INTO EUROPE The Speaking Handbook - Lancaster University

20 INTO EUROPE The Speaking Handbook
instructions or information. However, in other cases s/he may be asked to speak
from notes, or from visual aids. In interactive activities, the language user acts
alternately as speaker and then as listener with one or more partners in order to
realise a specific communicative goal.
In order to ensure the validity of any speaking examination, the speaking
activities should be carefully selected, taking into account the language needs of
the target population and the purpose of the examination. Speaking activities must
always be relevant for the candidates who take the given exam. For example, if the
speaking examination is intended for young adults who have no specific purpose
for the use of English, it is highly unlikely that any of the following activities
would be valid language use activities: giving speeches at public meetings, giving
sales presentations or negotiating a business transaction. All these language use
activities are unusual as it is only a specific group of language users (business
people) who may be required to perform them in real life. In modern speaking
exams that aim to assess candidates’ overall speaking ability in English for no
specific purpose, the following one-way information flow tasks are frequently
employed: describing experiences, events, activities, habits, plans, people;
comparing and contrasting pictures; sequencing activities, events, pictures; giving
instructions or directions. Interactive or two-way information flow activities, on
the other hand, include transactions to obtain goods and services, casual
conversation, informal or formal discussion, interview, etc.
Modern European speaking examinations should provide candidates with
appropriate opportunities to demonstrate that they can communicate in the target
language in order to convey messages and realise their communicative goals, and
in order to make themselves understood and to understand others. Naturally,
learners at different levels of proficiency will perform different speaking activities
with more or less accuracy and fluency. Learners at low levels of proficiency
cannot be expected to perform the same range of language activities as learners at
higher levels. In order to ensure that language proficiency is understood in similar
terms and achievements can be compared in the European context, the Council of
Europe has devised a common framework for teaching and assessment, which is
called ‘The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages’, or CEF
for short (Council of Europe, 2001). When assessing learners’ oral abilities,
examination tasks should be designed in such a way that they are closely related to
the oral production and interactive activities that represent specific levels of
language proficiency within the Council of Europe Framework.
The CEF scale has six major levels, which start with “beginner” or “false
beginner” and go up to “highly advanced”. The levels are labelled with letters and
numbers since what is considered “false beginner” or “highly advanced” varies
greatly in different contexts. In the Framework, the lowest level is marked as A1
and the highest level is labelled as C2. Each level should be taken to include the
levels below it on the scale. The descriptors report typical or likely behaviours of
learners at any given level by stating what the learner can do rather than what s/he
cannot do.