 question there are now two additional distractors – so there are three distractors in all.
     
Speaking
  • Overall the revised Speaking paper takes the same length of time and has the same number of parts and tasks but there are changes to each part.
  • In Part 1, the timing has been reduced from 3 minutes to 2 minutes.
  • In Part 2, the candidate response time has increased from 20 seconds to 30 seconds.
  • In Part 3, the picture prompts are replaced with written prompts. The task is now split into two to include a discussion phase and a decision-making phase.
  • The Part 4 timing has increased by one minute.