Aptis reading Test: General Tips and Strategies

Key Vocabulary For APTIS Speaking Part 2
Before looking at how to answer the question, we should look at some of the vocabulary you need to describe a 
photograph. 
Look at the box below and make sure you know all of the phrases.

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1. In the top left-hand corner. 
2. At the top. 
3. In the top right-hand corner. 
4. On the left side. 
5. In the middle 
6. On the right side. 
7. In the bottom left-hand corner. 
8. At the bottom. 
9. In the bottom right-hand corner. 
Objects at the front of the picture are: In the foreground. 
Objects at the back of the picture are: In the background. 
It will help you very much to learn these phrases so that you use the correct articles and propositions, and because 
knowing the expression gives you something to say while you are thinking. 
Below we will analyze first example question we provided above. 
Question #1: Describe picture
Know the grammar. 
Present continuous. For this part most of the tenses will be either present continuous- this will describe what the 
person is doing, or activities etc. 
There is/There are. Also important are: There is a/some… There are some… So, revise those before the exam. 
Prepositions are essential because you will need to describe where things are situated. 

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For the picture above you may be asked, What can you see in this picture? 
The first thing you talk about is what you see. 
You could answer, ‘In the foreground, I can see…. And in the background, there is…On the right-hand side there 
are some… 
Don’t spend too long on describing what you can see. To answer this question well you have to speculate. You can 
do this by asking yourself the following questions: 
• Who is the person? 
• What are they wearing? 
• Where is the person? 
• What are they doing? 
• How do they feel? 
Language of Speculation 
Some of the ways you can speculate on what you see are: 
• I guess she’s… 
• She could be… 
• It looks like she’s… all are followed by + adjective, or noun, or gerund (verb+ ing) 
• I get the impression that she’s… 
• My initial impression is that she’d… (formal) 
• She must/may/might/could/can’t be 
You might also what to say how you feel about the photograph and give a reason. 
• This photograph makes me feel… because… 
• I don’t like this picture because… 
• This picture gives me a…. feeling as… 
Example answer: What can you see in this picture? 
In the foreground of the picture, there is a girl or young woman. She is looking at a computer screen and on it, 
there’s a woman who looks like a teacher. The reason I think this is that she is sitting in front of a blackboard. The 
girl in the foreground has a notebook in front of her and looks as if she’s taking notes. In the middle of the picture, I 
can see a keyboard and on the left-hand side a wire basket and so it seems to me that the girl is having an online class. 
Question 2 
The second question is about your situation and experiences, for example: ‘Tell me a time when you learned 
something online’. 
Know the grammar 
Used to. If you get a question related to the past, an easy way to start is with: I used to + inf (for a past habit) 

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Example: 
I used to enjoy doing to school but as I got older it became easier to learn from home… 
or 
I remember. I remember + ing (for a single past memory). 
Example: 
I remember getting my first table and thought how much easier it would make learning English. 
Relative clauses mean that you can add extra information to a sentence. It means that you are using one sentence 
instead of two, and this lifts your level. 
Use ‘Who’ for people. I learned a lot and he was the person who helped me most. 
‘Where’ for places. This is the place where I learned to love music. 
‘When’ for times. My school days were the time when I met my closest friends. 
‘Which’ I am happy when I am gardening, which is good as I have a very big garden. 
After that, you can talk about the things that happened using the past simple, or, if you feel confident and you want 
to impress the examiner, you can use the past continuous and the past perfect. 
Remember you can get an idea about the grammar you need to use from the question. 
Example answer: Tell me a time when you learned something online. 
A few months ago I was working on a project and I found that I needed more information about online marketing, 
so I looked for a course. I found a course presented by Google that was free and so, I did that. I remember feeling 
strange at first because, although some great people were presenting the material, I had always learned things in a 
classroom and the feeling was very different. Anyway, I soon became comfortable with it and I ended up learning a 
lot of new things.
Question 3 
The third question maybe something like: ‘Do you think people learn better online or in classrooms?’ 
Know the grammar 
To answer the third question in Part 2 it is possible to only use the functional language for expression and 
justifying opinions. However, to get a higher score you can impress the examiner by using high-level structures. 
The second conditional is useful in this section as you can talk about a hypothetical situation, for example: 
I learn better in a class because if I learned online, there would be too many distractions. 
The third conditional is useful if you can use it, as you can talk about a hypothetical situation in the past, for 
example: 
If I hadn’t had the opportunity to learn in the classroom, I wouldn’t have learned as much. 
Will/Going to + inf. In question 3 you may get the opportunity to make predictions. Use will for opinions/what 
people think and going to if there is evidence of a future event.
Expressing and Justifying opinions 
This section generally wants you to express an opinion and some ways to do it are: 
• If you ask me… 
• Personally, I think (that)… 
• It seems to me (that)… 
• To my mind… 
• I have no doubt (that)… 
• In my view… 
When we justify opinions, we usually give a reason for them. You should learn to do this automatically because it 
will make your English seem more natural and extend the time you are speaking. 
Ways to justify are: 
• Because… 
• … is due to the fact (that)… 
• I believe (that)… 
• The evidence shows (that)… 
• For this reason,… 
• The reason is (that)… 
Grammar note 
You will need to learn which linking words are followed by a clause (sub + verb) and which are followed by a 
noun/noun phrase (article + adjective + noun) the examples above are all followed by a clause. 
Example: 
Because the weather was bad, we stayed at home. 
However, we can change the structure if we use ‘because of…’ In that case, we need a noun phrase. 
We stayed home because of the bad weather. 

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The grammar may seem complicated if you have not learned English grammar before. Don’t worry! You can still 
use high-level structures by learning a phrase and then using the important words (the content words) which suit you. 
To speak at a natural speed for 45 seconds each of your answers should be about 100 words long. Go back to the 
section called ‘How to have something to say’ in the General Listening Tips and Strategies for advice on how to do 
this. 
Example answer: Do you think people learn better online or in classrooms?
Personally, I think that people learn better in classrooms. The reason I believe this is that at the moment most 
people go to school and have lessons in a classroom. This is a habit and it takes a lot to change people’s habits. 
However, I think that this situation is changing and as online learning becomes more common, people will adapt to it 
and it will become more normal. Because of the advances in digital technology, it’s going to get easier and easier and 
soon classrooms will be forgotten.