Question Type 1: Basic Description Questions

Topic Easy Difficult

An important building A shopping mall Your school library

A trip To Hong Kong To Yellow Mountain

A famous person A singer / actor A politician / leader

Step 2: Vocabulary

The next step in the one-minute preparation is to write down as many examples of uncommon vocabulary as possible. The vocabulary must be directly related to the topic.

A good method is to ask the following question: "Can this word be used for many other topics?" If the answer is "Yes" then that word is NOT directly related to the topic.

Activity

Look at the following example. Topic: Describe some travelling you like to do.

Vocabulary:

exciting interesting opportunity tourism

sightseeing attractive backpack explore

excursion leave special mountain

Ask the question: "Can this word be used for many other topics?"

Topic-related words are:

tourism sightseeing backpack

explore excursion

The other words are not directly related to the topic and could probably be used for many Part Two topics, e.g., interesting (this word could be used for almost every topic).

It is not wrong to use the common words during your Part Two talk, but at this preparation stage you need to find uncommon topic-specific words.

Activity

Find uncommon topic-specific vocabulary for the following topics:

• 
  A film that you have seen
  
• 
  A song / piece of music
  
• 
  A school subject
  
• 
  A neighbor
  

Uncommon or topic-specific vocabulary is given for each topic card later in the book. Most of the vocabulary given in the Part One topic section of this book will he related to many of the Part Two topics and can be used in your Part Two talk.