5 Things That Actually Matter When You Teach Cambridge Exams

And why getting them right changes everything — for your students and for you

Teaching Cambridge exams is a specific skill. It’s related to teaching English, obviously, but it’s not the same thing. Teaching English for specific purposes (for instance, an exam) can be a daunting task. It doesn't have to be one, though.

Over the years, I’ve watched very competent English teachers struggle in exam classrooms, not because their language wasn’t strong enough, but because they were approaching the exam as if it were a language course with a test at the end. It isn’t. And once you understand that, a lot of things start to make more sense.

Here are five things I keep coming back to, in my own teaching and in the conversations I have with other teachers about this.

1. You need to know the exam better than your students do.

This sounds obvious, but I mean something more specific than “read the handbook.” I mean knowing why each task exists, what each criterion is actually measuring, and what the difference looks like in practice between a B2 response and a C1 one. Your students will bring you work that sits somewhere in between, and you need to be able to say something useful about it. That level of familiarity takes time, observation, and deliberate study — it doesn’t come from teaching the coursebook.

2. Exam technique and language development are different things, and need different kinds of attention.

A student can have a genuine C1 level of English and still underperform on a C1 exam. The task types, the time constraints, the conventions of each paper — these are learnable, but they need to be taught explicitly and practised under realistic conditions. Part of your job is helping students understand that preparing for an exam is its own discipline, separate from improving their general English. The two things support each other, but they’re not the same.

3. Feedback needs to be criterioned.

One of the hardest adjustments for teachers coming from a communicative background is learning to give feedback that’s tied to specific assessment criteria. “This is good but could be more sophisticated” isn’t useful exam feedback. “You’re meeting the criteria for content and organisation, but your language range isn’t showing enough variation for this level” is. It takes practice to think and speak this way, and it changes how your students understand their own work. It gives them autonomy.

4. Managing student anxiety is part of the job.

Teachers who are well-prepared for exams are not immune to anxiety. Neither are their students. A significant part of teaching for Cambridge is helping people build the kind of confidence that holds up under pressure, and this doesn’t happen by accident. It comes from consistent practice, honest feedback, and a classroom environment where making mistakes is part of the process, not a sign that someone isn’t ready.

5. Your students need to understand what they’re being assessed on, not just what they need to do.

There’s a difference between a student who knows they have to write a report and a student who understands what a strong report looks like at their level, and why. The second student can self-monitor, make decisions, and recover when something goes wrong in the exam room. Getting students to that point is one of the most valuable things you can do as an exam teacher, and it requires you to be very clear, in your own mind, about what good performance actually looks like.

---

If you want to go deeper into these ideas, I recorded a workshop on exactly this — Teaching for Exams: Key Principles. It’s available on Nutror for you to watch at your own pace, here.

And if you’re a teacher who wants to sit a Cambridge exam yourself — FCE, CAE, or CPE — my preparation courses for 2026.2 start in the first week of August. Small groups, live classes, taught in English. Details and enrolment here. If you feel you have any questions, send me a message.

Hoping to see you there!