Impact Study

How do you help your

students to achieve
exam success?
 Background
‘Family and Friends’ is Oxford’s best-selling primary English Language Teaching course of all time, and has helped millions of
students across the globe to succeed in English. We carried out an impact study to gain an in-depth understanding of how
teachers feel that Family and Friends contributes to their students’ exam success.

Research Objective
To what extent, and how, does Family and Friends help students to achieve exam success?

Methodology
Oxford Impact is Oxford University Press’s approach to evaluating the impact that our educational products and services have on
teaching and learning. An impact study investigates a particular change or outcome that a product or service has on the group of
people it is intended to help or benefit.

We received 269 responses from teachers in 21 different countries who had all used Family and Friends for more than one year.

LATVIA RUSSIA
LITHUANIA SLOVAKIA
SERBIA UKRAINE
CROATIA KAZAKHSTAN
SPAIN TURKEY
MEXICO SOUTH KOREA
GREECE
NORTH TAIWAN
AFRICA
CHINA
URUGUAY VIETNAM
GULF STATES & THAILAND
SAUDI ARABIA

Key Findings
Family and Friends
helps to improve core skills 97%
Family and Friends helps
core vocabulary acquisition 96% 92%
Family and Friends has a clear
and consistent structure which
stretches students of all abilities
95%
92% agreed that using
Family and Friends helps develop
a strong grammatical foundation 94% Family and Friends helped
their students achieve
Family and Friends provides plenty exam success.
of opportunities for students to
practise the skills needed
91%
% 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
How does Family and Friends help students to achieve exam success?

Skills coverage 100

Which exam skills does Family and Friends
provide effective support for?
97% of teachers agreed that using the 90
Family and Friends series has helped their 80
students improve the core skills 70
(reading, writing, speaking, listening) 70 70 71
60 64
they need to achieve exam success. % 50
40
“The book covers all four core skills equally, 30
with a lot of practice.” 29
20 25 23 12
“It helps build up the main language skills 10 6 0 4 0 6 1 16 1
a student needs.” 0
Listening Reading Speaking Writing

Strongly Agree Disagree

Feature
Agree Strongly Disagree

Clear and consistent structure

95% of teachers agreed that Family and Friends has a clear and consistently structured syllabus that stretches
students of all abilities, helping to ensure the best possible outcome in their exams.
“The content of the book is clear and easy to teach.”
“Every lesson is well-planned. Useful grammar and lexical material.”

Grammar and vocabulary syllabus

96% of teachers agreed that Family and Friends supports students in the core vocabulary acquisition
needed for exam success.
94% of teachers agreed that Family and Friends supports students to develop a strong grammatical foundation
in preparation for their exams.
“The Family and Friends series provide teachers with priceless authentic and practical materials which are aimed
at developing and improving all the skills (listening, reading, speaking, writing) and language areas (vocabulary,
grammar, discourse).”

Practice activities and tasks

91% of teachers agreed that Family and Friends provides plenty of opportunities for their students
to practise the skills needed to achieve exam success.
“Exam-oriented tasks help students to become aware of exam format.”
“There are a lot of exercises for practising these skills and my students like them.”
 Which of the features in Family and Friends are perceived to be
most effective in helping students to succeed in exams?

100
90
80
70
60 65 63
61 61 59
% 50 56 53 55
40 42
30 33 35 33 37
31 29 29
20 8 13
7 7 8
10 2 0 1 1 4 5 0 1 1 1
0
0
Word Lessons Grammar Phonics and Skills Time! Review Extensive Exam Practice Fluency Time!
and Stories Lessons 1 & 2 Spelling Lessons Lessons Sections Reading Sections through Test Sections
Package (2e only)

Feature Very Effective Effective Ineffective Very Ineffective

Exam success stories

We asked teachers if they had any examples of an individual or class ‘exam success story’ they would like to share.
Here are some of the great examples they gave:

“My student, whom I “All my students passed “My student got the
taught at school and their Cambridge exams, highest score at the
privately, primarily with a substantial number YLE Starters exam after
Family & Friends won with merit. All my studying 2 years.
a scholarship to study students gained sound We used Family and
abroad. The exams were skills in writing, reading Friends 1 and 2 as our
all taken in English.” and speaking.” basic course.”
English Language Teacher, Head of Department, English Language Teacher,
Thailand Greece Russia

“One of my learners achieved only two shields for each

skill in her first Starter exam before she entered my class. “I have a 95% pass rate
After attending my three-month course with Family and since switching to
Friends 2 and exam practice, she improved a lot in four Family & Friends.”
skills and achieved three shields in Speaking English Language Teacher,
and Reading!” Thailand
English Language Teacher, Vietnam
Conclusion
This study found that overall 92% of respondents perceive Family and Friends as helping their students to achieve exam
success. Teachers perceive that it helps students to develop the core skills, a strong grammatical foundation and the
vocabulary acquisition needed for exam success, plus a clear and consistently structured syllabus with plenty of opportunities
for students to practise. Teachers reported that that the review sections, word lessons, stories and Skills Time! lessons are the
most effective features in helping students to succeed in their exams.

Visit www.oup.com/elt for more information