It is always useful to be able to ask and answer questions about yourself, your interests and preferences. If you take the FCE examination, you and a partner will be asked questions about your interests in the Speaking paper. In this part you practise asking and answering questions, work on relevant vocabulary and study some examples of word stress.
| 1 Asking about personal information |
| In the next exercise you will hear an extract of two people taking the First Certificate Speaking paper in the UK. Their names are Carmen and Gunter. You will hear part of their oral exam. In this part of the exam, the examiner asks questions about personal information, for example; the place you live, your hobbies and studies. |
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Before you listen to Carmen and Gunter answering questions about themselves, complete the examiner's questions.
Now listen to the oral exam and how these questions were used.
In the exam Gunter and Carmen were both asked about their hobbies. Listen and decide which activities Carmen does and which ones Gunter does.
| 2 Pronunciation: word stress |
| In English it is very important to stress the correct part of the word. If you stress the wrong part of a word, you may not be understood. In the FCE Speaking paper the examiner will be listening to how you stress your words. |
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Notice that Carmen says:
"Usually I like dancing very much, especially Sevillanas. That's a traditional dance from the south of Spain."
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The word 'traditional' has 4 syllables: |
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tra-di-tio-nal. |
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Carmen stresses the second syllable like this: |
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tra-DI-tio-nal |
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We can represent the stress pattern like this: |
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o - O - o - o |
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Now listen to Gunter talking about his studies and drag the word into the column which shows the appropriate stress pattern.
| 3 Pronunciation: changing word stress |
| Notice that stress can change between parts of speech. For example; 'competitive' is an adjective and is stressed differently to the noun 'competition' e.g. comPETitive but compeTITion |
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Now, listen to these words and put them in the correct column according to which part of the word is stressed.
| 4 Sports, hobbies and interests |
| In the exam Carmen and Gunter were asked about their free time activities. This is a very common topic for examiners' questions. |
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Arrange these free time activities under the correct headings.
| Exam advice: How do you pause for thought? |
In the exam Carmen is asked about her city. She replies,
"Well, let me see…it's a very beautiful city with many interesting and historic places to visit…" |
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She says 'well' and 'let me see' because she needs time to think about her answer. Other things she could have said would be 'erm' or 'mmm' . This is perfectly acceptable in spoken English as long as you don't pause to think for too long. Be careful not to use hesitation words or sounds from your own language as these may sound strange and could have a different meaning for the examiner.
| Suggested practice activity |
Practise answering the examiner's questions from the first activity. Better yet, record yourself answering them. Then listen to the recording and analyse yourself - was there any vocabulary you needed to talk about yourself? Did you make any grammar mistakes?
The better prepared you are for the exam, the easier it will be for you and this means knowing your weaknesses and where you need to improve as well as your strengths.
Be careful! It is important that you don't prepare any speeches for the speaking paper as the examiner will quickly ask you another question.
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