Your Roadmap to Speaking Exam Success

Day 2: Get to know your Exam

Welcome to Day 2 of 'Your Roadmap to Speaking Exam Success'. Hopefully you're now surrounded by stickers at home reminding you of your commitment to speaking English. (See yesterday's lesson if you have no idea what I'm talking about!)

Let's go back to yesterday's lesson and get a reminder of the first of the three goals we identified:

Goal 1: Know what to expect in the exam so you can prepare efficiently and avoid any nasty surprises on the big day.

Knowing your Speaking exam inside out will increase your confidence and enable you to prepare efficiently. In today's task, you'll become totally familiar with the structure of your exam with our ten-question quiz. (Tomorrow we'll look at assessment and what the examiner will be expecting from you.)

Today's Task

Go to your exam board website (see the weblinks below) and download the handbook for your particular exam. For a summary of some of the main advanced exams, have a look at the exams section on the Splendid Speaking website.
http://www.splendid-speaking.com/exams/index.html

Using these resources, answer the following 10 questions:

Your Speaking Exam

1) How many sections are there in your Speaking exam?

2) How long is each section?

3) What's the focus of each section? Answering questions? Making a long turn? Taking part in a role-play, simulation or discussion?

4) Are you interviewed alone or with a partner?

5) What kind of questions are you likely to be asked in the 'getting-to-know-you' section?

6) What do you have to do in the long-turn?

7) Do you have time to prepare for your long turn and if so can you make notes?

8) If you're being examined with another candidate, do you have to do anything at the end of your partner's long turn?

9) If your exam has a role-play or simulation activity, is the task given to you in writing?

10) If there's a discussion stage, do you talk with a partner, the examiner or both?


If you can answer these questions about your exam it's safe to say you're very clear about what you need to do.

Day 2 Links

Links to external websites
CAE
CPE
Bec Higher
BULATS
IELTS
ILEC
ICFE



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