Speaking: the Grade 3 interview, from reading aloud to your own opinion
The Grade 3 second-stage test is a short one-to-one interview with a single examiner, conducted entirely in English and lasting about five minutes. You are given a card with a short passage (roughly 40 words) and a picture. The interview moves through four stages: you read the passage aloud, answer questions about it, describe what is happening in the picture, and finally answer a question about your own life or opinion. The examiner rates your pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, fluency and whether your answers fit the question, and the result is pass or fail.
Stage by stage
- Reading aloud. Accuracy first, speed second. Read in phrases, not word by word, and finish every word - dropped endings (-s, -ed) are the most common loss here.
- Passage questions (three). The answers are in the text you just read, so answer in a full sentence and echo the question's words: "Where did Ken go last Sunday?" → "He went to the beach with his family."
- Picture question. You are asked what one person is doing. Use the present continuous: "The boy is putting some books in his bag." Name the person and the object as well as the verb.
- Your own answer. A question such as "Do you like cooking? Why?" - answer yes or no, then give one reason. A bare "Yes, I do" is not a complete answer.
Worked example
Picture: a boy standing at a desk with books and an open bag. Question: "What is the boy doing?"
Weak: "Books." - no verb, no subject. Better: "He is putting books in his bag." - correct structure and the key vocabulary. Strongest: "The boy in the blue shirt is putting his books into his bag. He looks like he is getting ready for school." - accurate, and one added detail shows fluency without risking error.
Traps that cost marks
- One-word answers, or silence while you search for a perfect sentence. Start with "He is …" and continue.
- Answering a different question from the one asked, usually because you only caught one keyword - ask the examiner to repeat with "Pardon?" rather than guessing.
- Reading the passage too fast and stumbling; a calm pace reads as confidence.
- Forgetting the tense: passage questions are usually about the past, picture questions about now.
- Sliding into Japanese. If you do not know a word, describe it: "a thing you use for …".
Greet the examiner, speak to them rather than to the card, and say "Thank you" at the end.