Foreign language instruction should begin in kindergarten

Part 2 – the long turn – IN – ADD – ADD – ADD – OUT

Part 2 is you telling the examiner about a person, a thing or an experience. Note that it is always something personal to you. Here, I really suggest that you concentrate on using the question booklet to help you organise your answer. If you follow the points in order, your answer automatically has structure – that’s good for coherence. You want to avoid:

losing track of what you are saying – easy to happen when you talk for a longer time

leaving out detail – do this and your answer may be too short and your vocabulary is also likely to be weak

Here is a possible outline to make answers more coherent:

IN – tell the examiner what you’re going to say (think of it like an essay introduction – that’s the IN)

A – answer each point in the question booklet directly. Let the examiner know what you are talking about

D D – detail is a natural way of expanding your answer in a coherent way. You start with a general point and then add in particular points. It’s DD because you want detail and detail!

OUT – this is a type of conclusion – just like an essay too. There are different ways to do this. One of the best is to return to the main question in your introduction. For every IN there must be an OUT!

Practice tips

Don’t just practise complete long turns. You can learn more sometimes from just talking about one point for around 20/30 seconds. This way you are more likely to focus on the key detail.

Say your answer. Record it. Write it down. Look at what you said. Think about more detail to add in. See if you can break it into paragraphs. Paragraphs are an idea explained. If you can find paragraphs, then your answer is probably coherent. Then repeat until you have something you are happy with.