Speaking part: variant 86 - Langart

Task 1

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

If you travel about 140 kilometres north of London, to England’s east coast, you’ll find a very unusual school. It’s a boarding school in a large nineteenth-century building, where children, teachers and other members of staff live, eat and study together. Its name is ‘Summerhill’.

There are about a hundred students at the school, aged between five and eighteen, and the school has its own library, theatre, sports hall and playing fields. What makes the school different, however, is the way it treats its students. Summerhill is a free school. If you go there, you have the right to choose when you attend classes, the right to vote on school rules, and the right to take exams…, but only if you want to. If you prefer going for a walk in the countryside instead of going to maths, that’s OK. Nobody is going to punish you. Summerhill continues to be a school that believes young people should live their own lives, not the lives that their parents and teachers think they should have.

Task 2

Study the advertisement.

Learn how to feel safer and more confident!

You are going to enrol your younger siblings in the training programme (offered by this self-defence club) and now you’d like to get more information. In 1.5 minutes you are to ask four direct questions to find out about the following:

  1. monthly training fees
  2. a pay-per-class option
  3. one-on-one training
  4. protective equipment

You have 20 seconds to ask each question.

Task 3

You are going to give an interview. You have to answer five questions. Give full answers to the questions (2–3 sentences). Remember that you have 40 seconds to answer each question.

Tapescript for Task 3

Interviewer: Hello everybody! It’s Teenagers Round the World Channel. Our guest today is a teenager from Russia and we are going to discuss sibling relationships. We’d like to know our guest’s point of view on this issue. Please answer five questions. So, let’s get started.

Interviewer: Are you an only child or do you have siblings? Do you think it’s better for a child to have siblings or to be raised as an only child?

Student: _________________________

Interviewer: What do you think makes a strong bond between siblings? What activities may create supportive sibling bonds?

Student: _________________________

Interviewer: What valuable lessons can brothers and sisters teach each other?

Student: _________________________

Interviewer: Do you think siblings are a must for childhood happiness? Why or why not?

Student: _________________________

Interviewer: What is your opinion on the ideal age gap between siblings, and why?

Student: _________________________

Interviewer: Thank you very much for your interview.

Task 4

Imagine that you and your friend are doing a school project “Jobs that matter”. You have found some photos to illustrate it but for technical reasons you cannot send them now. Leave a voice message to your friend explaining your choice of the photos and sharing some ideas about the project. In 2.5 minutes be ready to:

  • explain the choice of the illustrations for the project by briefly describing them and noting the differences;
  • mention the advantages (1–2) of the two jobs;
  • mention the disadvantages (1–2) of the two jobs;
  • express your opinion on the subject of the project – which of the jobs presented in the pictures you’d prefer and why.

You will speak for not more than 3 minutes (12–15 sentences). You have to talk continuously.