A1 Movers common mistakes
A1 Movers · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
In Listening Part 1 the child draws a line from the name to a person the moment the name is spoken, then leaves it there even when the words that follow describe somebody else.
The name comes early in each exchange and the identifying detail ("the one with the blue scarf") comes later; children treat hearing the name as the signal to act, and their pencil is already moving.
What to do instead
Train one routine until it is automatic: hear the name, wait, find the detail, then draw. Do paired practice where you say a name, pause for three seconds, then give the clue, and only then let them pick up the pencil.
In Listening Part 4 the child ticks the first picture option that is mentioned and stops listening, even when the second speaker rejects it ("No, not the beach - we went to the mountains").
First mention feels like the answer. Movers multiple-choice items almost always put a rejected distractor first, and children have not yet learned to expect the correction.
What to do instead
Run 'listen to the end' drills with short dialogues that each contain one rejection. Teach the signals no, but, actually, I'd rather, and make the rule that the option is only ticked after the second speaker has replied.
In Listening Parts 2 and 5 the child writes answers with invented spelling or half a word ("hows" for house, "brithday", "swim" for swimming), so an answer that was heard correctly is still marked wrong.
Productive spelling of Movers topic words lags behind recognition, children spell as they hear, and when the recording spells a name out loud they write it as one chunk instead of letter by letter.
What to do instead
Keep a running spelling list of topic words, days and months with a two-minute test each lesson. When the recording spells a word, have them write one letter per beat and read it back before moving on.
In Reading Part 1 the child matches a definition to a picture word because one familiar word appears in both ("You can buy food here" leads to choosing market only because food is in the picture), without checking the rest of the sentence.
Single-word matching is the strategy that worked at Pre-A1. Movers definitions are full clauses and the competing pictures belong to the same topic set, so one shared word proves nothing.
What to do instead
Teach a two-step check every time: underline the key noun (person, place or thing) and the qualifier after it, then test each candidate word against both parts before writing.
In Reading Part 3 the child chooses the option that repeats words from the text but does not answer the question (picking "because it was raining" when the question asks how the character felt).
Spotting familiar words feels safe, and the wrong options in this part are deliberately written by copying vocabulary out of the passage.
What to do instead
Have them read the question stem first and say aloud what kind of answer is needed - a reason, a place, a time - before looking at A, B, C. Then make them point to the line in the text that answers the question, not the line that repeats the words.
In Reading and Writing Part 5 the child writes four or five words where one to three are allowed, or copies the sentence with altered word forms ("she were playing"), so a correct idea is rejected.
Children believe more words make a safer answer, and copying sets off a grammar 'correction' they cannot yet do accurately.
What to do instead
Practise copying word for word from the text without editing, counting on fingers as they go, and crossing out each gap number once it is answered so the word limit stays visible.
In Writing Part 6 the child answers with labels or noun phrases ("a boy", "two dogs in the park") instead of a sentence, so no verb appears and no mark is earned.
Single-word answers are the Pre-A1 habit, and producing subject + verb + object unaided is new; they describe the picture rather than fitting it into a sentence pattern.
What to do instead
Give one fixed frame per picture (The ___ is ___ing ___ / There are ___ ___ing ___), build all three sentences orally before any writing, and check each line for a 'who' and a 'doing word'.
The child writes the whole answer in lower case with no full stop and misspells words it has just read in the prompt ("teh", "playd", "becos"), so the sentence is hard to mark even when the idea is right.
All attention goes on content and there is no editing habit; copying is done by whole-word shape rather than letter by letter, so errors survive.
What to do instead
Use a three-item editing routine at the end of every writing task - capital letter, full stop, copy the tricky word straight from the text - and mark only one item at a time so the check stays short.
In the Speaking 'find the differences' task the child names objects in one picture only ("a cat", "a ball") or just says "different" without saying what is different, instead of contrasting the two pictures.
Naming is the skill they already own; comparative frames with but and in this picture have to be supplied from outside and are not automatic under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Drill a single frame until it is automatic: "In this picture there is a ..., but in this picture there is a ...". Practise on two versions of your own picture before moving to exam-style pairs.
In the Speaking picture-story task the child tells the story as a list of things in the pictures ("a boy, a dog, a tree, a park") with no verbs for the actions and no linking, so no story is heard.
When language runs out children fall back on nouns, and they have not been taught to scan a picture story for who, where, what happens and how it ends.
What to do instead
Rehearse a four-question routine - Who? Where? What happens? How does it end? - with First, Then, After that, Finally, and tell the same story twice so the second telling is fluent.