2.5 Listening Part 5: Colouring, Writing & Paper Pacing

2.5 Listening Part 5: Colouring, Writing & Paper Pacing

Quick Answer: Flyers Listening Part 5 is a big picture plus an adult–child conversation heard twice. Children colour three objects and write two simple words on the picture. They do not draw anything. The ten permitted colours are black, blue, brown, green, grey, orange, pink, purple, red and yellow. Artistic quality is not marked; following the instruction is. The whole Listening paper is about 25 minutes for 25 questions, so pacing means using looking time and the second playing — not controlling the clock.

The Part 5 task, without the drawing myth

This is the Listening part that families most often remember wrongly from older YLE papers. Pre A1 Starters and some historic Flyers tasks included a drawing instruction (draw a cloud, draw a window). A2 Flyers Part 5 does not include a drawing task. The 2018 specification change replaced drawing with writing a word. The Handbook for Teachers 2024 describes the live task as colouring and writing: an adult asks a child to colour different things in a picture and write two simple words. Candidates listen and follow the instructions.

The 2026 format page matches that description: colour different objects for three of the questions and write a single word for two of the questions in the picture. Five questions, five marks, one example already done on the page (often a coloured newspaper or similar small object so children can see the idea).

If a practice book still says "listen and colour and draw", it is teaching an old paper. On the real Flyers paper the rubric is Listen and colour and write.

Materials: ten colours plus an ordinary pencil

Children should bring coloured pencils or pens in exactly these colours:

• black, blue, brown, green, grey, orange, pink, purple, red, yellow

That list is the Handbook range. There is no gold, silver, white, dark blue as a separate colour, or light green. If a child only packed red, blue, green and yellow, three of the five Part 5 marks are at risk before the recording starts.

They also need an ordinary pencil or pen for:

• Part 1 lines
• Part 2 words and numbers
• Part 3 letters in boxes
• Part 4 ticks
• the two written words in Part 5

Write the Part 5 words with the ordinary pencil, not with a colouring pencil, unless the instruction is simply to write and the word will still be readable. The mark is for the right word in the right place, spelled as a Flyers wordlist item.

Only colour what you are told — and it does not have to be beautiful

The Handbook's marking philosophy for Part 5 is child-friendly and strict at the same time:

• Children will not be expected to colour particularly well.
• They simply have to show that they have understood the instructions correctly.
• That includes not doing anything they are not asked to do.
• They should only colour what they are told to colour.

A quick, visible block of the right colour on the right object is enough. Diagonal hatching that clearly fills the object is enough. A perfectly shaded sunset that also colours the tree, the path, and a second suitcase is not enough — extra colouring can lose the mark because the child did not follow the instruction.

Wrong ways to lose a colouring mark:

• right colour, wrong object (the suitcase on the boat instead of the suitcase by the hotel entrance)
• right object, wrong colour (orange pocket instead of the yellow flag)
• colouring both similar objects "to be safe"
• colouring extra things because the picture looks unfinished
• spending so long blending pink that the next instruction — a writing item — is already over

Finding the right object among similar ones

Part 5 is perhaps more challenging than it appears, the Handbook says, because children must understand language that distinguishes two similar but slightly different objects or people. That language is usually location or appearance:

• the suitcase on the ground by the entrance, not the suitcase on the boat
• the flag in the park by the path, not the flag on the hotel
• the pocket on the backpack, not the pocket on the coat
• the boy wearing a helmet, not the boy sitting down

During looking time, circle pairs of similar objects with a fingernail or a tiny pencil dot in the margin of the picture (not on the objects themselves). When the adult says "Which one?", the child's answering line in the recording often repeats the location. That echo is a gift: it tells you which of the pair is live.

Writing two words on the picture — not in a gap

The two writing items are not Part 2 form gaps. The word is written on the picture in the place the speakers name: on the board on the front of the boat, on the sign above the hotel, on the T-shirt, on the shop window. A perfectly spelled word in the margin of the page is not in the right place. A word written on the wrong board is the same kind of error as colouring the wrong suitcase.

Write one word, as instructed. Typical Flyers words are short wordlist items: names of places, simple adjectives, labels such as sunny, star, closed, café. Do not write a sentence. Do not add the colour name next to a writing item. Do not draw a little picture of a star because the word is star — write the word.

Spelling still matters here. These two words are not covered by the Part 2 "some misspellings allowed if not spelled out" note in the same generous way families sometimes hope. Aim for the wordlist spelling. If the speaker spells the word, copy the letters exactly.

First listening and second listening in Part 5

First listening: locate the object or writing place immediately. Put a small pencil mark next to it. Start the colour or write the word as soon as you are sure — do not wait until the part ends. Second listening: check colour versus object, check the word sits on the named board or sign, and resist the urge to decorate the rest of the picture.

If you miss a colour on the first playing, catch it on the second. If you still cannot find the object, do not colour a random similar object. A blank object is cleaner than two coloured ones.

Whole-paper pacing: you do not hold the clock

Listening lasts about 25 minutes for 25 questions. That is not a candidate-controlled 25 minutes. The recording includes:

• the opening rubric
• looking time for each part
• one or two examples per part
• the first playing
• the second playing (Now listen again)
• short pauses between parts

Children cannot "save time" in Part 1 to spend it in Part 5. They can only use the time the recording already gives them. Pacing is a behaviour, not a stopwatch skill.

A paper-wide two-pass habit

1. Looking time: read names, gaps, the Part 3 heading, each Part 4 question, and scan the Part 5 picture for pairs of similar objects. Predict the kind of language you will hear.
2. Example: watch how the answer is shown (a line, a filled gap, a letter, a tick, a coloured object). Copy that method, not a different part's method.
3. First listening: place an answer for every scored question you can. Empty answers rarely improve later.
4. Second listening: check, erase, confirm. This is not a first attempt. Children who sit politely through the first playing "to be sure" are already behind.
5. Between parts: put the pencil down on the next page. Do not keep colouring Part 5 during the Part 1 example — and do not go back to fix Part 2 while Part 3 is being explained.

Accent and spelling across the paper

Recordings use adults and children speaking clearly in standard British and American English. A child trained on only one accent will lose easy marks on letter names, on grey/gray as a heard colour word (the pencil they pick up is still the grey one in the ten-colour set), and on lexical pairs from the wordlist such as lift/elevator or autumn/fall. Both standard British and standard American written answers are accepted, but the colouring pencils still have to match the ten named colours.

What "five shields" means for this paper

Listening is marked out of 25 (one mark per question) and reported as a maximum of five shields. There is no pass mark published as a raw score; shield boundaries can differ slightly by version because of equating. The practical target is still simple: attempt all 25, use both playings, and do not throw away Part 5 marks on extra colouring or on a drawing that the paper never asked for.

After Listening, Reading and Writing lasts 40 minutes with its own pen or pencil work. Leave the coloured pencils in the tin. They are a Listening tool, not a whole-exam decoration kit.