FCE – SPEAKING

FCE SPEAKING – PART 1 : INTERVIEW

Format of FCE Speaking Part One/ What students must do in FCE Speaking Part One

The FCE speaking test is held with two examiners, only one of whom speaks, and two or (very rarely) three candidates. This first part of the exam could hardly be easier in terms of what students need to do, which is simply to listen to and answer the personal questions that the examiner asks them. The examiner almost always makes it obvious who should answer at each point, and certainly if there is any confusion about that. After three minutes (or five minutes with three candidates), the examiner will move onto Speaking Part Two.

Typical topics include friends and family, hometown, food and drink, free time and hobbies, work, studies, technology, language learning, accommodation, and future plans. There will probably also be at least one more unusual topic that has yet to appear in past exams, such as perhaps dieting or keeping in touch with people. The examiner will ask one or two questions on one topic, then switch and do the same for one or two more topics. Unlike some exams such as IELTS, the examiner doesn’t announce changes in topic.

The examiner seems to have freedom whether to ask the same questions to both candidates or different questions on the same topic to each candidate, and some examiners seem to mix the two ways of asking questions up. If the same question is asked to the second candidate, it could just be “And you?”, or the question might be repeated. When questions are repeated, the examiner will obviously make an effort to ensure that one candidate isn’t unfairly targeted by being the person who answers first more often than their partner.

The questions on one topic usually consist of one present tense question and one with a slightly trickier tense, e.g. a past tense question, a future one, or even one with more complex forms like Second Conditional and other Unreal Past situations. The most common tenses are, in approximate order:

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-       Present Simple-       “Would like” etc for desires-       Simple Past-       Going to, “plan to” etc for plans-       Will

I couldn’t find any examples of “Have you… (recently/ ever)…?” questions in the tests I looked at, perhaps because it is difficult to design questions to which all candidates can give a reasonable length answer with that tense. However, the Present Perfect tense could come up in answers if the answer to “When did you last…?” is “Actually, I’ve done it today”. The same thing is true of Present Continuous for arrangements in exchanges like “Do you have any plans to…?” “I do. In fact, I’m meeting my friend this afternoon and…”

If a student doesn’t understand a question, the examiner will repeat the question more slowly with the same wording, then reword it (in a way which is written on their script) if the student still doesn’t understand. If the student still doesn’t understand after all that, the examiner will simply move onto another question.

The examiner might cut a candidate short if the answer to the last question is very long (as timing is very tight, so this is not a bad sign for the candidate!), then they will move straight onto Speaking Two (long turn with two photos each).

What students need to do to do well in FCE Speaking Part One

There aren’t separate marks for each part of the exam, so it can help more nervous students to see this as a warm up for the rest of the exam. There are also things that they can do and that can be practised in class to help them impress the examiners from the very beginning of the test, however.

There is no need for students to interrupt each other and try to turn this part of the exam into a discussion, as is possible sometimes in Speaking Part Four (discussion questions), and in fact it would be rather unnatural to do so when the questions are in the format “And you, Hang Seul? What do you do to keep fit?” However, it is natural for students to mention when their answer is similar to or different from their partner’s with phrases like “Like/ Unlike Jonathan, I…” and “Almost the same as Yukiko, but…”

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The question I get asked most often by students is how long their answers should be, to which I also answer “be natural” and add “concentrate on communicating”. This means that “Peacehaven” wouldn’t really be really communicating if someone asks “Where are you from?” (because no one has ever heard of my hometown and so learn nothing from just its name) and “Peacehaven, which is a small seaside town which was founded in the early 1920s by Lord Sutton. Most people there are retired or work in the tourist industry,…” would be unnatural. Having said that, because there are no follow up questions if their first answer is short they should probably make some effort to avoid very short answers. It depends on both the question and students’ personal information, but one or two fairly short sentences is usually about the right length.

Students sometimes also wonder about how formal they should be in the exam, to which the answer is normal conversational English, i.e. avoiding forms which are only usually written (e.g. “dislike” and “with regards to”) but not drifting into slang, and certainly not swearing or blaspheming.

Students sometimes also ask me if they can use their imaginations in this part of the exam. As the examiner is not going to send a private detective around to their house to check the truth of what they said (or even look at their Facebook page), they can of course lie. However, I recommend against it as it goes against the whole point of communicating in the exam. It is also likely to lead to less complex language than an honest answer, e.g. the lie “The day before yesterday” being much more basic in language terms than the true answer “Actually, I can’t remember the last time. It might have been back in my elementary school days”.

