Trinity Exam Preparation Courses

Trinity’s Graded Examinations in Spoken English (GESE) are one-to-one, face-to-face assessments of speaking and listening skills with a Trinity examiner.

Preparation for these exams and achievement of GESE qualifications supports people wishing to develop their proficiency in English language speaking – for personal goals, study, travel, employment, settlement or for visa application purposes.

GESE exams are available at 12 levels, from Grade 1 to Grade 12 (pre-A1 to C2 CEFR proficiency levels). Grouped by development stage, GESE grade qualifications offer a progressive framework for the development of English language skills.

Trinity’s GESE exams are designed to complement general English language courses, and exam preparation focuses on the development of communicative skills and building confidence among candidates. Though there is no requirement to have passed lower levels, or other qualifications, guidance is offered about the knowledge and skills required at each proficiency level.

If you’re preparing for a Trinity exam, it’s because you have a specific reason. If you need to take the Trinity GESE 2 or 3 (A1 / A2), it’s because you need a family, spouse or partner visa or want to extend the visa you have. If you need to take the GESE 5 (B1) exam, you’re probably applying for Indefinite Leave to Remain, or for British citizenship. 

Our Trinity classes are usually taught as one-to-one or two-to-one lessons, or in very small groups. This means you’ll get lots of attention and guidance from our experienced, qualified teachers.

Ingla is an official Trinity Preparation Centre, which means Trinity College thinks we’re a great school at preparing students for the GESE exams, and many of our teachers have been to training programmes at Trinity College.

Our 90-minute Trinity lessons are flexible, to fit your busy life. Our GESE 2, 3, and 5 lessons will give you the speaking, grammar, and vocabulary skills you need to pass your exam, and increase your confidence when speaking.

By the end of this course you’ll be able to…

• Talk about your daily routines using words like “always”, “sometimes” and “never” (GESE 2/3)
• Talk about things that happened in your life in the past using Past Simple (GESE 2/3)
• Talk about future plans and predictions using “going to” (GESE 3)
• Describe places on a map and give simple directions (GESE 3)
• Talk about the future using “will” (GESE 5)
• Talk about life experiences using Present Perfect (GESE 5)
• Choose and prepare a topic for the exam that will give you the opportunity to use all of the language areas you need to pass the exam (GESE 5)

GESE exams take the form of an unscripted conversation with a Trinity examiner and tests take between 5 and 25 minutes depending on the grade. At each stage, candidates carry out a number of speaking and listening tasks that show their fluency, accuracy and ability to communicate in English.

Task components include:
–The Conversation: An opportunity to demonstrate a realistic exchange of information, ideas and opinions at an appropriate level for the grade.
–The Topic: Before the exam, the candidate prepares a topic of their choice – this is used as the basis for discussion and as the basis of a presentation at Advanced stage.
–The Interactive task: A prompt from the examiner initiates candidate-led speaking and listening interactions – requiring an authentic exchange of information and opinions.
–The Listening task: Short, spoken passages prompt the candidate to demonstrate prediction, deduction and inference skills (only at Advanced stage).

As they move up the grades, candidates undertake tasks that require a more advanced use of language. At higher grades, they are expected to take more responsibility for developing and directing the conversation, rather than simply responding to a series of questions.

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