so here we go again today with a very special maths class for you today we will check out how to calculate your score in cambridge exams so make sure you keep watching hi and welcome to teacher phil where i help people like you pass their cambridge exams as always make sure you like the video and you can check out the full article on my website all the links are in the description box below so let's get started understanding your score in cambridge exams can be a little bit complex for once there are two different scores or numbers that we have to work with and you have to understand what these two scores mean so in this video we are going to look at both of these scores and i'm going to explain the differences and how to interpret them so you will know exactly how it works and you will feel more confident about them a few years ago cambridge english introduced their english scale from that moment on exams were not only marked by fail or pass but instead students now get a score that is put on a scale as a rule of thumb however you can still use a rough 60 as the passing grade in all cambridge exams the big advantage of this scale however is that it's now easier to compare your cambridge result with other exams like ielts or lingua skill which can be important if you for example apply to study in a foreign country or when you apply for a job as i said earlier cambridge english introduced the cambridge english scale in 2015 and has used it ever since to report the results of the exams so now instead of only getting marks for your correct answers and taking the percentage of your correct answers to decide if you pass or fail your marks are now converted into a scale score the cool thing is that now there's a real progression from one exam to the next which you can see quite easily on this scale for example a score of 160 means that your level is b2 and it doesn't matter in which of the exams you score 160. it could be in b1 preliminary b2 first or even c1 advanced 160 always means the same no matter which exam you take and now we can also clearly see what your score means in comparison to other exams again some governments prefer certain exams to assess who to give a visa to or some educational institutions like certain universities in english-speaking countries they might use other exams like ielts or toefl to find out if a student's english is good enough to start a course with the cambridge english scale we have now a very easy tool to see what the score means and you can assess somebody's level of english a lot more easily of course the big question is how do i get from my marks in the exam to my english scale score as you might already know the different exams in cambridge are broken up into different papers for example in c1 advanced there are five different exam papers reading use of english writing listening and speaking in each paper you can score marks and there is a maximum number of marks depending on how many tasks there are or how many questions you have to answer in each case we can take your number of marks and convert them into a scale score the average of your five scale scores is your final mark or your final score in c1 advanced as you can see here in the reading portion of c1 advanced there is a passing score of 32 that means you need to score 32 marks in the different reading tasks in order to get a scale score of 180 on the right you can see the cefr level of c1 which basically means that you pass this part of the exam in c1 advanced as the name suggests a level of c1 means pass but you can also see that with a higher score of 43 marks or more you can even reach c2 level which would be proficiency if you score less than 32 marks however you will drop to b2 level which would be the passing grade for b2 first in use of english the passing score is different because there are less exercises and less questions to answer so here with a marking score of 16 you pass and get a scale score of 180. in the writing paper as you write two different texts for which you get marked separately you can pass with at least 24 marks again these are worth 180 points on the scale for the listening paper a c1 level is reached if you score 18 marks and last but not least looking at speaking you need 45 marks to get to 180 on the scale so now one of the biggest questions that i often hear is phil can i still fail the exam the answer to this is really yes and no strictly speaking there is no fail grade anymore as you've just seen in the different little graphics that i showed you if you score less than the marks that you need to get to level c1 you still get level b2 that means you don't just fail but in every part of the exam your level is projected however if you need the exam for a specific purpose let's say you want to study at a university in an english-speaking country and they tell you that you need to have c1 level in all five exam papers then of course a score of less than 180 could be considered a fail it depends on your personal situation and what you need the exam for but officially there's no failing grade anymore okay i hope you found my short explanation useful remember that even though you technically can't fail anymore you still need to be careful and check exactly what your scores need to be in order to achieve what you set out to do in the first place as always thank you very much for watching the video please check all the links in the description box below for further information and other useful tips and tricks so you can pass your cambridge exam with ease also make sure you subscribe and like the video and i'll see you next time