TKT - Teaching Knowledge Language and Skills Description Questions and Answers 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A teacher asks students to listen to a train station announcement to find out which platform a specific train departs from. Which listening subskill is the primary focus of this task?
- Listening for gist
- Listening for specific information (Correct answer)
- Inferring attitude
- Listening for detail
Correct answer: Listening for specific information
Listening for specific information involves listening to a text to find a particular piece of information, such as a name, a number, or a place. In this scenario, the students only need to identify the platform number, not understand the entire announcement (gist) or every single word (detail).
Question 2: Which of the following is the best definition of a 'phoneme'?
- The smallest written letter in a language.
- A unit of meaning that can be a whole word or a part of a word.
- The smallest unit of sound that can change the meaning of a word. (Correct answer)
- The rhythm and stress pattern of a spoken sentence.
Correct answer: The smallest unit of sound that can change the meaning of a word.
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that distinguishes one word from another in a particular language. For example, the sounds /p/ and /b/ are phonemes in English because they differentiate 'pat' from 'bat'.
Question 3: A student says, 'Could you possibly pass me the salt?' This is an exponent of which function?
- Making a request (Correct answer)
- Giving an order
- Expressing an opinion
- Apologising
Correct answer: Making a request
A function is the communicative purpose or intention of a speaker. An exponent is the language used to express that function. 'Could you possibly pass me the salt?' is a polite linguistic form (exponent) used to perform the communicative act (function) of requesting something.
Question 4: In the context of describing language, what does 'syntax' refer to?
- The vocabulary of a language.
- The system of sounds in a language.
- The meaning of words and phrases.
- The rules for combining words to form sentences. (Correct answer)
Correct answer: The rules for combining words to form sentences.
Syntax is the area of grammar concerned with the way words are arranged to show relationships of meaning within sentences. For example, English syntax requires the subject to typically come before the verb in a declarative sentence.
Question 5: A teacher wants students to practice the reading subskill of 'skimming'. Which instruction would be most appropriate?
- "Read the text and underline all the past tense verbs you can find."
- "Read the text and find the author's date of birth."
- "Read the article quickly to understand the main topic and the writer's general opinion." (Correct answer)
- "Read the story and then write a detailed summary of the plot."
Correct answer: "Read the article quickly to understand the main topic and the writer's general opinion."
Skimming involves reading a text quickly to get a general overview or the main idea. The instruction to read quickly for the main topic and general opinion directly targets this subskill, unlike scanning for specific information (date of birth), reading for detail (summary), or focusing on grammar (verbs).
Question 6: Which of the following word pairs is an example of a 'collocation'?
- dog, cat
- run, ran
- heavy rain (Correct answer)
- un-happy
Correct answer: heavy rain
A collocation is a combination of words that frequently occur together. 'Heavy rain' is a common and natural-sounding pairing in English, whereas we don't typically say 'strong rain' or 'powerful rain'. 'Dog, cat' are part of a lexical set, 'run, ran' shows verb tense, and 'un-happy' is an example of affixation.
TKT - Teaching Knowledge Language and Skills Description Questions and Answers 1
A teacher asks students to listen to a train station announcement to find out which platform a specific train departs from.
Which listening subskill is the primary focus of this task?