“Be natural” and “Communicate” also work for what students should do if they don’t understand the question, in this case leading to always saying if they don’t understand and making such statements or questions as specific as possible, e.g. “You said something like ‘jowging’. What does that mean?” rather than just “Pardon?” As listening comprehension is tested in the actual Listening paper rather than in the speaking, I always tell students that such situations are actually a good opportunity to show the examiners that they can really communicate with a good range of language that is really adapted to the communicative situation that they are in. A good specific question can also stop the examiner just repeating the question with the same wording.

There is also a fair chance that one or more questions are ambiguous, e.g. for many students the very common question “Where are you from?” could

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refer to where they were born or where they grew up. The two options in that case are to check which the examiner means (although they usually just say “Either one is fine”) or to communicate the ambiguity in your answer with phrases like “If you mean…” and “There are two possible answers to that for me,…”.

There is also a small chance that the questions might not match the situation of one of the candidates. The two options are similar to that suggested for ambiguous questions above, in this case being stating the problem (e.g. “Sorry, I can’t answer that question because…”) or answering a closely related question (e.g. “I never actually went to school, but my parents taught me…”)

Students can often just follow the tense of the question in their answer, although there might be times when their own personal information doesn’t match that tense in exchanges like “What are you going to do tonight?” “I have no idea. I’ll probably just go home and watch television.” Tenses which they are most likely to use are given above, with Present Simple by far the most common. As well as the difference between that tense and Present Continuous, students really need to understand the differences between language for future arrangements, plans, predictions and desires.

Related language they are likely to need includes time expressions (“once every two weeks”, “the week before last”, “in the last couple of days”, etc).

There isn’t much functional language in this part of the exam except for comparing with the previous speaker and checking/ confirming what questions mean, but students will need to talk about likes and dislikes, and use a range of positive and negative language more generally.

As the topics are fairly fixed, students can gain a lot from looking up and learning vocabulary to describe their own accommodation, education, etc.

Students can sometimes benefit from being told to look at the person speaking, especially their partner when they are answering the questions. This is likely to make them listen to their partner more carefully (useful if they want to mention similarities in their own answers) and can also relax them as it makes the atmosphere more like a conversation and less like an exam.

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Classroom practice of FCE Speaking Part One

This part of the exam is quite similar to simple GTKY (getting to know you) and needs analysis discussion questions like those often used in first classes – and indeed when we meet people for the first time outside class too. I like to start courses with questions used in this quite chatty way so that I can tell students “If you can just relax and answer as naturally as that, you’ll pass no problem!” However, once this point is made and their confidence is duly boosted, perhaps the most important thing when practising this part of the exam is to make it as realistic as possible. I therefore do almost all practice of personal questions in threes or fours with one person as the examiner, usually also doing several topics each time in a similar way to the exam as well. If I want to do more intensive practice of one likely topic in the exam, e.g. answering personal questions about food, we move on from that to more realistic practice with some questions about food again and then some other topics. It is also worth keeping the timing and number of topics realistic, and I also tell the student with the examiner role to mix up how they ask the questions (some to both students in turn, some to only one student).

Teachers can write these kinds of questions for almost any kind of topic that comes up in class, but make sure you also make the questions authentic in terms of anyone being able to give a medium length answer without the need for a follow up question. One way of making them authentic is to use a list of question stems collected from past papers, such as these I found in FCE 4 (CUP):

“Are/ Do any of your friends…?”

“Do you have any… plans for the future?”

“Do you like to…?”

“Do you plan to…?”

“Do you prefer to… or…?”

“Do you spend a lot of time…?”

“Do you think… in the future?”

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“Do you use… to…?”

“Do you usually… (on holiday)?”

“Do you… every day?”

“Do you… the same… as your parents?”

“How do you prefer to…?”

“Is there a… that you would really like to…?”

“Is there anything you would really like to… in the future?”

“Tell us about the last time you…”/ “Tell us about the last… you…”

“What do you like (most) about…?”

“What is your favourite…?”

“What sort of… do you prefer…?”

“What’s the most interesting thing…?”

“Would you prefer to… or…?”

