Skills for English B1 SELT cheat sheet

Skills for English B1 Speaking is a face-to-face or video-recorded test with an examiner and lasts about 12 minutes; it has four parts: warm-up questions, a picture-based discussion, a role-play or situation task, and a closing discussion on a familiar topic.

B1 CEFR descriptors for speaking: can sustain a simple description, give reasons and explanations for opinions, and handle most everyday situations, but pauses and repairs are expected; the pass threshold is the B1 level, not perfection.

Part 1 warm-up questions are personal and predictable (home, work, studies, free time, last holiday); answers of two to three sentences with one reason or example score better than one-word replies.

Part 2 picture task: the candidate describes what people are doing, where they are, and how they might feel, then answers two or three follow-up questions; use present continuous for the scene and 'might/could' for speculation.

Part 3 role-play: the examiner plays a shop assistant, official, or friend; the candidate must open the interaction, ask for information, respond to unexpected turns, and close politely using functional phrases such as 'Could you tell me...?', 'I'd rather...', 'That's fine, thanks.'

Part 4 discussion: give an opinion, support it with a reason, and add a contrast ('On the other hand...') or a personal example; examiners reward extended turns over short question-answer ping-pong.

Fluency scoring at B1 tolerates hesitation but not long silences; use fillers that keep the floor ('Well, let me think...', 'That's a good question...') rather than switching to the first language.

Pronunciation is judged on intelligibility, not accent; control word stress in two-syllable nouns/verbs (PREsent vs preSENT) and final consonants, which carry grammatical meaning in English.

Grammar range expected at B1: present simple and continuous, past simple and present perfect for experience, comparatives, 'going to' and 'will' for plans and predictions, first conditional, and modals of obligation and advice (must, should, have to).

Skills for English B1 Listening lasts about 35 minutes and contains multiple parts with 25 questions in total; recordings are played twice in most parts, so the first listen is for gist and the second for detail.

Task types include multiple-choice with three options, matching speakers or items to statements, and gap-fill or short-answer notes; each item tests one specific piece of information, and answers appear in the order of the recording.

B1 listening descriptors: can understand the main points of clear standard speech on familiar matters and follow the outline of a short narrative or announcement, but not fast or heavily accented speech.

Distractors are built on words that are heard but do not answer the question; the correct option is usually a paraphrase, so match meaning, not identical wording.

Numbers, times, prices, and dates are common gap-fill answers; listen for correction markers ('actually', 'sorry, I meant', 'let's say') because the first figure spoken is often changed.

Spelling counts in gap-fill answers; answers are normally one to three words, and the word limit is stated in the rubric, so exceeding it scores zero for that item.

Signposting language signals structure: 'first', 'then', 'however', 'the main thing is', 'to sum up'; these words mark where an answer is likely to follow.

In matching tasks with several speakers, each speaker gives one clear opinion plus a contrasting remark; the opinion is the answer, and the contrast is the distractor.

Never leave a blank: there is no negative marking, so an unanswered item should always receive the most plausible guess before the recording moves on.