SPEAKING PART 4
1. Tell me about a time when you were stressed out.
2. What made you feel that way?
3. What are some ways of coping with stress?
What grammar do you need?
You want to show off your English skills and so you should try to use complex sentences, higher-
level tenses and conditionals, passives, and inversions if you can.
Analyse the grammar. When we look at the questions above, we can see that questions 1 & 2
are both in the past. There is no connection with the present and so you may not need the
present perfect.
Question 3 is about coping with stress in general and so much of your answer could be present
simple.
Narrative tenses. Use these tenses- past simple, past continuous, past perfect and past perfect
continuous, to answer questions 1 & 2.
Think about the time you were stressed. What was happening around that time (past
continuous)? What had happened previously (past perfect simple & continuous)?
Explanations. Question 2 asks you why you felt this way and so you will need language that gives
reasons and result- because/due to/as a result of…
Present tenses. With question 3, you can talk about what generally happens in this situation
(present simple), or what you are doing at the moment (present continuous), or what you started
doing in the past and are still doing now (present perfect and present perfect continuous).
Conditionals. Use conditionalS to talk about things that may happen now if you are stressed
(2nd conditional) or things that might have happened in the past but didn’t (3 rd conditional).
Answer the three questions
You could lose marks if you don’t answer the questions, so ask yourself questions about stress.
For the three questions, your prompts could be:
1). When was I stressed out? What was I doing? What had happened before? If this thing hadn’t
happened, would things have been different?
2). What made me feel stressed? Why did it make me feel that way? What had happened before?
If this thing hadn’t happened, would I have felt any better or worse?
3). What do I do about stress now? Am I doing anything now? What have I done/been doing up
to this point? What would/wouldn’t you do today if you were stressed?
Make notes
During the preparation time, you should make notes. Notes will help you organise your thoughts
and help you to remember what you want to speak about.
Don’t write your notes in full, make brief notes and use them for the different points to want to
make.
You could write a one or two-word answer to the questions above, maybe with a note of the
grammar you are going to use.
Expanding your answer
If you use the prompts above, you should have enough to talk about but if you need more, you
could.
· Give a background.
· Contract what stresses you, with what makes you relaxed.
· Say how stress affects people in general.
· Talk about different types of stress, i.e. good stress- When it helps you to concentrate, etc.
APTIS Speaking Part 4: Example Answer To Sample Question #1
1. Tell me about a time when you were stressed out.
Well, I remember a time when I had an important appointment on the other side of the city I
lived in. I was working in a coffee shop at the time but had been looking for a better job and had
got an interview. I had plenty of time but my friend offered to give me a lift and insisted that he
took me. I didn’t really want him to because he always got distracted by other things. Anyway, we
were driving along when my friend said that he had to stop at the supermarket to buy something.
I said ‘Oh no!’ I’m going to be late but he said ‘You’re always worrying, relax.
2. What made you feel that way?
He was waiting in the car and I was getting more and more frustrated. I kept asking myself ‘Why
didn’t I just take the bus?’ It was like one of those nightmares where you are trying to do
something but things keep stopping you, except that it was real. When my friend came back after
about fifteen minutes I was very upset and I shouted ‘Come on, we’ve got to get going!’. He said
‘Don’t worry, there’s plenty of time’. We got moving again and he stopped the car again and told
me that he had to speak to a friend about a party they were arranging. I jumped out of the car,
ran to the bus stop and caught the bus. I arrived a minute early and got the job.
3. What are some ways of coping with stress?
I normally cope with stress by avoiding stressful situations like the one I explained. I don’t get
stressed at work much but if I do, I try to do things slower than normal and I concentrate on
relaxing. I genuinely believe that some stress is good for you especially if you are preparing
yourself for sport or an exam. If you are able to control stress and learn how to control it, then
stress can help you perform better.
