About A2 Flyers Reading and Writing Part 1 and how to do well

In this post, I’d like to analyse A2 Flyers Reading and Writing Part 1.

This is the first part of the test which learners will read when they open their test booklets.

It’s meant to be a motivating start to the Test, and candidates generally do it quite quickly.

But beware! Lots of candidates make some (silly) mistakes in this Part!

Let’s look at a Part 1 from A2 Flyers Sample Papers 2, available here.

You can see that we have an example sentence and answer. The example answer ‘a diary’ is also outside the box along with 14 possible answers.

There are 10 sets of sentences inside the box for learners to read and there are 15 answers to choose from outside the box. This means that 4 answers will not be used.

The 15 answers come from 3 or 4 topic groups. 

In this example, we can see that the words come from transport (an ambulance, engine, motorway, tyre), work (a businessman, a dentist, a waiter), the world around us (caves, a desert, ocean, woods) and 4 documents from home, school, time (a calendar, a diary, a dictionary, a postcard).

Notice that most of the words are singular and have articles (a diary, a businessman, a calendar, a desert, a dentist, a postcard,  a dictionary, a motorway, a tyre, a waiter, an ambulance, an engine, ) and 2 are plural (caves, woods).

So, what’s a good way to do this Part?

Firstly, don’t rush through this part! Learners often do and they make careless mistakes!

1 Read the example and the example answer.

Find this answer outside the box and cross it out because you will not need to write this answer.

2 Take a look at the other fourteen words outside the box and think about which topics they come from. Don’t worry if you do not know some of the words.

3 Start reading the sentences.

4 If you know the answer and can find the words for it outside the box, write the answer on the line at the end of the question.

If you are not sure of the answer, leave that question and come back to it later when you have answered other questions and have fewer answers to choose from.

5 Cross out the words outside the box as you use them.

Do this by putting a line through them, but don’t make them totally illegible as you may change your mind and want to use them for another question!

6 Check your answers carefully.

Make sure you copy them exactly as they appear outside the box.

So many learners lose marks even though they have matched the correct answer to the correct question!

If your spelling is not correct, you lose the mark!

* That includes not writing the article for the word and not putting the plural ‘s’ on the end of the word!

6 Check that you have answered all the questions.

Every time, some learners don’t get a mark for a question because they’ve forgotten to answer one that they meant to come back to.

Or, they are not sure, so they don’t write an answer.

By the time you’ve answered other questions, you will have few options to choose from, so it should be quite easy to choose the answer.

7 Never leave any questions unanswered!