Students can also use these question stems to make their own questions to ask each other.

The next most useful thing to do is get your class watching or listening to other candidates answering the questions, to critique their answers and pick up useful tips and phrases. Things good and bad that they can watch out for include:

-       Simple or no language to show not understanding the question-       Good language to show exactly what is not understood-       Answers which don’t match the questions-       Answers which are unnaturally long or short-       Interrupting

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-       Mentioning what the other candidate has said, or missing obvious chances to do so-       Silence-       Dealing with questions which are ambiguous-       Dealing with difficult questions, e.g. pausing for thought-       Dealing with questions which don’t (quite) match the situation of the candidate-       Nice high level language connected to the topics-       Flat intonation-       Dealing with wanting to say something that they don’t know or can’t remember the English name forIt’s not really possible to get students using the actual scoring criteria to judge candidates in this part of the exam, as discourse management and interactive communication hardly come up at all. You could create a similar list of criteria for students to judge from including things above like “really answering the question” and “suitable length”, but this might be off-putting for students if you have already told them to think of this part of the exam as a warm up. In a similar way, it’s probably not worth getting students listening out for errors, as this will probably make them too sensitive about this comparatively unimportant part of their language (as many of them are already).

All the above is probably less heavy than it sounds, given the fact that students get to talk about themselves – something we all love doing! However, there are also games that you can play which are closely related to this part of the exam. My favourites involve throwing dice to decide the topic and/ or time of the questions which will be asked, for example having to ask a question about their hobbies in the distance past if they throw two ones. A one of way of dividing up the times is:

1 = distant past

2 = past

3 = present and past

4 = right now

5 = present habits

6 = future

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You can also exchange some of them for “past habits”, “recent past”, “near future”, “distant future” etc, or you could go with functions of tenses like “plans” and “experiences”.

Something well worth doing after that game, and for this part of the exam more generally, is a tense review. As mentioned above, students most need Present Simple for routines and a range of future forms, plus time expressions. Matching up sentence halves then brainstorming questions to get those responses is a good way of doing all these things.

Another way of approaching grammar is to get them to correct typical mistakes in student responses. To save them concentrating on grammar too much, I tend to mix a few sentences with grammar mistakes up with many more examples with more important problems like false friends, Franglais/ Janglish etc forms, and minimal pairs. You can also use these sentences to introduce useful language they might need like “third floor apartment”, “sitcom” and “I’m a big fan of…”

Another way of introducing lots of useful vocabulary for this part of the exam is something I call a “List Dictation”. The teacher reads out a list of tricky but useful vocabulary for the exam until one of the students works out that the thing that list has in common is that they are all “related to media”, “positive words”, etc. The same thing continues with other lists, then students label the lists on a worksheet and test each other in pairs or small groups.

You can also do more intensive practice of the limited amount of functional language that could come up in this part of the exam. For the most common of those functions, you could force them to always confirm the meanings of the questions before they answer them (probably after giving them a list of questions which could be considered ambiguous like “Where are you from?” and “Do you have any short term plans?”). You can also do the same thing for other functions by getting them to always compare with their partner’s response to the same question with “In a similar way to…” etc and forcing them to always (slightly) contradict the question with “Actually,…” etc. You’ll need to carefully select the questions in all cases, and with “Actually,…” etc you might need to let them use their imaginations.

The intensive practice of “Like…” etc can be one way of tying Speaking Part One in with other parts of the exam by getting students to report back to class similarities and differences between them, perhaps with the rest of

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the class commenting on their own similarities and differences related to that thing to give them a reason to listen. You can then elicit language for comparing and contrasting before moving onto comparing and contrasting pictures in FCE Speaking Part Two.

Another obvious tie in is with Speaking Part Four, e.g. moving from personal questions on media to more discussion-style questions on the same topic. You can also design Use of English-style exercises for useful language for this part of the exam, e.g. multiple choice questions with the distracters being false friends etc or open cloze for the language of likes and dislikes. Is it also possible to write a task that looks like FCE Writing Part One (letter or email) for further practice of talking about themselves by making it a penfriend letter, although this makes it rather unrealistic practice of that part of the exam as the real tasks always demand much more functional language (inviting, politely turning down invitations, recommending, etc).

