How to prepare for the exam?
- Familiarize with Exam Categories and Levels. Teachers should establish the proper exam level for their students checking the levels descriptions, categories and students' typologies.
- Explore Exam Format and Content. Learn about the content and the format of the exam and inform your students.
- Let your student practice the NIE. To allow students to gain familiarity with the Exam and for teachers, to test the Exam's functionality in advance, it is possible to take Practice Exams that reflect the structure and functionality of the NIE. Practice exams are available to teachers and students once they register on Lingco or using the link below (on Quia).
Tips for preparing students for the reading section
- Give students a wide range of authentic text types to read. For example, notes and messages on social media websites, information brochures and articles.
- Help learners practice skimming and scanning both shorter and longer texts. Encourage learners to develop a habit of always skimming a text first to get a general understanding.
- Give students practice reading texts with unfamiliar vocabulary, and use a variety of reading strategies to infer the meaning and focus the attention on the task rather than on the comprehension of individual words. Help your learners to work out the meaning of new words by using the rest of the text. Encourage them not to use a dictionary for every new word.
- Encourage your students to read instructions carefully. Ask them to highlight key words, and use examples to help them understand what to do.
- Give students practice doing timed exercises and exam tasks where they need to manage their own time.
- Help learners think about the different ways we read texts. For example, if they are reading an information brochure then ask them to find some specific information like the time a movie is being screened. If they are reading an email, ask them to think what is the main message.
Tips for preparing learners for the listening and viewing section
- Help students identify and understand the type of text they are listening to. They should also identify the purpose of the task that they have to do. Together, these activities will help them to choose the most appropriate listening strategies for the tasks.
- Use classroom spoken activities and a range of oral texts (audios and videos) to help to develop listening skills.
- Make sure learners read the instructions on the exam, and listen to them on the recording so they are completely clear about what they have to do.
- All the texts in the exam can be heard as many times as students deem necessary, however they need to learn how to use the time wisely since the exam is 40 mins long. Students should focus on the task and the information they need to complete the task and not on understanding every segment of information.
- Use the transcript of the recording once learners have completed a task. It can be useful to look at it to identify key phrases, cues, distraction, etc.
- Practice different types of listening to develop your learners’ listening skills. Testing should not be the only focus.