developing awareness of the assessment of speaking · this activity is particularly suitable for...

Developing awareness of the assessment of speaking 5Y09

Handout: Overall Speaking Assessment Scales

DEVELOPING AWARENESS OF THE ASSESSMENT OF SPEAKING 3

Handout: Glossary of terms


(Glossary of terms continued)


Handout: Which level?

Work together in pairs or groups to decide which descriptors below correspond to

which levels of the Overall Speaking Assessment Scales (A2–C2).

A) Grammatical resource (Grammar and vocabulary) 1. Shows a good degree of control of simple grammatical forms, and attempts

some complex grammatical forms.

2. Maintains control of a wide range of grammatical forms.

B) Lexical resource (Grammar and vocabulary) 3. Uses a range of appropriate vocabulary to give and exchange views on

familiar and unfamiliar topics.

4. Uses appropriate vocabulary to give and exchange views on a range of

familiar topics.

C) Discourse management (Extent) 5. Produces responses which are extended beyond short phrases, despite

hesitation.

6. Produces extended stretches of language with ease and with very little

hesitation.

D) Pronunciation 7. Is mostly intelligible, despite limited control of phonological features.

8. Is mostly intelligible, and has some control of phonological features at both

utterance and word level.

E) Interactive communication 9. Maintains and develops the interaction and negotiates towards an outcome.

10. Requires prompting and support.


Handout: Assessing speaking performance at A2 (Grammar and vocabulary)


Handout: Assessing speaking performance at A2 (Grammar and vocabulary: Gustavo)


Handout: Assessing speaking performance at B1 (Interactive communication)


Handout: Assessing speaking performance at B2 (Pronunciation)


Handout: Assessing speaking performance at C1 (Lexical resource)


Handout: Assessing speaking performance at C2 (Discourse management)


Handout: Assessing speaking performance at C2 (Discourse management: Annick)


Handout: Classroom activities

All the activities, with adaptation for the appropriate CEFR level(s) you are teaching,

will at the same time provide fun speaking practice and give you the chance to

assess areas of strength and weakness in a student’s spoken production and

interaction. They can also actively involve students in assessing their own speaking

skills and providing peer support.

Classroom activity: Concise responses Timing 20 minutes Materials set of topics relevant to the level for each team Rationale This activity is particularly suitable for lower levels, and relates to the

‘interview’ part of the Cambridge English speaking tests, where candidates are answering personal questions. The assessment focus is on Interactive communication (responding appropriately).

Procedure 1. Explain to your class that sometimes we need to give only brief responses to

questions about personal information, likes and dislikes, etc. Although anything too wordy is not appropriate, we can often make a good impression by adding a little extra.

2. Firstly, ask the students to work in pairs, and give them an everyday, personal topic relevant to the level you are teaching, e.g. family, work, leisure (you can refer to the Cambridge English handbooks at different levels for lists of topics). Students should write down questions on slips of paper which can be answered in one or two words, (but not yes/no). For example, ‘What’s your favourite time of the day?’ ‘Evening’. Monitor and help students with question formation, if necessary.

3. When you have plenty of questions prepared, collect in the slips of paper and divide the class into two teams. Give a question to one team; they should then ask someone in the other team the question. If they answer with only one or two words, they win 1 point, but if they add some extra information they win 2 points for their team. Do an example first, e.g. for the question ‘What’s your favourite time of the day?’, the answer ‘Evening’ would win 1 point but the answer, ‘Evening, because I have free time and can watch TV’ would win 2 points.

4. Keep a tally of the scores on the board. N.B. At higher levels (B2 upwards), you can withhold the bonus point if the extra

information becomes too long.


Classroom activity: Speaking for a minute Timing 10 minutes

Materials pictures for students to describe and/or compare

Rationale This activity is suitable for Levels B1 and above, and relates to the

‘extended long turn’ part of the Cambridge English speaking tests,

where candidates speak on their own for up to a minute. The

assessment focus is on Discourse management (producing extended

stretches of language without too much hesitation).

