GESE Grade 7 Topic Form examples: ten forms that work for settlement candidates and three to avoid

What the form is

A single page you fill in before the exam and hand to the examiner at the start. At the top, the title of your topic. Underneath, the points you want to discuss, normally four to six. The examiner reads it in a few seconds and uses the points to ask questions, so the form is also your plan for the Topic phase. Download the current form from Trinity; the layout changes occasionally but the content does not.

Rules Trinity applies: the topic must be your own choice; it must not be one of the six Conversation subject areas (education, national customs, village and city life, produce and products, early memories, pollution and recycling), although a personal aspect of one is allowed; and it must not be prepared as a speech to recite.

What a good point looks like

A point is a few words, not a sentence, and each one should open a door to Grade 7 language. Compare:

• Weak: "I like cooking." Nowhere to go.
• Strong: "How my mother used to cook, and what I changed." Past habits, comparison, reasons.
• Strong: "What I'd do if I had my own café." Second conditional for a full minute.
• Strong: "Advice for someone starting a cleaning business." Advice modals, advantages and disadvantages.

Ten forms that work for settlement candidates

1. Starting my cleaning business in Manchester

1. Why I started it: the job I used to have and what was wrong with it
2. How the first clients were found (and lost)
3. Advantages and disadvantages of working for yourself
4. The mistakes I'd avoid if I started again
5. Advice for someone thinking of doing the same
6. Where the business might be in five years

2. Raising my children between two cultures

1. What my own childhood in Lahore used to be like
2. What my children do differently at home and at school
3. Language at home: what we tried and what worked
4. The rules I keep and the rules I've let go
5. If we moved back, what would change for them
6. Advice I'd give new parents in my situation

3. Learning to drive in the UK at 34

1. Why I never used to drive at home
2. The theory test and what surprised me
3. My instructor and the day I failed
4. Roundabouts: what should be done about them
5. How driving changed my work and family life
6. Would I have learned sooner if…

4. My grandmother's recipes

1. The kitchen she used to cook in and what was in it
2. Three dishes and how they're made
3. Ingredients I can and can't find here
4. Why young people in my family don't cook them any more
5. What I'd do to keep the recipes alive
6. Should recipes be written down or learned by watching?

5. Running: how I found friends in a new country

1. How I used to feel in the first year here
2. The parkrun I joined by accident
3. What the group does and who comes
4. Advantages of running over the gym (and one disadvantage)
5. Advice for someone who says they can't run
6. The marathon I might do next year

6. Working nights in a care home

1. What the job involves and how a shift is organised
2. How care for older people used to work in my country
3. The hardest part, and what helps
4. What should change in the care sector
5. If I were the manager, what I'd do differently
6. Where I'd like to be in the job in five years

7. Football in my life

1. Playing in the street as a boy: what we used to do without a pitch
2. Supporting a club at home and one here
3. Why football is so expensive in England now
4. Should children's football be more serious or less?
5. Advantages and disadvantages of letting my son play at an academy
6. The match I'd go to if I could

8. The journey that brought me here

1. Why I decided to leave, and what I'd expected
2. The first week in the UK: what I remember
3. What was easier than I thought and what was harder
4. What I'd tell myself if I could go back to that day
5. The people who helped, and how
6. Whether I'd advise my brother to do the same

9. Being a carer for my father

1. How his illness changed the family
2. A day in his care, how things are organised
3. What the NHS does well and what it should do better
4. How care used to work in my culture and what's changed
5. The advice I'd give someone who's just started caring
6. What might happen next, and what I'm not sure about

10. Sewing clothes for my community

1. How I learned: my aunt's shop in Dhaka
2. What people order here and why
3. How a sari blouse is made (the process)
4. The advantages of working from home, and the loneliness
5. Whether I should open a shop
6. If I could train young people, what I'd teach

Three forms to avoid

• "The history of Nigeria": facts to remember, no opinion, impossible to discuss when interrupted.
• "Pollution in my city": this is a Conversation subject area. "How my neighbourhood dealt with the rubbish strike" would be fine.
• "My religion": possible but risky; the examiner may be cautious about asking questions, and you may feel attacked when they do.

Checking your form

Read your six points and ask which Grade 7 item each one invites: used to, the second conditional, advice, advantages and disadvantages, possibility, the passive. If a point invites nothing, rewrite it. Then practise each point out loud for a minute with no notes, and have someone interrupt you with "Why?" and "Can you give me an example?"