About the course

The BEC exam

The Business Goals 1 Workbook starts to prepare students for the BEC exams by presenting them with the types of tasks found in the exam. Although the workbook is a lower level than the BEC Preliminary exam, working through these tasks will help students to develop the skills they need to perform successfully in the exam when they reach the required level.

The workbook units are divided into the four skills of Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking to reflect the four BEC test papers. Each paper of the exam has several different parts each testing different skills. The Reading test is divided into seven parts, the Listening test has four parts, the Writing test has two parts and the Speaking test has three parts. More information about the BEC exam can be found at www.cambridgeesol.org.

The workbook exercises directly mirror these different exam parts in order to strengthen students’ skills in that area and give them more confidence when they eventually come to take the exam itself. For students who are not taking the exam, the skills that the BEC develops are useful in their own right in terms of improving fluency and boosting confidence.

The table below provides a quick reference guides as to which exercises in the workbook relate to which exam part. (It will be noticed that sometimes the Writing section of the workbook actually relates to the BEC Reading test, part 7. This is because at elementary level when students can write only a limited amount, form-filling seemed more to belong to the Writing syllabus).

View quick reference guide (PDF)