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May 14, 2010

GUIDELINES FOR A SUCCESSFUL ORAL EXAM

My colleague Gabriel and me thought of a few strategies you may follow when taking the Speaking exam. Hope you find them useful!


-->1. Make few mistakes

2.
Make even fewer “important” mistakes, e.g. - Mens are - The people is -News are -The bigger (superlative)

3.
Mind the concordance in number between Subject and verb.

4.
When talking about the past, don’t forget to mark verbs with the right sound ending.

5.
Make sure all verbal phrases have the proper “SUBJECT”, e.g. is probable that

6.
Make a cohesive speech using signposting.

7.
Use links to make complex sentences
-
Result, - Reason, - Concession, - Conditional, etc

8.
Make sure that your speech is rounded up, e.g. signal the beginning and the end:
I will first speak about…

Initially,

Let me start by giving a few …


·
Signal the end so everybody knows the exercise is over.
And Finally,
In a nutshell, To conclude, So that’s it./ That’s about it.


9.
Breaking the ice: Lately I’ve been hearing about changes in the levels at Language Schools. Have you heard about it? (Dialogues analyzing things) Later you can start asking others.

10.
Take into account the following strategies:
·
Turn-taking for dialogues. If somebody is quiet and doesn’t speak much, invite him/her to talk: You are very quiet what do you about this? (What would you do? / Do you like the idea?

·
Make Suggestions using the right language, How about…? Why don’t we hire a ground floor bar?

·
Remember to accompany people with some expressions on your face and with little comments: Oh, I see!/ Yes. I understand/ Oh yes! I love that!/ That’s annoying/ Sure /Oh well…

·
Mind that the language in the dialogue must sound more familiar.

11.
Keep a steady rhythm.

12.
Sound assertive when talking about any topic, feel it real. Your voice will vary if you do that!

13.
Deal with ALL the points in your topic.

14.
Teachers cannot talk to you. They take notes to be able to share them and agree on a final mark for your exercise. So they need to concentrate a lot and take notes. Their notes are also about the good things in your exercise, not only about your mistakes.
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