Read more at http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/how-to-teach-cambridge-first-certificate-fce-speaking-part-one.html#cSXgYrm2XgO3g2fL.99

FCE SPEAKING – PART 2 : INDIVIDUAL LONG TURN

What students need to do to do well in FCE Speaking Part Two

The first thing to notice about the questions is that the word “describe” is not used at all. Therefore in the first (and main) part of the speaking task, the candidate should concentrate on comparing the two pictures as they have been told to. This can, and probably should, include talking about both similarities and differences, and I recommend that every sentence or pair of sentences that they come up with should compare or contrast the two photos. It is also theoretically possible to describe one picture for twenty seconds or so, then switch to the other and compare and contrast it with the first one. However, timing is difficult when you do it this way and it’s almost impossible to make sure that the things you say about the first picture are things that turn out to be relevant when comparing the second picture with it. In my experience, students trying to do this are also much more likely to run out time before even getting onto the second question.

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These “compare not describe” instructions mean that phrases sometimes taught in FCE books like “in the top right corner” and “in the background” are of very little use – and sometimes actually dangerous as they usually lead to descriptions which are impossible to compare with the other picture. Instead, what students most need is language to compare and contrast. In approximate order of how useful it is likely to be in this part of the exam, language that should be taught and practised includes:

1.Both… and…/ … and… both2.…, whereas…3.…, but…4.…. In contrast,…5.Unlike…,….6.…, and so is/ does…7.…, and… is/ does too.8.…, and… is/ does as well. 9.A/ One difference/ similarity (which

stands out) is…10. One thing that… and… have in

common is…11. One of the (few) similarities/

differences between… and… is…12. Another/ An additional difference/

similarity (which is instantly apparent) is…

13. The most obvious/ important/ apparent similarity/ difference (for me) between… and… is…

14. A striking similarity/ difference is…15. … and… are (quite/ very/ really/ really

quite) similar/ different, for example…16. … and…. are (quite/ very/ really/

really quite) similar/ different in terms of…

17. … is different/ similar, in that…18. …, as is/ does….

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19. … and… have a lot in common, for example…

20. … and… don’t have much in common, but…

21. There are more similarities than differences between… and… For instance,…

22. The main similarity/ difference between… and… is…

23. The only difference/ similarity between… that I can see is…

24. In comparison to…,…25. Compared to…,…26. A/ One contrast between… and… is

that…27. … is (slightly/ a bit/ somewhat/ quite

a lot/ a great deal/ substantially/ a lot/ much/ far/ much much/ far far) … er/ more… than…

28. … is not (nearly/ quite) as… as…29. …. In a similar way,…30. Contrasting… and…,…31. The most apparent difference/

similarity between… and… is…32. …and that is (more or less) the same

for…33. … and… share…34. A more subtle difference is…35. … differs from… in that…36. …. Likewise,…37. Neither… nor…38. One resemblance between… and… is

that…

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Note that actual comparatives as taught in almost every EFL textbook like “The guy in the top photo looks much more relaxed than the girl in the bottom one” are quite difficult to use in FCE Speaking Part Two, and students are unlikely to be able to come up with more than one or two such statements. They would therefore be better off concentrating on the language for talking about similarities and differences from higher up in the list above. Note also that superlatives are wrong with just two things to talk about.

!!! Students are unlikely to be able to use “on the other hand” (because they are not comparing in order to choose one) and “on the contrary” is completely wrong in this task. “However”, “Despite”, “In spite of”, “Even though”, “Though” and “Although” are likely to be useless for similar reasons. “Nevertheless” and “Nonetheless” can only be used when summarising how similar or different they are in sentences like “Nonetheless, they aren’t really that similar” – something that isn’t really necessary unless they run out of things to say.

Students will need to make sure they use a range of language, preferably not repeating any comparing and contrasting phrases at all. For that reason, I generally suggest that they leave simple phrases like “but” until later in the minute of speaking, at which point they will probably be running out of ideas. Although “and” is used by native speakers to contrast things in normal speech, I recommend students avoid it because of how low level and sometimes confusing its use can be.

