Here are the answers that I gave the teacher:
I tell my students to use the prompts because they help you to structure your answer. However, it is still possible to get a very high score even if you don’t address all of the points e.g. if you speak well about the topic but miss the last point or two. I don’t recommend ignoring the points completely, because there’s a danger that you’ll go off task if you do that.
If you misunderstand the question and give an unrelated answer, I’m afraid you’ll get a very low score. The reason is that candidates could memorise a perfect answer if off-topic answers were allowed.