Listening - Breakthrough (A1)
What Breakthrough Listening tests
Breakthrough sits at A1 on the CEFR and is taken by young learners, typically aged nine to twelve. The listening paper uses short, slow, clearly articulated dialogues and monologues about concrete, familiar topics: family, pets, school, food, toys, colours, numbers, times, prices and places. Recordings are usually heard twice - once to get the general idea, once to check. The marks come from picking out one specific piece of information per question, not from understanding every word.
Core rules
- Look at the options before the recording starts and predict what you expect to hear: a time? a number? a colour? a place?
- Expect a distractor. A1 recordings often mention two possibilities and then reject one: "The 4.30? Sorry, that's full."
- Expect self-correction: "It's on Tues- no, Wednesday." The second version is the answer.
- Write while you listen. There is no extra time at the end to copy answers across.
- When a name is spelled out, write the letters as they come; do not wait for the whole word.
Worked example
Recording: "Two tickets for the 4.30 film, please." "Sorry, the 4.30 is full. There's one at 5.15." "OK, 5.15 then." Question: What time is the film? Options: 4.30 / 5.15 / 5.50. The answer is 5.15. Reasoning: 4.30 is spoken first but explicitly rejected ("full"); 5.50 is a near-sound trap for 5.15; the answer is the time the second speaker actually agrees to.
Traps that cost marks
- Choosing the first number or name you hear.
- Confusing similar-sounding pairs: thirteen/thirty, fifteen/fifty, four thirty/four thirteen.
- Missing a negative: "We don't have art on Monday."
- Writing a whole phrase in a gap that needs one word.