Like it or not, emoji are part of our modern lives 😉. Kids and grandparents 👴👵 alike love 💖 them. So let’s use emoji to encourage our students to write 👍✍. With these materials, we explore how to write a story for the B1 Preliminary Writing Part 2, using emoji as a tool to promote varied, interesting story writing.
B1 Preliminary Writing Part 2 - the story option
In B1 Preliminary Writing Part 2, candidates choose between an article and a story. If you choose the story, write about 100 words and begin with the first sentence given in the question. The emoji prompts in this worksheet are a classroom planning activity to help students develop a story.
Story writing requires some imagination. I think that’s what scares off exam candidates. However, writing a story can also be a much better way to show off your language ability through the use of narrative tenses, time linkers and interesting vocabulary.
Cambridge says that candidates should be encouraged to write short stories for homework on a regular basis, but sometimes that’s easier said than done. I think the goal is to show my students that the story is a good option and it doesn’t need to be more difficult or take more time than an article. In fact, in many ways it’s a more interesting and more rewarding option.
If you want to practise email writing for B1 Preliminary Writing Part 1, check out our materials for improving an email.
The materials - emoji story
Writing a story for the B1 Preliminary exam can be difficult because candidates are given very little to work with. That means they need to stretch their imaginations.
Using emoji will motivate students to produce something interesting and varied while keeping them on task and having fun at the same time.
First, students try to predict the events of a story with emoji prompts before reading the sample story. Then, they have 4 different emoji story options to choose from to write their very own emoji masterpiece.
As a warmer or closer, try out one of these emoji quizzes on sporcle.com.
If you want to extend the task into some fun communicative practice, see if your students can collaborate to build story ideas on the spot using byrdseed.com’s emoji generator.
This activity is especially well suited to B1 Preliminary for Schools students, but it would work equally well with adult B1 Preliminary exam candidates. It might be interesting to compare the final results too!
EXAM PART: B1 Preliminary Writing Part 2 – Story
EXAM SKILLS: Producing a longer piece of continuous writing which shows ambition and a variety of interesting content
TIME: 45-60 minutes
PREPARATION: One copy of the worksheet per student or pair of students
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