Listening Part 4: emotional keyword versus final stance
In a CPE Listening Part 4 task, five questions match five speakers to options A-F. Speaker 2 says: We lost eighteen months waiting for the grant. At the time I was furious. But looking back, the delay forced us to rebuild the prototype from scratch, and the second version is the one that worked. I would not wish it on anyone, but I cannot honestly call it a waste. The candidate selects option B, regret about a missed opportunity, because the speaker mentions losing time and being furious. The correct option is D, a setback that produced an unexpected benefit. The candidate's score on the task is 2/5, and the teacher notices the same pattern in three of the five items: matching a single emotionally charged word rather than the speaker's overall stance. The recording is played twice, and the candidate has 30 seconds to check answers after the second listening.
1. Explain why the candidate's answer is wrong using the speaker's discourse structure, not just the final sentence.
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The candidate has matched furious and lost eighteen months to regret, but regret is not the speaker's overall stance. The extract follows a concession-plus-reversal structure: At the time I was furious concedes a negative reaction, but But looking back signals a reevaluation, and the main clause after it, the delay forced us to rebuild the prototype and the second version is the one that worked, carries the speaker's current evaluation. The final sentence explicitly blocks the regret reading: I cannot honestly call it a waste. Option B picks up the temporary emotion; option D picks up the retrospective judgement. In Part 4, the answer is usually carried by the clause after the contrast marker, not by the first emotional adjective.
2. What 30-second checking routine would correct this pattern without turning into a transcript-reading exercise?
Read the worked answer
The routine should operate on stance, not words. 1) For each speaker, write one word for the initial reaction and one for the final stance, for example furious then vindicated. 2) Check whether a contrast marker such as but, looking back, in the end or having said that separates them; if so, the final stance is the answer. 3) Match the final stance to an option, and reject any option that captures only the initial reaction. 4) Do not change an answer because a word from the option appears in the text; that is the trap. In the 30 seconds after the second listening, the candidate should review only items where the option keyword matched a single word rather than the whole stance. This is a decision rule, not a vocabulary check.