Revised 2018 Young Learners Tests

www.cambridgeenglish.org/exams/young-learners-english

YLE 2018 2

Activity sheet 1: Listening

3 YLE 2018

Activity sheet 2: I hear with my little ear

Before listening, remind students about animal vocabulary by playing ‘Can you find the

animals?’ (this activity is taken from ‘Starters Home Fun Booklet Level 2’ which comes with the

new version of StoryFun, produced by Cambridge University Press.)

Listen to the ‘At the zoo’ song. Tick [] the animals you hear about in the song. What are the

animals doing? Tick [] the things you hear about in the song.

Which animals do what?

The animal What the animal does

YLE 2018 4

Activity sheet 3: ‘This is a/These are’ game

Colour the pictures Cut on the dotted lines

This is a These are

pencils bag cats apple

dogs mouse birds ruler

cow lemons house armchairs

cake onions pen snakes

5 YLE 2018

Handout: Writing activities

Type ‘writing activities for young learners’ into an internet search engine and

discover a wealth of useful material. The following suggestions come from

http://busyteacher.org/16863-young-learners-7-writing-tasks.html

1. Word jumble

This activity is useful for those who have just started writing in English. Since writing whole sentences on their own can be rather challenging, this activity can help students understand word order whilst giving them the support they need.

Divide students into small groups of three or four, or into pairs. Give each group a set of cards containing words that can be used to form a sentence. These words are clearly jumbled, in other words, in the wrong order. Students have to race to put them in order to make the sentence, and then copy the sentence onto their notebook or separate worksheet.

2. What happens next?

Give students the first sentence or beginning of a story, and ask them to complete the story. To make it fun, they can be given funny or even ridiculous sentences/situations. This helps students use their creativity and understand how sentences relate to one another to make a cohesive text.

3. What is happening in this picture?

This is a simple writing activity where you show students an illustration and ask them to write about what they see. Illustrations that show a lot of things happening at the same time are great for this activity; students can choose or even create a small story that revolves around the whole scene. This visual prompt will get your students started and guide them in terms of content so that they won’t stray too far from the topic.

4. Story with a twist

This is a great post-reading writing activity. After the reading, ask your students to change the ending. You can read a well-known classic or a story that is completely new to them. They can change a few details or change the outcome altogether. They will need to get creative here but they will be using a story they are familiar with and have that extra, needed support.

5. Let’s write together

This is a classic writing activity when you have a large group of young ESL students who don’t feel confident enough to write an entire story on their own. One student writes a sentence (or you can get the ball rolling yourself) and the next has to write the sentence that follows and so on till the story is complete. And it doesn’t have to be a “story”; they can write a news article. This is a great task to promote cooperation and collaboration among students. Also, since each one will be completing a part of the text, they will have to make choices regarding text structure, i.e. decide if they need to start a new paragraph.

YLE 2018 6

Speaking activities Classroom activity 1: Noughts and crosses

Classroom activity 2: Spot the difference

1 2 3

4 5 6

7 8

9

7 YLE 2018

Classroom activity 3: Picture story role play

Timing 15 minutes

Materials Picture stories – from Flyers and Movers exam

Rationale

This type of activity can be used for practising the story telling part of the Movers and Flyers

exams where students have to make a story from a sequence of pictures.

Procedure

1. Make enough copies of the story pictures for your students.

2. Elicit nouns, verbs and – with learners at Flyers level – adjectives that would be

appropriate for the story and write them on the board.

3. Divide the class into pairs or threes at the most. Ask each pair/group to write out their

story and tell them they are going to act it out in front of the class. Give them 10 minutes

to write their story.

4. Teacher monitors and helps with language and provides support where necessary,

making sure that every learner is contributing to the story.

5. Ask the pairs/groups to practise their stories before asking them to perform in front of the

class.

6. Optional point system for each story – write on separate pieces of paper, the numbers 2,

4, 6, 8 and 10. Turn them over, face down, and after each performance each pair/group

chooses a piece of paper. These are the points they are given for their story. Mix up the

order of the numbers after each story.

Flyers

Movers

YLE 2018 8

Story writing

9 YLE 2018

Useful links

At the zoo video - https://youtu.be/XS4h5rFNmO8

World of fun - http://worldoffun.cambridge.org/

Penfriends - penfriends.cambridgeenglish.org

Information on updates to YLE:

http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/exams-and-tests/starters/preparation/2018-update/

http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/exams-and-tests/movers/preparation/2018-update/

http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/exams-and-tests/flyers/preparation/2018-update/

General resources for teachers:

http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/teaching-english/resources-for-teachers/

http://cambridgeparati.es/

Script (for activity sheet 1)

Look at the pictures.

What do the children like to eat and drink?

Listen and look.

There is one example.

Let’s start with Grace. Grace likes to eat some bread for breakfast.

Can you see the line? This is an example.

Now you listen and draw lines.

Alex enjoys breakfast. Alex likes to eat a banana for breakfast.

May loves lunch. May likes to drink lemonade for lunch.

And now Matt. Matt likes ice cream for lunch.

What does Eva like for dinner? Eva likes chicken.

What does our friend Sam like for dinner? Sam loves rice.