You can help your child improve their English by giving them lots of opportunities to read in English. This will help your child to feel more confident and prepared for their English exams.
Here are some ideas you can try at home.
Storybooks
Read storybooks or fun facts related to topics your child is interested in.
Encourage your child to choose books and websites that are appropriate to their level (or slightly above their level, if they have interesting pictures and topics).
Stopping all the time to look up words is frustrating and makes it much harder to understand the reading material. If a book is too difficult or your child isn’t enjoying it, encourage them to put it back and choose another one.
Learning tip
Find a funny text or short story. Cut it up and ask your child to stick it back together again. You can make it more difficult by having a couple of cards that don’t match so the task isn’t completed by luck towards the end. Then read the story aloud together.
Check out more learning tips and activities in our article Learn English through stories.
Free online learning activities
Encourage your child to try some of our fun learning activities, available on a computer or a tablet.
Learning tip for 5–12 year olds
Your child can practise their English with these fun learning activities.
Learning tip for 13–18 year olds
Encourage your child to try some of our free reading activities.
Games and social media
Our free games are designed to help learners improve their English language in a fun way.
Learning tips for 13–18 year olds
The Cambridge English Facebook page is updated every day, giving your child regular opportunities to practise English. Encourage your child to check out our interesting facts, videos, discussions and quizzes. Quiz answers are made available the next day.
Practise English in your daily life
English can be part of your child’s everyday life, not just something they study at school. The more they use English, the more confident they will become.
Learning tips
Here are some ideas you could try at home:
- Ask your child to research a food/drink from a different country. For example, traditional English ‘afternoon tea’.
- Give your child a shopping list written in English. Ask them to find the items on the list.
- Cook a meal with an English language recipe.
- Read English-language stories and fun fact books.
- Read English-language news.
- Play a board game in English.
- Change smartphone, laptop and tablet settings to English. This will give your child instant, regular reading practice.
- Go on a ‘scavenger hunt’. Create a list of things for your child to find. Ask them to take a photograph of each item. This is a great game to play when you’re out on a walk, during a long car trip, or on a rainy day with household objects.
Encourage your child to record English words they hear and see.
- After reading a text, encourage your child to look for useful words and phrases that they would like to remember.
- Your child might find it useful to add photos or pictures for each word/phrase.
- When your child records new adjectives, encourage them to note down the nouns they commonly pair up with. A good dictionary will help. For example: avant-garde art/cinema/painting (very original or modern).
- Some phrasal verbs have more than one meaning, which can make them tricky to learn. When your child records a new phrasal verb, encourage them to check the meaning in a dictionary and write it down with an example sentence. This will help your child remember how to use it.
Prepare for the Reading test
Here are some ways you can help your child prepare.
Learning tip for 5–12 year olds
Children can learn at home with official Cambridge English resources, such as Fun for Starters, Movers and Flyers and Storyfun.
Learning tip for 13–18 year olds
Read lots of different kinds of text in English. Don’t just stick to one. This will help your child widen their vocabulary and prepare for Cambridge English Qualifications.
Cambridge English Reading tests can have many different kinds of texts. Encourage your child to read short stories, magazines and graded readers. They should also read factual information (e.g. brochures, adverts, instructions, signs, recipes, websites).
Don’t rely on ‘word spotting’ – just because the same word, name, or date appears in the text and the question, don’t assume it is automatically the right answer.
Test preparation resources
Your child will feel much more prepared and confident about their exam if they know exactly what they need to do.
It’s really useful to do some practice exams. It will help your child to become more familiar and confident with the different types of tasks. Your child should be able to work their way through these with encouragement and careful guidance.
If your child is anxious about any of their English classwork, discuss it with your child’s teacher and ask them what you can work on at home.