Speaking Exam Preparation

What is Speaking Exam Preparation all about?

Exams are part of life and nowadays we can’t escape them. But how frustrating when an exam stands between you and your entrance to university or is the key to your immigration to a new job and life in an English speaking country. Typically, it’s easier to do written exams. Why? Because it all happens in your head and you have loads of experience doing these! Speaking exams are not easy and usually pull your marks down. So, if it’s important to reach a certain score, you probably need to work on your speaking performance.

Firstly, you can’t cram for a speaking exam. It doesn’t matter if you feel confident that you can speak English. The exam situation is different and performance anxiety reduces your ability. If you don’t spend time preparing for your exam, you can’t expect a good performance!

Secondly, the exam will be over in between 10 and 25 minutes, depending on the test. So, you have a little opportunity to have a great impact on your future. It’s worth spending the time every day leaning up to the exam so that you know you did your best, not matter what the outcome.

Exam Preparation depends on the exam you are about to do. However, it is based on these activities. Depending on your abilities, it might take more or less time to cover the different aspects:

• The format of the exams.
• Fluency – how to improve your coherence and fluency while speaking.
• Lexical ability – ensuring you have adequate knowledge of, examples and vocabulary to talk about hot exam topics.
• Grammar – while spoken English is very different from written English, you need to be aware of grammatical errors you make.
• Discourse management – can you structure your verbal response and this includes speaking with a group or partner.
• Brilliant 30 sec – 2min answers – the best way to give a good answer.
• Analysis and understanding of exam criteria.
• Self assessment and how to further improve your spoken English.