As seen in one of the example phrases above, another kind of language that candidates are likely to need is the language of speculation. For example, “This man is happier than this woman” is simply wrong, because it is impossible to know just from photos. Instead, they will need to use language like this (in approximate order of how useful it is likely to be in this part of the test):

1.…seems…2.…looks…3.…is obviously…4.…probably…5.I guess/ I imagine…6.…might/ may/ maybe/ perhaps…7.…clearly…

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8.I’m not sure exactly (what this is) but…9.…appears…10. …looks like…11. I reckon…12. I suppose…13. I’m fairly sure…14. I get the impression that…15. …is almost certainly…16. My initial impression is…17. …must…18. …could (possibly)…19. I’m pretty confident that…20. I expect…21. I think I’m justified in saying that…

The related phrases “some kind of…”/ “some sort of…” are also very useful.

Again, you might notice how the related grammar point that comes up in every textbook is far less useful than simpler phrases. In this case, this means modals of possibility/ probability like “must be” being much less useful than adverbs like “probably”. Students are also very unlikely to need negative expressions, as it isn’t really natural to say things like “He can’t be a serial killer” in this task!

The third major language point that comes up in this part of the exam is structuring their speaking with phrases like “The first thing that jumps out at you”, “One more similarity”, “Turning to the differences” and “As for the second question,…” This can be emphasised too much, as the Cambridge description of “Discourse management” in FCE focuses much more on not pausing too much and putting ideas together logically. It can also seem a bit forced when students make too much of an effort to use such phrases. I therefore probably wouldn’t teach it or do practice activities specifically for this point, but it’s something well worth giving feedback on after students’ practice this task. As I’ve done above, you can also include this kind of language in the speculating and comparing/ contrasting phrases that you present.

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Other discourse management phrases that could be useful include, in approximate order of how much so:

1.Right/ Well/ So2.The most obvious similarity/ difference

is…3.That’s all I can think of to say.4.I guess I should talk about the second

question now.

If they finish too quickly, they might also want to say “Going back to comparing,…”

Another kind of functional language they might need is confirming/ check phrases when they don’t understand the second question written on the card or the question after their partner speaks (the other “I’d like you to compare…” question always being the same). This is far more important in other parts of the test, especially Speaking Part Four, but if you haven’t presented it before it is worth getting in early.

They might also be able to comment on what their partner said with phrases like “Like Maria Jesus, I think this guy seems a bit bored, and I’d feel the same way so…” This again is more likely to come up in other parts of the exam but might be worth a mention here.

If students run out of ideas, one possible tip is for them to contrast things that they can say with a fair amount of certainty about one picture with things they can’t be sure about the other with sentences like “I’m pretty sure the man in the top picture is satisfied with his meal, but I have no idea the couple in other photo feel”.

Although students only really need one tense and should in fact be consistent once they have chosen one, there is a choice of talking about things happening in the photo with Present Continuous (“It looks like he is enjoying his drink”) or with past tenses because of course the photo was taken in the past. Especially with extended speaking, the former seems more natural to me – and also brings in a tense that students are unlikely to need much in the rest of the exam. The examiner also uses the Present Continuous to ask the shorter question.  

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Students who aren’t speaking should look at the person who is and listen to what is being said just in case they can mention something from it when they answer the short question for the person speaking (although this actually being possible is quite rare in Speaking Part Two).

I probably wouldn’t present “the foreground” etc for the “compare, don’t describe” reason given above and anyway it is okay to point at “This picture” etc, but it probably is worth teaching “The top photo”, “The one underneath”, “This part of the picture”, etc. Unfortunately, once they’ve said “photo”, “photograph” and “picture” they will have to repeat or use simpler referencing expressions like “this one here” as other expressions like “pic”, “picky”, “snap” and “the former/ latter” don’t sound very natural here. Because of the “compare, don’t describe” advice, students also don’t really need subject-specific vocabulary.

Classroom practice of FCE Speaking Part Two

As with all kinds of exam practice in class, the most important thing is to make it as realistic as possible. The most important thing is to get students used to answering both questions in one minute (or at least starting on the second question in that time), and I never do this task without timing and interrupting them at just over a minute. I also insist on comparing and contrasting (rather than describing) from day one, and it is well worth the extra expense to always use colour photos to get them used to this aspect of the exam. You can easily find photos to match almost any topic in your class or textbook (e.g. the reading text which you cover before or after Speaking Part Two practice), but don’t emphasise the topic specific language that could come up too much.

When it comes to presenting and practising the language above, one thing students could do is rank one or more of the lists of useful language above (comparing and contrasting, speculating, etc) by how likely they are to be able to use it while doing this task, then compare with your suggested order. With a different selection, students can also rank them by how sure the person speaking is or how similar or different the two things being compared are.

