Flyers

YLE Flyers Overview – teacher’s notes
Description This activity is in the form of three games which give students the opportunity to look carefully at each part of the Flyers test and to practise some of the skills that are tested. Time required: 30–40 minutes. You could also split this over 3 lessons: Lesson 1: Steps 1–5; Lesson 2: Steps 6–7 (including the Student’s Worksheet); Lesson 3: Steps8–11   Student’s Worksheet Copies of YLE Flyers Listening, Reading and Writing and Speaking tests, enough for one copy per two or three students (http://www.cambridgeesol.org/resources/teacher/yle.html)      to provide students with an overview of the Flyers test to give students practice in listening carefully to give students practice in reading and completing questions to get studentsused to words commonly used in the Reading & Writing rubric to give students practice in asking and answering personal questions

Materials required:

Aims:

Procedure 1. Ask students what they kinds of things they need to know when they do tests in English. Elicit things like grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, listening and speaking. Encourage them to think of other things like spelling,matching, choosing the correct word, communication etc. 2. Hand out copies of the YLE sample papers to each pair of students. Ask them to look quickly through the test and think about what is being tested in each paper/question. Give them 3 – 4 minutes to do this. 3. Go through briefly together. Get them to use the words that were elicited in stage 1. This is to give them a ‘big picture’ of thetest. The activities that follow will help them look more carefully and get to know each paper. 4. Explain that you are going to play a game. The students have to listen very carefully to your questions as well as look at the test and put their hands up when they know the answer. 5. Start with the Listening Paper only. Ask the following questions orally in English and allow enough time so as manystudents as possible can find the answers, but also not too slowly so it still feels like a race: a. How many questions are there in this paper? (25)
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YLE Flyers Overview– teacher’s notes

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b. How many parts are there in the paper? (5) c. In Part 1, how many words do you need to write? (none, that’s a trick question -Beware of trick questions!) d. In Part 2, do you need to write words or numbers? (both) e. In Part 3, how many people are there in the Salt family? (6) f. And how many objects are there to choose from?(8) g. In Part 4, is it a good idea to close your eyes when you listen to the question? (No, you have to look very carefully at the picture to choose the right one) h. In Part 5, how many people can you see? (9) i. How many people do you have to colour? (you only colour things you are instructed to) You could add more questions of your own. 6. Explain that now students are going to do a readingand writing activity about the Reading and Writing test. Give out a copy of the Student’s Worksheet to each pair. They should look at each question carefully and think about what they must do in each part of the test. You could the first one or two questions with the students to get them used to what they have to do. 7. Students complete the worksheet in pairs, then check the answers together. Asyou check, make sure they know the meanings of the key words, as these will always be used in the rubric. See key below. 8. Lastly, explain briefly what the students have to do in each stage of the Speaking test. Write on the board: Information exchange Asking questions about the child Asking the child’s surname and age Story telling Find the Differences Ask the children to look at their Speaking...