5.4 Speaking Part 4: Personal Questions

5.4 Speaking Part 4: Personal Questions

Quick Answer: Part 4 is the closing task: the examiner asks the child some personal questions on topics such as school, holidays, birthdays, family and hobbies. A phrase or one or two short sentences is enough. Questions are usually present tense, but children should also be ready to use the past, present perfect and going to. The task tests understanding and responding to personal questions.

Where Part 4 sits in the paper

A2 Flyers Speaking lasts 7–9 minutes, has four parts, and is marked by one examiner for a maximum of five shields. An usher — often a teacher the child knows, who speaks the child's language — explains the format in the child's first language before taking them in. The standard format is always one candidate and one examiner, and children bring nothing into the room. Pictures and questions stay inside the Pre A1 Starters, A1 Movers and A2 Flyers word and structure lists, and the four parts always follow the same order, so a well-prepared child should meet no surprises.

Part 3 had a picture strip to lean on. Part 4 removes it. There is no card and no picture — just the examiner, the child, and questions about the child's own life. That makes it the truest test of reception and responding in the paper, and the one where a rehearsed script is most obviously a script.

The examiner asks the candidate some personal questions on topics such as school, holidays, birthdays, family and hobbies. The Handbook also tells teachers to make children confident about themselves, their families and friends, their homes, their school and free-time activities, their likes and dislikes, and other everyday-life topics.

Simple answers of a phrase or one or two short sentences are all that is required. This is the most common Part 4 error in the other direction from Part 3: children who have been told to 'talk a lot in Speaking' produce a two-minute hobby lecture, lose the thread, and invite extra questions they cannot control. Two short sentences beat a ramble.

Tense range — present is not enough

Questions will normally be in the present tense, but candidates should also be prepared to use the past, present perfect and going to, and to answer questions about, for example, what they did yesterday or what they are going to do at the weekend.

Handbook-style present questions:

• What time do you get up on Saturday?
• What do you do on Saturday afternoon?

Prepare past / present perfect / going to answers of the same length:

• What did you do yesterday? → I went to the park with my brother. We played football.
• Have you ever been to the circus? → Yes, I have. I went with my grandma last year. / No, I haven't. I'm going to go this summer.
• What are you going to do at the weekend? → I'm going to visit my cousins. We're going to swim.

Present perfect is on the Flyers-new grammar list (Have you ever been to the circus? / He's just eaten his dinner.). Part 4 is one of the places it can appear in speech. A child who can only answer I play football every day will still get through many questions, but will be thinner on the non-present prompts.

Worked mini-dialogues

Keep answers inside the wordlist. Do not reach for teenage slang or unlisted hobbies.

Examiner: What time do you get up on Saturday? Candidate: I get up at eight o'clock. I have breakfast with my family.

Examiner: Tell me about your last birthday. Candidate: I had a party at home. We ate pizza and I got a new football.

Examiner: What are you going to do in the school holidays? Candidate: We're going to go to the beach. I like swimming.

If the child does not know a word, Sorry, I don't understand is still available. A one-word football is better than silence; a short sentence I play football at school on Fridays is better still, because extent and cohesion (and, because, then) can appear.

Part 4 traps

• One-word freeze on every question (Yes. Football. Ten.) after a strong Part 3. Phrase or two short sentences is the target, not a single noun every time.
• A memorised 90-second speech that does not match the question asked.
• Only present simple, so What did you do yesterday? gets I play tennis yesterday.
• Inventing a glamorous life that the child cannot continue when the examiner asks a follow-up. True, simple facts are safer.
• Forgetting social close-down. The test ends. Thank you. Goodbye. is still the right last move.

In class, do Part 3 and Part 4 back to back, because that is how the clock runs. After a five-picture strip, ask three personal questions that recycle the same language: if the story had a teacher and a cat, ask Have you got a pet? and What did you do at school yesterday? The child who can describe Nick climbing a ladder should also be able to say Yesterday I went to the park without a picture. Section 5.5 shows how those turns are marked.