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These ranking tasks are easier to do and more fun if the phrases are given on pieces of paper to put into columns on the table. Students can then deal out those pieces of paper and try to use them during a speaking task, feeding back on which ones actually turned out to be easiest to use.

With classes who would benefit most from being pushed to use more and higher level language, you could give them points for using phrases that no one had used so far, including even more points for more obscure speculating and comparing phrases.

The game above works best if students take turns making statements about the same pair of photos, something that is also worthwhile practice more generally despite it not being extended speaking, as it really helps students stick to comparing and contrasting. Students can take turns trying to find more and more comparisons between the two photos, or they can set challenges for each other by making a statement about one photo including an aspect that their partner must mention when then talking about the other one.

It is also possible and useful to sometimes set it up as a pairwork communication task, with each person having one of the two photos and getting them to find similarities and differences without showing them to each other. This makes it easier for students to combine both speculating and comparing, with the initial statements that they make needing the former and then working together to achieve the latter. You can also let them speculate about their one photo in pairs before changing groups to do the blind comparisons thing with someone else.

The extended nature of speaking in this part of the test makes it the most suitable for classroom analysis of recordings or transcripts of candidates’ answers. They can judge:

-       Staying on topic

-       Range of language (especially not repeating)

-       Spending the right amount of time on the two parts of the task

-       Structuring the answer

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Especially if you edit it to make it worse, they can also try to improve on the performance shown in a (real or imaginary) transcript. For example, you could take out all comparison, speculating and/ or discourse management language and get them to put it back in. You could also have them correcting actual grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation mistakes such as minimal pairs and false friends. However, students often have too much of an emphasis on avoiding mistakes already, and those who lack fluency and/ or confidence wouldn’t benefit from this at all.

An alternative is to get students to replace expressions in the text with something at least as good, maybe underlining the ones that you want them to look at.

You can link from transcripts to other parts of the exam by designing a Use of English task around one, with Part One (multiple choice open cloze) and Part Two (open cloze) being the easiest. Something similar can also be done with individual useful phrases, e.g. sentence transformations with speculating language, but you’ll need to make sure you don’t go too far away from phrases that are actually useful in this part of the exam in order to ensure that students don’t try to say “It must have been…” in the speaking.

You can also link to other tasks through choice of the topic of the photos. This is possible for almost any part of the exam, e.g. a Use of English text on the same topic, but is probably best with Speaking Part Three as they can use almost exactly the same comparing and speculating language in that task too. However, you might want to point out that Speaking Part Two and Speaking Part Three never have the same topic in a real exam, with Part Three being rather linked to Part Four.

FCE SPEAKING – PART 3 : TWO-WAY COLLABORATIVE TASK

Format of FCE Speaking Part Three/ What students need to do in FCE Speaking Three

Students are given a group of (usually between five and eight) colour pictures and are asked to “First talk to each other about…” something for each of them and “Then decide…” which one or two they would choose for some particular purpose. For example, they could be given six pictures of adventure sports and be asked to “First talk to each other about what kinds

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of people the activities might be most suitable for” and “Then decide which one you would choose for a company team building activity for a group of middle-aged office workers”.

Since the 2008 update of FCE, the instructions are also written at the top of the page of pictures, although students should still listen carefully, especially to extra the background information. After being given the instructions and picture, students are given three minutes to work on both tasks, or slightly longer if there are three candidates. While they are speaking, the examiner will take no part and will usually even look away from them to let them get on with it together.

The students will be interrupted at exactly the time limit and are usually asked to briefly report back to the examiner on what they decided in the second part of their discussion.

The whole examiner script will be something like:

“Now, I’d like you to talk about something together for about three minutes.

(four minutes for groups of three)

I’d like you to imagine that… Here are some… which…

First, I’d like you to talk to each other about… these… Then decide which (two)… All right?”

If the examiner doesn’t give a number, it means the students only need to choose one.

Although the two parts of the task are related, the thing they have to decide and the thing they have to discuss about each item isn’t exactly the same so it isn’t really possible to do both parts of the task concurrently.

