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Certificate of Proficiency in English (CPE)

Welcome to the CPE Home page, where you can find all the information and help you need to start preparing for CPE.



Click on one of the steps to learn more about the exam.

KET | PET | FCE | CAE | CPE


ABOUT CPE

CPE is the highest-level Cambridge ESOL exam, at Level C2 of the Council of Europe's Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). What is Level C2?

What's in CPE?

The table below shows you the different parts of CPE. You can also view the CPE papers in more detail.

Paper Content Time Marks (% of total)
readiconReading 4 parts/40 questions 1 hour 30 minutes 20%
writeiconWriting 2 parts 2 hours 20%
useiconUse of English 5 parts/44 questions 1 hour 30 minutes 20%
listeniconListening 4 parts/28 questions about 40 minutes 20%
speakiconSpeaking 3 parts 19 minutes per pair of candidates 20%

SUPPORT FOR CPE

To help you get started, Cambridge ESOL have some FREE material which you can download for CPE.

Information for Candidates

This short booklet explains what's in the exam in more detail.

Download the CPE Information for Candidates (English)PDFicon (2.3 Mb)


Sample Papers

Download the CPE Reading sample paper Download the CPE Reading sample paper pdf (3.2 Mb)

Download the CPE Writing sample paper Download the CPE Writing sample paper pdf (764 Kb)

Download the CPE Use of English sample paper Download the CPE Use of English sample paper pdf (2.4 Mb)

Download the CPE Listening sample paper Download the CPE Listening sample paper pdf (1.2 Mb)

Download the CPE Listening mp3 files Download the CPE Listening mp3 files zip (22 Mb)

Download the CPE Speaking sample test Download the CPE Speaking sample test pdf (1.3 Mb)




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