INTO EUROPE The Speaking Handbook - Lancaster University

SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
The book is the second in the Into Europe series. The series in general is aimed at
both teachers and students who plan to take an examination in English, be it a
school-leaving examination, some other type of national or regional examination,
or an international examination. Hopefully that examination will be a recognised
examination which is based on international standards of quality, and which
relates to common European levels – those of the Council of Europe.
However, unlike the first book in the series (Reading and Use of English) this book
is especially aimed at teachers who are preparing their students for English
examinations, or who may themselves have to design and conduct oral
examinations in English. Assessing a learner’s ability to speak a foreign language is
a complicated and difficult task. Not only must the teacher know what tasks to set
students when testing their speaking ability – what the features of good tasks are,
what mistakes to avoid when designing oral tasks – but the teacher must also know
how to assess the students’ performance as fairly as possible. It is often said that
testing speaking is a subjective matter and in a sense this is true and inevitable. But
it does not have to be unreliable or unprofessional, and teachers can learn how to
improve their ability to design tasks as well as their ability to judge performances
more reliably. This book will help all teachers who feel the need to do this.
The authors of this book have long experience of teaching and assessing
English. Moreover, as part of a British Council Project they have for the past six
years and more been actively involved in designing speaking tasks, in piloting
those tasks, and in devising appropriate procedures for the assessment of students’
performances. They are the authors of a series of courses aimed at making teachers
more aware of what is involved in assessing speaking, and they have developed,
piloted and delivered highly successful in-service training courses to help teachers
become more professional interlocutors and assessors. In Part Three of this book,
those courses are described in more detail.
The British Council-funded Project was conducted under an agreement with
the Hungarian Ministry of Education, through its agency OKI (the National
Institute of Education). The task of the Project was to produce test specifications,
guidelines for item writers and test tasks for the reform of the Hungarian
School-leaving English Examination. The test tasks produced (Reading, Writing,
Listening, Use of English and Speaking) were tested on large samples of students
similar to those who would take school-leaving examinations in the future. The
Project also trained raters of students’ spoken performance, and developed
in-service training courses for teachers of English, to help them become aware of