CAE Practice Exams

One of the things that is very important for you to do if you want to pass the Cambridge Certificate in Advanced English (CAE) exam is to practise doing the different parts of the exam. The more you do them, the more comfortable and quicker you become at doing them.

To help you easily find copies of the exam to practise doing them, I have created the below list of web pages where you can find them. In some of these, the exam is online (so, you can do it on your computer, smartphone etc...). In others, you have to download a copy of the exam and print it out to do it.

All of these come with the answers (so you can check how well you have done after doing the tests).

There is only one CAE exam

Unlike the FCE exam (where there are two different versions of exam: the First Certificate in English and the First Certificate in English for Schools) there is only one CAE exam.

Make sure you do the latest exam format

In 2015 the exam format of the CAE exam changed. Although the current format has many exercises which are similar to the old format, some are very different. So make sure that any practice exam that you do is for the current format which you will have to do when you do the exam.

All of the below links are for the exam or parts of the exam with the currently used format.

For the Reading and UOE exam

Both of these provide online exercises you can use to practise the Reading and Use of English part of exam:

Flo Joe online Reading/UOE exam

Exam English online Reading/UOE exam

For the Listening exam

The below link again provides online exercises you can use to practise the Listening part of exam:

Exam English online Listening exam

A copy of the whole Certificate in Advanced English exam

The link below provides with a PDF from Cambridge that has two different sample CAE exams and examples of different pieces of writing. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the audio files to do the Listening part in either exam:

Two Official Cambridge CAE exams

This link is also from Cambridge and has the first exam from the above PDF. But it includes the audio files for the Listening exam. It also provides you with the option of either doing a paper copy of the exam or doing the exact same exam computer-based (i.e. doing it online):

An Official Cambridge CAE exam with audio

A book of practice exams

If you want to practise doing more parts of the exam than I have shown you above, then I recommend that you buy a book which contains all the different parts. The book is called Advanced Trainer from Cambridge.

It not only contains 6 full practice exams (with access to the audio files online), but provides advice on doing the different parts and gives some (but not many) vocabulary and grammar exercises. I really like this book. Make sure that you get the one with the answers.

Learn methods to do the exam

Although practising doing the different parts of the exam will help you to do them better, it is more important that you learn a method to do each part quickly and accurately. So, I recommend that you create your own or find methods before doing lots of different CAE exam papers.