Final Exam Prep

1. Oral English Test prep
Summer College English ERRC

2. Two Part Examination
Interview with
your Instructor:
 This part is relatively easy. I will ask
you questions and you must answer
them. The questions will be about
you, your course of study, your family
or your daily schedule
Conversation with
your Partner:
 This part is more complex. I will
introduce you to your conversation
partner and you will begin discussing
a topic that I have selected for you.
 *There is a list of topics at the end of
this ppt

3. Exam Organization
You will be graded on:
 Your active listening skills
 Your transition skills
 Your ability to introduce new information
 Your ability to seek clarification of misunderstood information
 Your ability to use effective communication strategies
 Your abilities in conversation repair

4. Effective English
To speak effectively in another
language we need a variety of ‘’tools’.
We will be exploring some of them and
suggesting ways in which you can practice
and improve using them in English.

5. Tools for Speaking
 Conversation is a complex activity, even in
our first language, and can cause
difficulties for either speaker or listener
 We are going to look at two aspects for
speaking.

6. Aspect #1
 As a speaker you may not remember the
exact word or expression for what you want
to say. In this case, you need to adopt one
of a set of communication strategies,
which involve finding another way of
expressing the desired meaning in a
different form.

7. Aspect #2
 When you are listening, you may not
understand - or hear - the speaker, so you
have to signal that there is a problem, so
that the speaker and you can negotiate a
way of resolving it between you. We refer
to this as conversational repair

9. Here is an extract from a Danish student’s story about an
accident, based on a set of pictures:
They are carrying a man - in ahm - erm - in a
portable bed - the one that the hospitals use to
carry people that got an accident - and they're
taking him - ah from the road - he was on the
road - ok but they have just come because - a
man - has called the police - I mean the people
in charge of looking after people that have had
accidents. (Bygate 1987: 46)

10. What was the English word he was looking for when he said
portable bed? What did he mean by the people in charge of
looking after people that have had accidents? Which of the
Communication Strategies was he using?
The first word the Danish
speaker did not manage to
remember (or did not know)
was stretcher.
In both cases he
used paraphrase
to resolve the
problem.
The second was paramedics or ambulance crew.

11. Conversational repair
Our next example involved two native
speakers of English: A, an American
woman visiting Edinburgh, and S, a
local resident. A had asked S for advice
on where she could go for a bicycle
ride.

12. Firth of Forth
The Forth Bridge is a cantilever
railway bridge over the Firth of
Forth in the east of Scotland
which connects Scotland's capital
city, Edinburgh, with the kingdom.

13. What was the misunderstanding?
 A: What about going down by the Firth of Forth?
 S: That should be fun, shouldn't it? Yes, you could. You can
ride right along the edge, you know, without having to keep
to the main road. That should be great, actually. You could
do that.
 A: Is it very rough down there, though?
 S: Well, there are no cobbles as far as I can remember.
Have you tried riding on the cobbles?
 A: No, but I was thinking rather more... rough in terms of
the people.
 S: Oh I see. Well, I don't think so. I don't know. Parts of it
are quite poor, particularly the Pilton area.
 (adapted from Brown and Yule 1983: 93)

14. What the Scottish woman did was
reformulate (rephrase) what she has said, to
make her meaning clearer. …
The Scot understood that the American
meant that the road by the Firth of
Forth is 'rough' (= uneven to cycle on);
in fact, S was asking whether the local
people were 'rough' (= unfriendly,
aggressive).

15. Helping
your
partner
out:

16. It is a common experience that when
speaking another language we are aware
of greater time pressure than
when talking our own language. By the
time we have worked out what we
wanted to say, the conversation may
have moved on, making our comment no
longer relevant.

17. 4-3-2: Speaking Under Pressure

18. Cultural Problems
Westerners are unwilling to correct
international students in informal
conversation for social reasons.
In English, if you openly correct
someone in informal conversation, you
risk being considered arrogant or too
aggressive.

19. Practical Tips for Negative Feedback
 One possibility is: ask the listeners what they thought
you said. When we have said something that is not
understood, our natural reaction is to repeat or rephrase
what we have said, so that the listener can understand us.
Asking the person to tell you what it was they thought you
said will give you a 'picture' of what your English sounds
like to other people.
 A second tactic for learning from conversation is to listen
carefully to what the other people in the conversation
say when they are trying to understand a word you have
pronounced differently from them.

20. Conversing Principle: Lines as wholes
 Opening: Hi; How are you?; How's it going?
 Taking a turn: Yes but; Well yes but; Surely...
 Holding a turn: er; um; anyway; you know; I mean
 Passing a turn: What do you think?; tag questions
 Closing: Right; well anyway; so; ok then

21. Topics
 Is torture justified when used for national security?
 Should cell phones be banned in schools?
 Is peer pressure harmful or beneficial to individuals?
 Should violent video games be banned?
 Should the death penalty be taken away completely?
 Are beauty pageants a way to objectify women?
 Should cigarettes be banned from society?
 Is it unethical to eat meat?
 Should people live together before they are married?
 Do celebrities make for bad role models?
 Are credit cards more harmful than debit cards?

22. Topics
 Should school attendance be made voluntary in high school?
 Is the boarding school system beneficial to children?
 Are curfews effective in terms of keeping teens out of trouble?
 Should libraries have a list of books that are banned?
 Will posting students’ grades on bulletin boards publicly motivate
them to perform better or is it humiliating?
 Do school uniforms help to improve the learning environment?
 How far is competition necessary in regards to the learning process?
 Should the concept of zoos should be nullified?
 Should fried foods come with a warning?
 Should sex education be banned?

23. Topics
 Should schools be required to teach arts and music?
 Is human cloning justified, and should it be allowed?
 Is pollution a real or fake problem?
 Should parents not purchase war or destruction type toys for their children?
 Should animal dissections be banned in schools?
 Should plastic bags be banned?
 Are humans too dependent on computers?
 Are security cameras an invasion of our privacy?
 Should gay marriages be legalized?
 Is co-education a good idea?
 Does money motivates people more than any other factor in the workplace?
 Is it ethical for companies to market their products to children?
 Is age an important factor in relationships?