Dealing With a Difficult Situation
An awkward situation and two people you could take it to. Choosing one and speaking to them directly is the task. Covering both halves it, and carries a ceiling.
The task, and why it gets a full minute of preparation
Task 6 is Dealing with a Difficult Situation: 60 seconds of preparation and 60 seconds of recording, text only. A socially awkward situation is described on screen and you are offered two people you could speak to about it. You choose one, and then you speak to that person.
Along with Task 5, this is one of only two tasks with a full minute of preparation, and the reason is that the choice is genuinely part of the work. Before you can plan anything you have to decide who you are addressing, because the register you owe each of them is different and the content changes with it. What you say to your brother about his dog is not a subset of what you say to the neighbour who complained.
The right split of that minute is roughly fifteen seconds to decide and forty five to plan the branch you chose. Candidates who plan both branches and pick at second fifty nine arrive at the microphone with two half answers and no register.
Choose one, and stay in it
The instruction says choose one. Answering both does not double your content, it halves each of them: sixty seconds split in two produces two thirty second fragments that each name a problem and never resolve it. It also caps Task Fulfilment at 6, and so does addressing the wrong person or wobbling between the two branches partway through.
Wobbling is the subtle version and it is worth watching for in your own recordings. It sounds like this: you begin talking to the building manager, and then at second thirty five you say and I will also speak to my neighbour about the noise and ask her to be more careful. You have left the conversation you were having and started reporting a second one.
The commitment device is simple. Write the name or role of the person you chose at the top of your notes, and write it in the second person: to Mrs Patel. Everything you plan under that heading has to be sayable to Mrs Patel's face.
Choose the uncomfortable branch
Given a choice between confronting your brother and calling a manager, most candidates take the manager. It feels safer and it is usually the weaker answer, because the difficulty is the material.
Options that avoid the awkwardness produce bland, procedural answers with nothing to reward: you state a problem to somebody whose job is to handle problems, and they handle it. Options that face the awkwardness force you to soften, to concede, to manage somebody's feelings while still asking for something, and all of that is language the higher bands are described in terms of.
There is a second reason, which is content volume. A difficult conversation has more moving parts. You have to acknowledge the relationship, name the problem without accusing, allow for the other person's side, and still land a request. That structure fills sixty seconds naturally. A complaint to an official can be complete in twenty.
Speak to them, do not report the conversation
The task asks you to have the conversation, in the second person, as though the person is in front of you. A common way to lose marks here is to narrate instead: I would tell the clerk that I am unhappy and I would ask him to check the records again.
That is a summary of a conversation rather than a conversation, and it costs you twice. It removes all the register from the answer, because reported speech flattens tone, and tone is a named factor of Task Fulfilment. It also removes the thing the task exists to observe, which is how you actually handle somebody.
The direct version of the same content is more interesting to listen to and easier to produce than most candidates expect. Hi, sorry to bother you again. I know this is not your fault, but I came in on Tuesday and I was told the refund had already gone through, and it has not. Could you check the reference number for me? Address, softener, fact, request. All of it is register.
Decide which person you are addressing in the first fifteen seconds and write their name in the second person at the top of your notes. Wobbling between the two branches caps Task Fulfilment at 6, and it usually starts around second thirty five.
The three things a complete answer contains
The problem, named plainly. Not hinted at, not buried under apology. If somebody has been parking across your driveway, the sentence I cannot get my car out in the mornings has to appear.
The uncomfortable part, not dodged. Whatever makes the situation difficult is what the task is testing. If your friend still owes you money, an answer that discusses everything except the money has avoided the task while appearing to complete it.
A concrete resolution, proposed. This is the part most commonly missing. An answer that explains the situation for a full minute and never says what it wants is incomplete, because the request is the point of the conversation. Give the person something specific to say yes to: a date, an amount, an action, a change of arrangement.
A useful check on a practice recording: can you point at the sentence where you asked for something? If you cannot, the answer is not finished, however articulate the rest of it was.
Appropriate is not the same as polite
Tone is scored, and the scale runs from conveying information, through adjusting your style for different audiences, to adapting fully to the situation, the purpose and your relationship with the listener. Appropriate can mean firm.
Naming where the fault sits, asking for somebody's name, setting a deadline, saying that you have already raised this twice: all of that is within range when the situation warrants it. Being so gentle that you never actually ask for anything is a failure of the task, not a display of good manners.
What is outside the range is misdirected heat. Losing your temper at a clerk who did not cause the problem misreads the relationship, and misreading the relationship is exactly what this criterion penalises. The distinction that makes it work is between the person and the problem: I am not annoyed with you, but I do need this sorted today, because it is the third time I have come in about it.
Two openings, same prompt. Your neighbour's renovation starts at six in the morning. A: Excuse me, I am so sorry to bother you, I know renovations are necessary and I do not want to cause any trouble at all, it is really not a big problem. That has apologised itself out of the conversation before it began. B: Morning, have you got a minute? The work is fine, honestly, but the six o'clock starts are killing us, and my daughter has exams next week. Is there any chance the noisy part could wait until eight? Warm, specific, and it asks for something.
Before you finish, make sure there is one sentence in which you ask for something specific. An answer that explains the situation beautifully and never makes a request is incomplete, and completeness is scored.
Practise it
Five judgement questions on choosing a branch, holding the register and landing a request.