There are 8 tasks test-takers will have to master to pass the speaking section of the CELPIP exam. A practice task that is unscored is used to see if the test-takers microphone and headset are working properly. Of the 8 marked tasks, only Giving Advice and Expressing an Opinion allow for 90-second responses, with all the other tasks allowing 60 seconds for a spoken response. This is a great deal of time to give proper responses on this exam. Usually, you have 30 seconds of preparation time but Comparing and Persuading and Dealing with a Difficult Situation allow 60 seconds to prepare. Remember, what markers value most are authentic responses or individual responses that are not memorized.

This text expresses an organized approach and method to answer each of the 8 tasks. Finally, the techniques introduced will help guide test-takers to make their responses more authentic.

The Question Types (you will be asked to respond to 1 question for each task)

Task	Name of task (and order of questions)	Time to Prepare	Recorded Response Time
0	Practice Task (equipment check)	30	60
1	Giving Advice	30	90
2	Talking about a Personal Experience	30	60
3	Describing a Scene (with Image)	30	60
4	Making Predictions (with Image)	30	60
5 a	Compare (2 images – choose 1 image)	60	Not recorded (take notes)
5 b	Persuade (chosen image + another)	60	60
6	Dealing with a Difficult Situation	60	60
7	Expressing an Opinion	30	90
8	Describing an Unusual Situation	30	60

 

Test-takers will only have to answer 1 question for each task, and the questions will follow the same order as above (1 – 8). Note, the questions range from somewhat informal tasks (1-4) followed by more Formal tasks (5- 8).

To answer more accurately to the different tasks, it might be helpful to review some of the differences between Informal and Formal language use when speaking.

Informal	Formal
Use of Phrasal verbs:   –          look at, check out –          cut back on –          put off Idioms: a dime a dozen	Single word verbs:  –          to observe –          to reduce –          to postpone –          inexpensive
Informal signal words (coordinating conjunctions):  And But so	Formal signal words (adverbials):  Consequently, However, Furthermore, In addition, Therefore,
Simple sentences  The man was late for his appointment. He ran to the bus stop.	Complex sentences  The man who was late for his appointment ran to the bus stop.
Ending sentences with prepositions  Who are you referring to?	Not ending sentences with prepositions  To whom are you referring?
Anglo-Saxon forms  Bad weather I bought a book I walked to the store	Latin and French origin words  Inclement weather I purchased a book I strode to the store

 

Hopefully, this text will help you move towards more formal language when you answer questions, but it is not totally necessary to achieve a score of 7+ – Organization is the key!

The Criteria

Test-takers work will be rated by 3 or 4, or as many as 5 markers. The general criteria they use is as follows:

What is assessed?	Do the answers include?
Content/ Coherence	Are the ideas organized and mature?
Vocabulary	Is the vocabulary used suitable for the task?
Can any listener understand the response?	Is it easy or difficult to understand the response?
Was the question answered appropriately?	Yes or no? What about tone? (Is the answer they authentic?)

 

The Criteria (note the criteria are almost identical to the Writing Criteria but Listenability is substituted for Readability)

Criteria (General)	Criterion (Specific)
Content/Coherence	1.      Number of ideas  2.      Quality of ideas 3.      Organization of ideas 4.      Examples and detail
Vocabulary	5.      Word Choice  6.      Suitable usage 7.      Range of words 8.      Precision and Accuracy
Listenability	9.      Rhythm, pronunciation, and intonation  10.  Pauses, interjections, and self-correction 11.  Grammar and sentence structure 12.  Variety of sentence structure
Task Fulfillment	13.  Relevance  14.  Completeness 15.  Tone 16.  Word Count

 

Content and Coherence: The easiest way to defeat all the criteria in this section is to think of your answer as a paragraph response (as you do when you write). So, you should introduce what you are talking about (an introduction) then support your introduction with ideas, and then give examples that support your ideas. This is the sort of organization you will need in all of your Speaking responses. You cannot just give reasons without an explanation; you cannot give an opinion without support!