Procedure 1. Ask students to bring in pictures (photographs or magazine pictures) on the topic

you are doing for the following lesson. Collect in the pictures and divide them into

two piles: pictures which could go together to compare or others which work best

on their own. You could have single pictures, pairs of pictures or groups of three

pictures on a common theme.

2. Give out the picture(s) to pairs of students and ask them to decide how they

would break down the 1 minute into four 10–15-second blocks, and what they

would say in each section. Gauging a minute accurately is tricky at any level, but

breaking it down into smaller chunks is a good strategy. Demonstrate with two

pictures and an instruction, such as ‘Compare the two pictures and say what you

think the people are enjoying most.’

• Both pictures show people ... (talk about what they have in common)

• In the first picture, people are sitting by a river and ... (describe the first

picture in more detail)

• In the second picture, there is one person standing in a room ... (describe the

second one in more detail)

• I think the people in the first picture are enjoying ... (focus on answering the

question).

3. Students won’t get four x 15 seconds spot on first time round but with plenty of

practice will fill the time allowed and be able, if necessary, to add more detail to

one of the divisions of the long turn.

4. After a few minutes of preparation (while you monitor and help/correct if

necessary), allow one person in the pair to practise speaking for a minute, while

you time them, or ask students to time each other with their mobile phones. Then

repeat the activity with different pictures and the other person speaking for a

minute.


Extension Students could record themselves speaking for a minute in this way. They could then

email the audio clip to you for correction and comments on their discourse

management.

At higher levels, students could be given some discourse markers to include in their

1-minute turn.

Other ideas for talking for a minute could include the following:

• Use pictures or prompts to construct a story. This could be an individual long turn

(prepared or unprepared) or part of a game: one student starts the story and talks

for a minute, then they pass it on to the next student, etc.

• Use pictures from previous units in a coursebook for students to summarise in a

minute.

• Give a list of topics to students who choose one to talk about for a minute, or play

a ‘talk for a minute’ board game where they talk for 1 minute about the topic they

land on.

• Students talk about their own experiences – family events, holidays, celebrations,

films, books, television programmes they’ve seen or read about.


Classroom activity: Over to you! Timing 10 minutes

Materials none

Rationale This activity makes collaborative tasks fun and rewards the

development of spoken interaction skills and strategies. It is an

adaptation of the popular radio game Just a Minute, but the students

speak in pairs. It is suitable for all levels, (but particularly B2 and

above) and relates to the collaborative part of the Cambridge English

speaking tests, where candidates speak together to discuss and

decide about something. The assessment focus is on Interactive

communication (maintaining and developing the interaction and

negotiating towards an outcome).

Procedure 1. Choose one pair of students to speak together, while the rest of the group listen,

on a simple collaborative task such as: ‘Discuss the best day of the week for a

celebration and what kinds of things you could do to celebrate’ or ‘Discuss which

continent would be the most interesting to spend a year in and say what you

could do there.’

2. The rules are that a pair must keep the conversation going for as long as possible

without undue hesitation, repetition or going off the topic and they get a point

each time they take turns in the discussion. You are the judge. The other

students can challenge if they think a pair hesitates, repeats words and phrases

or deviates (again, you are the referee – encourage continuation of the

discussion but award a point if a challenge is obviously correct).

3. After the students have spoken for about 3 minutes, stop the discussion and give

them a further minute for a follow-up decision-making task. For example, for the

tasks above, the decision-making task could be, ‘Now decide which day of the

week would be best and what you will do to celebrate’ or ‘Now decide which

continent you will go to together and what you will do there for a year’.

4. When they have finished, other pairs of students can take their place and the

game continues in the same way. At the end, the pair of students with the most

points is the winner.

5. You could conduct feedback by focusing on the good language used for

interacting, developing a topic and negotiating towards an outcome.


Extension You could do a similar activity with discussion tasks about topics that come up in

coursebooks, or tasks involving planning/ranking/exchanging ideas, e.g. improving

school facilities, where to go on holiday and why, designing a new reality television

programme, making improvements to an area, how to help the environment.


Notes


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