Format

The candidate holds a conversation with the examiner. Time : 7 minutes.

There are three phases to the conversation:

Greetings The examiner says hello and tries to put the candidate at ease.

Questions and

information exchange The examiner asks questions, requests information and develops the

conversation using the subject areas listed below and in the two previous

grades.

Leave-taking The examiner brings the conversation to an end by wishing the candidate

goodbye.

Candidate performance

The candidate is expected to

• respond appropriately to simple instructions and requests

• give basic personal information, including information about and description of life and activities

at work, school, college or university, at home and during free time

• give basic information about people and places including descriptions of people encountered in

daily life at home,work, study and recreation, as well as descriptions of places in the candidate’s

home town or country

• talk about his/her daily routine, events and weather, and describe what is happening at the

moment either in real life or in pictures

• ask for information on the above

• give simple directions

• tell the time and give dates

• express ability

New grammatical items

• Correct use of the present simple and present continuous tenses

• Formation of simple questions using question words as necessary

• Prepositions denoting movement, e.g. from , to

• Can

• Past tense of verb to be

• Ordinal numbers

—in addition to items listed for Grades 1 and 2

New subject areas for conversation

• Work

• School

• College or university

• Home life

• Weather

• Free time

• Places

—in addition to items listed for Grades 1 and 2

Candidates should be able to make use of a range of vocabulary items relating to the above subject areas.

Use will be made of pictorial material in particular. This is to enable candidates to extend their range of

language and to show that they can describe correctly what is currently happening and what happens

regularly.

Examiner and candidate language

The sample exchanges below show some ways in which examiners and candidates might express

themselves during the conversation. It is stressed that these are only examples.

Examiner Candidate

Where do you live? I live in Perugia.

Is that near here? No, it’s half an hour from here.

What is the weather like today? It’s hot and sticky.

Is it raining now? No, it isn’t.

What do you study at school? I study English, maths, science …

What do you do when you get home from I listen to some music. I do my homework. And

school? then I have dinner.

What is the name of your best friend? George.

Tell me about George. George is ten years old. He is tall, has brown hair…

Let’s look at this picture.What are these They’re sitting in front of a café. They are

people doing? drinking coffee.

What is this man doing? He’s cleaning a window.

And this lady? She’s carrying …

At what time do you go to bed? Ten o’clock.

Can you play the piano? No, I can’t.

What is the time now? It’s twenty to …