Term three, in six sentences
Standing up, round the room, no notes. Your teacher calls a unit; you say one true sentence using that unit’s grammar. Three seconds each, twice round.
Unit 9: a preference. Unit 10: an obligation. Unit 11: something that happened. Unit 12: a prediction.
Eight sentences from this term. Match each to the thing it demonstrates.
What A2 was for
The same speaker, September and now
September: I like my job. Is good. I work in a office. I go there in the Monday and I stay until six. Sometimes is difficult.
Now: I like my job most of the time, though I would rather do fewer hours. I work in a small office above a bakery — we have to log our hours, but we don’t have to be in before ten. Last year I had to commute for two hours a day, so this is much better. If the lease is renewed, I will probably still be there in five years. If it is not, who knows.
Four questions comparing the two. All four are about what became possible, not about accuracy.
1. The September version says Is good. What is missing?
2. in a office · in the Monday became in a small office · before ten. Which unit?
3. The second version can say Last year I had to commute…. Why could the first not?
4. The second version ends with two conditions. What does that let the speaker do?
The four things the assessment looks for
Term 3, and what each unit is assessed on
| Unit | You should be able to | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| 9 · Choices | Say what you like, prefer and would rather do | Verb patterns: enjoy doing, want to do, would rather do |
| 10 · Workplaces | Describe rules, obligations and permissions | mustn’t against don’t have to; the article before a job |
| 11 · Memories | Tell something that happened, at length | The scene in the continuous, the event in the simple; false friends |
| 12 · Looking Forward | Predict, and say how sure you are | The present after a time word; the adverb before the negative; question order |
Put the four parts of today’s assessment into the order you will do them.
The A2 assessment
Task card · Part one · Hand in · 3 minutes
Your clean rewrite of Three Predictions. This is the last piece your A2 portfolio needs.
A final check against five things, then hand it over.
- Five paragraphs, about 180 words, count written at the bottom.
- One adverb per prediction, on the correct side of its modal.
- At least one time clause, in the present.
- At least two words from the Lesson 4 vocabulary list.
- No sort of, kind of or a bit.
Task card · Part two · Speaking · 3 minutes + 2 minutes of questions
A new partner who has not read your piece. Your page stays face down.
Three minutes on your predictions, then two minutes answering their questions.
- Ranked, strongest first, each with evidence before the claim.
- One modal and one adverb per prediction, in the right order.
- At least one time clause. Watch the tense after it.
- Then answer four questions. Your partner asks two beginning Do you think… and two beginning with a question word.
- Finish with the summary — three clauses, one adverb each.
Listener’s job, and it is assessed too. Four questions, written down before you ask them, all four correctly formed. Two must be Do you think… or Do you know whether…; two must open with a question word.
While they speak, place each prediction on the scale from the words alone, and note every time word with the wrong tense after it.
Task card · Part three · The written section · 12 minutes
Four units of Term 3, on one page. Work alone and in silence.
Complete the two activities in the Feedback phase below. They are the written half of the assessment.
- Section A: eight errors, two from each unit of the term. Fix each and name the unit.
- Section B: one cloze paragraph containing all four units at once.
- Twelve minutes for both. Do the ones you are sure of first.
- Nothing is marked in this room. You are finding out what you own.
Task card · Part four · The comparison · 5 minutes
You now have a marked written piece, a listener’s page, and your own written section.
One sentence about the gap between the three.
- Count the errors in the written section, in the written piece, and on the listener’s page.
- They are almost never the same number. Which is highest?
- Look at which errors appear on the listener’s page but not on the written ones.
- Write one sentence: What I know and cannot yet say under pressure is ___ .
The written section
Eight sentences, two from each unit of Term 3. Fix each, and write which unit it came from.
1. I would rather to stay at home tonight.
2. I enjoy to walk to work in the morning.
3. You don’t have to touch that — it is live.
4. My brother is engineer at the factory.
5. I walked home when I was seeing the fire.
6. We assisted the whole ceremony from the back.
7. When the results will come, we will decide.
8. Do you think will the council agree?
One to four words per gap. Every unit of Term 3 appears at least once.
I work somewhere quiet, but I took this job anyway. I am receptionist at a dentist’s, which means I answer the phone all day — that is the job, nobody chose it for me. We wear a uniform, though most people do. You give anybody’s details to anybody, ever; it is the one rule with a real consequence. Last winter I cover reception alone for a month, and one morning while I the appointments, a woman came in and said my mother’s name. she had been my mother’s neighbour in 1994. When the surgery next year, I stay — but if they move it out of town, I .
What A2 was
Four questions, one from each unit of the term.
1. Which is right?
2. A colleague is about to do something dangerous. Which stops them?
3. I was reading when the lights went out. Which verb is the scene?
4. Which is right?
What you can do now. You can say what you prefer and why. You can describe the rules of a place, written and unwritten. You can tell something that happened to you for four minutes and keep the tenses. And you can say what you think will happen and exactly how sure you are.
Four terms ago the answer to what do you do? was three words long.
What B1 adds. Three things you have already needed and not had: the present perfect, for the past that reaches into now; the past perfect, for the event before the event; and the conditionals, for the things that did not happen.
Keep the sentence you wrote in part four. It names the gap between what you know and what survives under pressure, and closing that gap is most of what B1 is.