The Cambridge English: Starters exam is for beginners. The Reading and Writing section has a lot of pictures and the candidate is expected to:
- recognise words.
- write one-word answers.
- spell single words.
- write missing words.
- write one-word answers.
To be precise, at Part 1 you will be asked to look at a picture and read the accompanying textual description, and then put either a tick or a cross to indicate a true/false condition. Part 2 is similar except that you will first be given one big picture to look at, and then answer a series of yes/no questions. Part 3 is about naming some objects. You won’t need to spell the words from scratch since all the necessary letters will be provided.
Part 4 is sort of like fill-in-the-blanks, just that the available simple words will be provided so all you need is to pick and fill. Part 5 is like reading comprehension. You will be asked to look at a picture and then answer some very short questions using exactly one word. You will need to come up with the words (mostly simple vocab) from scratch. In any case, the words involved are likely related to the common topics of animals, food, shop, park, party …etc. You won’t see much grammar related questions at this level.
Do note that the actual exam version you encounter may have a slightly different structure and format!