What students need to do to do well in FCE Speaking Part Three

Students will need to:

- Get started on the first part of the discussion task quickly

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- Discuss as many of the pictures as they can before moving onto the second part of the task, meaning they have to discuss each picture but only briefly before they move onto the next one

- Leave at least one minute for the second part of the task, even if that means abandoning the first part unfinished

- Work their way towards agreement in the second part of the task

- Briefly report back on what they decided, or the point their discussion was at when they were interrupted

It would also help get a good mark for them to:

- Show a range of strong and weak opinions, including agreement and disagreement

- Show good turn taking skills, e.g. speaking approximately 50% each, interrupting politely and persuading reluctant partners to speak

Note that they don’t have to reach agreement, but they do have to show their ability to negotiate and compromise in an attempt to find something that they can both agree on.

Other functional language students will need includes:

- Controlling the conversation, e.g. suggesting things to talk about and moving the conversation on, for example when agreement is quickly reached or if it’s obvious no agreement is possible on something

- Speculating, e.g. on what a picture might represent or what something might be suitable for

- Talking around vocabulary they don’t know, with expressions like “This picture looks like some kind of picnic”

Comparing and contrasting language might also be useful for moving between items in the first part of the task (“This one, however,…”, “In the same way, this one…”, etc) and trying to reach agreement in the second part of the task (“But don’t you think this one is more suitable?” etc), and

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as this is really important for the rest of the exam it is well worth at least some specific practice of this point here.

The examiner might also be impressed by students being able to describe pictures, as “The top left picture” and “The one under that”, but it’s perfectly okay for students to just point at pictures and say “This picture/ activity/ sport/ one/ idea”.

There is little point trying to practise suitable vocabulary for this part of the exam, as there is no way of guessing what topics could come up and it is easy for students to work around any unknown words – a skill that is worth some practice.

Classroom practice of FCE Speaking Part Three

The first thing to make sure is that all classroom practice of this part is like the exam, meaning with:

- Written and spoken instructions similar to that of the exam

- Two parts to the task (discussing something about each picture, then deciding something), with the two parts being quite distinct from each other

- The right number of items to discuss

- Usually pairs but sometimes groups of three

- Pictures rather than written lists of things to talk about

- A strict time limit, and always being asked to report back to class on what they have decided (or where their discussion got up to)

Other tasks like balloon debates and pyramid ranking tasks can bring up similar negotiating and giving opinions language to the exam tasks, but the timing and responding to pictures parts of the exam are at least as challenging as the actual negotiating and should be practised as much as possible. If you do decide to do other speaking activities to provide more intensive practice of one aspect of the functional language they need, it is always worth doing a timed version of the same task or an exam task straight before or after in order to practise using that language under more realistic conditions.

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Although it’s difficult to find suitable pictures, there are also things which you’d want to discuss in class anyway which can be done in an exam format, including what their priorities are (needs analysis), which self-study activities are most suitable for them outside class, and things they should do on the morning of the exam. Students can also discuss the difficulties of a set of FCE Writing Part Two tasks and choose the easiest in the same way. Again, these tasks should be done also under real exam conditions, perhaps before or after more leisurely discussion of the points.

With students who tend to talk too much or too little in this task, more intensive practice includes:

- Students trying to speak more than their partner

- Students trying to make their partner speak more than them

- Getting one student to monitor each group for polite turn taking language and equal speaking time

Other more intensive practice of the language and skills mentioned above includes:

- Somebody monitoring for things other than turn taking such as if they used a range of different kinds of giving opinions and how much silence there was

- The teacher providing prompts for when they should move onto the second part of the task, or even when they should move onto different pictures in the first part of the task, e.g. shouting out or flashing up “Picture 2!” or “Starting deciding!”

- A third student controlling the conversation with useful phrases for the exam like “And how about the second best?”

- Students being asked to start with totally opposite opinions and work their way towards agreement, e.g. Students A and B being told “Choose the two items at the far left”/ “Choose the items on the far right” or “Choose meats”/ “Choose vegetables”.

- Students racing through the first part of the exam as quickly as possible while still briefly discussing each picture

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- Giving students phrases, key words or just names of functions (“interrupting politely” etc) that they should use during a Speaking Part Three task discussion, perhaps for points

You could also ask quite strong groups to try the task without pointing to bring in more complex language, but for most students this isn’t really a priority.

To also give more realistic exam practice, I would do each of those kinds of intensive practice with real exam tasks but without realistic timing, then change groups and get them to do the same task under real exam conditions.

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