Misunderstanding of some questions, e.g. ‘What would you like to do when you finish school?’ –
frequently interpreted as ‘What do you do at the end of the day ?’ Although
some candidates occasionally misunderstood some questions, they were able to
provide relevant responses. ‘Why ?
Why not ? at the end of a question can confuse candidates.
One of
the questions in Part 1 required a response in the past tense. Frequently,
candidates responded in the present tense and lost an opportunity to demonstrate
the use of a wider range of tenses.
Teacher/examiners
Part 2
is the only part of the test that candidates see in written form. Therefore it
is important for teacher/examiners to read out the questions in Parts 1 and 3
clearly and clarify, if required (not just repeat the question).
Very few
teacher/examiners picked up on the candidate’s responses to the questions in
Part 1 and Part 3 and developed a conversation by asking follow-up questions.
Some teacher/examiners
were very strict on timing, particularly in Part 2, which either resulted in
the candidate being cut off in mid sentence or the candidate struggling to
fill the last 30 seconds.