Before answering a question, you first need to understand what is being asked. Most questions begin with an instruction word(s). There are six types of instruction with each having words that tell what you must do to answer the question correctly. Listen carefully for these ‘instruction’ words because they will help you to develop better answers more quickly during the test.
The examples below use the topic : Family
1. Knowledge (what you know about the topic):
- Who are (person/people) the members of your family?
- What is (object/idea,etc) important to your family?
- When does (time/frequency) your family go on holiday?
- Where does (location/place) your family live?
- How does (method/quality) your family celebrate together?
- Describe (appearance/feature) a member of your family
2. Comprehension (your understanding of the topic):
- Tell me about (what/why it is important) a time you and your family made a decision.
- Summarise (give main points) how families support their children.
- Explain (specific ideas) the role of a parent in a family.
3. Application (using facts and ideas related to the topic):
- Can you give me an example (relevant events/circumstances) of good parenting?
- How is good parenting related to (connection/comparison) society?
- Why is the role of a parent significant (importance/reasons)?
4. Analysis (being able to talk about the whole topic as individual parts):
- What kind of (listing of types) decisions do families have to make?
- Outline (overview of the topic) the ways a family can work together
- How does modern families compare (direct comparison between two or more aspects) with traditional families?
5. Synthesis/Prediction (combining ideas to form a new understanding of topic):
- What would you predict (what will/most likely happen) is the role of families in the future?
- What might happen (what may/may not happen) if children no longer respected their parents?
- What are some solutions (outcomes) for teenagers who are in trouble with families?
6. Evaluation (your opinions, judgments, or decisions about the topic):
- Do you agree (state a position based on fact) that everyone needs a family?
- What do you think about (give an opinion) single parent families?
- What is most important (make a informed/or personal judgement) – family or friends?
- How would you assess (level of importance/personal bias) people who decide not to have children
Advice For Answering Questions
- Give direct answers to questions not what you think the examiner wants to hear.
- In Parts 1 and 2, the examiner can only repeat questions. In Part 3 the examiner can rephrase questions.
- Keep to the topics being discussed. Deliberately going off/avoiding the topic will almost always reduce the candidate’s score.
- Do not overuse the same linking words/phrases in all your answers. This usually indicates to the examiner that the candidate has a restricted range of vocabulary/fluency.
- In Part 3, your responses need to consist of mostly answers that are generally about people, society and the world as a whole. If a candidate only talks about themself/their own culture/their own country and keeps repeating/referring back to answers given in Parts 1 and 2, the examiner will most likely consider the candidate’s lexical resource to be insufficient for a BAND 6 score.
- Generic responses/tailored answers to questions that have been given out by training centres, AI, social media, websites, books and even the British Council, will have already been used by many thousands of candidates. Examiners will give lower scores in fluency, lexical resource and grammar for high amounts of memorisation in answers which have replaced the candidate’s authentic language.