About A1 Movers Reading and Writing Part 4 and how to do well

In this post, I’ll look at Part 4 of the A1 Movers Reading and Writing Test.

Let’s look at a sample part 4 task, taken from Sample Papers 1, available here.

In this part of the Test, learners have to read a factual text of around 90-100 words.  The texts are often about animals or places.

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The title and picture

The text has a title and a picture to help learners.

Approaching this part in class (*and in the A1 Movers Test).

So, what I tell my learners (and do in class) is to stop and think about the topic of the text. 

What do you know about dolphins? (They’re animals, they live in the sea, they swim and jump, people like them, etc)

Then, learners read the text and see if their information is there and if there is any other information.

Why?

This gives them a reason for reading the whole text.

It shows that they can understand the text, even with words missing.

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The text

Lots of the advice I gave in a previous post on  A1 Movers Reading and Writing Part 3  applies here.

The text in Part 4 is usually in the present simple tense.  This is important to know and remember, because one or two of the gaps usually test a verb.

There is one example and then five gaps.  The words learners need are on the opposite page *so they should have their exam booklet open so that they can see both pages.

The words

The words tested are grammatical words like prepositions, pronouns, adjectives (including superlatives and comparatives), verbs, determiners.

Tip

Lots of the words are tested very often (for example, ‘than’ in comparatives) so train your learners to look out for these!

The answers

Learners copy the correct word that they choose from the second page.

Spelling must be correct – so an important step is to check that the words that they have written are the same as the ones on the second page.

Tip – start with the easier gaps first

Some of the gaps will be easier and some more difficult for learners, so if they start completing the easiest ones first, that will give them more context for the other gaps.

Tip – ‘Read’ the text aloud in your head.

Sometimes, one option ‘sounds’ right if you say and listen to the sentence, so tell learners to ‘say’ the sentence in their heads and see if one of the words sounds right in the context.

Tip – When in doubt, guess!

I’ve seen kids in the A1 Movers Test leaving gaps blank because they don’t know the answer.  In this case, they should guess!  They only have three words to choose from, so even if they guess, they might get it right!  33% chance they will!

In my next post, I’ll share some ideas for interacting with a text like this.