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Current Location: Home arrow Exams arrow Cambridge ESOL exams arrow BULATS Business Language Testing Service

BULATS: Business Language Testing Service

This series of BULATS practice resources is for teachers who are preparing their students for the BULATS examination in English. The practice materials cover the Listening Test and the Reading and Language Knowledge Test.

Each set of resources includes extensive notes for teachers, student worksheets and reading and listening questions from the Standard test, which are reproduced here with the kind permission of University of Cambridge ESOL examinations.

What is BULATS?

BULATS is a service for companies which is designed to help them find out the level of language skills among their staff, trainees or job applicants. It assesses language skills which are needed for the workplace and for students and employees on language courses or on professional/business courses where foreign language ability is an important element of the course.

Students can take a paper-based or online (computer-based) test. The BULATS Writing and Speaking Tests are optional.

Computer-based / Online BULATS (OLB) vs paper-based / Standard Test BULATS (STB)

  • Students’ preparation for Online BULATS works equally well for Standard Test BULATS (assuming very basic computer literacy).
  • Online Bulats does not use all of the task types from Standard Test BULATS. It does not use tasks that involve productive keys (i.e. keying in words as answers), and it does not use matching tasks, either in listening or reading.
  • Difficulty levels may range more widely in the specification of the Online BULATS than the Standard Test BULATS. This is because the Online test is adaptive; in other words, students' answers determine the difficulty level and route they take in the exam.
  • The number of questions given to a particular candidate for a certain task type in Online BULATS may vary according to their level (because the test is adaptive), and it is possible that some candidates may not experience certain task types at all.
  • The selection and combinations of tasks presented in this series of practice materials is designed to provide the most effective broad coverage of the tasks in the overlap of Online and Standard Test BULATS.

The Onestopenglish BULATS practice materials will cover the Listening Test and the Reading and Language Knowledge Test. Questions are taken from the BULATS Standard Test sample paper*.

*Reproduced here with the kind permission of University of Cambridge ESOL examinations.

In this subsection

  • BULATS: Listening: Part 1

    The Staff Room

    This lesson, by Russell Whitehead, is designed to help you engage your students with Part 1 of the BULATS Listening test. This part is Questions 1-10 of the Standard Test and these tasks are included in the computer-based and online versions of BULATS.

  • BULATS: Listening: Part 4: Longer multiple-choice listenings

    The Staff Room

    This lesson, by Russell Whitehead, is designed to help you engage your students with Part 4 of the BULATS Listening test. This part appears three times in the Standard Test (as questions 33–50) and these tasks are included in the computer-based and online versions of BULATS.

  • BULATS: Reading and Language Knowledge: Part 1: Section 1

    This lesson, by Russell Whitehead, is designed to help you engage your students with Part 1 of the BULATS Reading and Language Knowledge Test. It covers Questions 51-57 of the Standard Test. The tasks are included in the computer-based version of BULATS.

  • BULATS: Reading and Language Knowledge: Multiple choice gap-filling

    The Staff Room

    This lesson, by Russell Whitehead, is designed to help you engage your students with multiple choice gap-filling tasks in the BULATS Reading and Language Knowledge test. This kind of task is used in several ways and places in the BULATS Standard Test and in computer-based and online BULATS. In the Standard Test, there is a text with gaps, Questions 82 – 86 (Part Two: Section Two), and there are sets of six sentences, Questions 58 – 63 (Part One: Section Two) and 92 – 97 (Part Two: Section Four). These tasks are included in the computer-based and online versions of BULATS.

  • BULATS: Reading and Language Knowledge: Open cloze tasks

    The Staff Room

    This lesson is designed to help you engage your students with open cloze tasks in the BULATS Reading and Language Knowledge test. This kind of task is used in two places in the BULATS Standard Test and also appears in computer-based and online BULATS. In the Standard Test, there are two tasks, Questions 70–74 and 87–91; the first is designed to be easier than the second. This lesson is designed to provide effective preparation for both tasks.

  • BULATS: Reading and Language Knowledge: Part 1: Section 3

    The Staff Room

    This lesson, by Russell Whitehead, is designed to help you engage your students with multiple choice reading comprehension in the BULATS Reading and Language Knowledge Test. This part is Questions 64-69 of the Standard Test and these tasks are included in the computer-based and online versions of BULATS.