II SEMESTR.docx

Classification of Language skills:
- Speaking (Productive) – Oral
- Writing (Productive)
- Listening (Receptive) – Arual
- Reading (Receptive)

Reading:
- skimming (identifying some general topic)
- scanning (looking for specific information)

Listening:
Real-life Listening:
Informal spoken conversation:
- brevity of chunks: people speak in short turns
- pronunciation: words are slurred/indistinct
- vocabulary: colloquial
- grammar: unclear division into sentences, grammatical structures changing in mid-utterance, unfinished clauses.
- ‘Noise’: bits of conversation which are not understood by the hearer – meaningless ‘noise’
- redundancy – the speaker says more than is needed to communicate the message (repetition, paraphrase, self-correction, filler – I mean, well)
- non-repetition – conversation is heard only once

Listening task:
Listener has expectations and purpose – The listener know in advance something about what is going to be said and has a purpose in listening.
Short response:
- ticking off items
- true/false
- detecting mistake
- close
Longer responses:
- answering questions
- note-taking
- paraphrasing and translating
- summarizing
- long gap-filling

Looking as well as listening – In most situations listening is supported by visual stimuli.

Ongoing, purposeful listener response – The listener usually responds to the conversation while it is going on. It is rare to listen to a long conversation and respond only at the end. The response is usually related to the listening purpose.

Speaker attention – The speaker usually directs his/her utterance at the listener and adapts the speech accordingly to the listener’s reaction (verbal or non-verbal)

Speaking:

Successful speaking activies:
- Use group work.
- Base the activity on easy language.
- Make a careful choice of topic and task to stimulate interest.
- Give some instruction/training is discussion skills.
- Keep students speaking the target language.

Topic-based activities:
Learners talk about a topic – the aim is the discussion process itself:
- Learners can use ideas from their own experience and knowledge.
- There is a controversy – learners are divided.

Task-based activities:
Learners have to perform a task – the discussion process is a means to an end:
- Goal-oriented – an observable result (notes, lists, rearrangement of jumbled items, a drawing) attained only by interaction (e.g. find a consensus, find out everybody’s opinion).
- Visual prompts used.

First Certificate in English (FCE, level B2) ASSESSMENT SCALES (bands 1-5)
- Grammar and Vocabulary
- Discourse Management
- Pronunciation
- Interactive Communication

COMPETING CRITERIA IN SPEAKING ASSESSMENT:
- Fluency (rate of speech, pausing, repetition)
- Accuracy (error-free sequences, gravity of errors)
- Complexity (lexical, grammatical)

Tests:
- FCE Familiar topics
- CAE Unfamiliar topics
- CPA Abstract topicss