In each of the 8 Speaking Tasks that follow in this text, there will be example evaluations that measure responses based on the following criterion:

1. Number of ideas: This simply refers to the test-takers ability to support the question prompt with a number of ideas (usually 2 or 3 are enough – perhaps more when you have 90 seconds of recording time)
2. Quality of ideas: This is slightly judgemental on behalf of the marker, but ‘quality’ refers to how well your ideas relate to the question prompt. You cannot use ideas that do not correspond to the question prompt or are off-topic. For example, if you are asked about street traffic, you would not talk about the number of people shopping in the malls unless you referenced the fact that they all drive to the mall and this congests the streets with their cars.
3. Organization of ideas: this criterion refers to the logic of your argument and support for your introduction. Usually, a response will move from an introduction/statement to an idea to support for an idea + another idea and support for this idea, etc.
4. Examples and detail: Detail and/or examples are used to support your ideas. Detail and examples from your own life experiences are rated higher than if you use typical, generic, answers. As long as you are supporting an idea, support it with an example that is specific and somewhat short in length of time because while you are speaking, you will give 2 or 3 examples to match the number of ideas you have for that particular question prompt. Usually, one idea equivocates to one example (as you will see in the following Tasks).

Vocabulary:

5. Word Choice: Word choice refers to words that reference the context of the discussion – are they appropriate or not? (informal or formal -see table above)
6. Suitable usage: Again, this is a slightly judgemental criterion as the marker decides if the words you are using are related and are properly chosen or aligned with the question prompt. For example, an accident usually involves police cars, an ambulance, a type of injury and people watching, etc.
7. Range of words: This can be rated on the different types of words you use (i.e., parts of speech (see appendix) or synonyms used because you have to support your ideas, you will undoubtedly refer back to an idea and this can be done in different ways. For example, if you are speaking about ‘an accident’, you might refer to it using synonyms like misfortune, mishap, catastrophe, or disaster…. depending on the ‘degree’ or ‘extent’ of the ‘the accident’ – spilled coffee or a train crash?
8. Precision and Accuracy: These terms refer to the same word usage – truthfulness to a description or an exactness of expression. Sometimes test-takers use too many adjectives and not many are accurate. For example, it is a ‘huge’ house on a hill, but this can be expressed in a similar fashion with words like massive, big, and/ large… house on a hill. These different adjectives do not make the expression any clearer – they are all about the same in meaning. However, if you responded with ‘it is large, sprawling house upon a hillside’, the listener would get a better impression of the house because the word ‘sprawling’ gives an impression of a house that is ‘long’ in length, across the top of a hillside, which would be considered a more accurate description.

 

Listenability:

9. Rhythm: This criterion refers to the fluency of spoken English. Technically, English is a stress-time language, so rhythm is a combination of ‘stressing’ the important words of an utterance and using ‘grammatical’ words with less stress over time. For example, ‘I want to go to the store’ – the stressed words are blackened. This utterance would be spoken in 3 beats (I want) ^ (to go to) ^ (the store) – notice ‘to go to’ is spoken quicker to keep the rhythm of the beat. Without rhythm, a speaker may sound slightly robotic (i.e., I + want + to + go + to + the + store. Hesitation is normal, as one pauses to recollect, but try to stay away from long pauses.

Pronunciation: This criterion refers to the proper syllable stress of words and the phonemic sounds of the letters of the alphabet. Hopefully. test-takers have the ability to speak to be understood – one or two errors are acceptable as long as the listener can understand the utterance.

intonation: This criterion refers to the rising or falling of the utterance. For example, when a speaker uses the‘ wh’ question form the intonation falls at the end of a sentence. (i.e, Where are you going↓? If the speaker uses a ‘yes or no question’, intonation usually goes up. (i.e., Do you like pizza↑?) Generally, in the English language, intonation is ‘even’ until questions are asked.

10. Pauses: pauses can be used in many different ways, but there should always be appropriate pauses between sentences. This is mainly what the markers are listening for. Generally, a good pause is when you are trying to remember something and you pause slightly. For example, what is your grandmother’s phone number? It is 456…uh 43 25. Opposed to this are the bad or marked-down pauses, these are heard when speakers delay in speech because they are searching for the correct word to use.

 

Interjections: interjections signal emotion to the listener (i.e., Wow! my friend said when he won the prize (marked with an exclamation point when written). You may give an interjection to an answer but not too often as it does affect the tone.

 

Self-correction: self-correction is normal and is not marked negatively unless there is too much of it. People often self-correct single to plural, for example; many native speakers often do this as well. (i.e., ‘She often goes’ to the park together… oh sorry, ‘They often go to the park together. Self-correction is a positive attribute for ESL/EFL learners while developing their language ability because they are showing that they ‘notice’ the language they are using – do not be afraid to self-correct on the Speaking tasks.

 

11. Grammar and sentence structure: Are the grammar and sentence structure correct for any test-takers response? Grammar can be confused, spoken in the wrong order, or suffix endings can be left off the endings of words. For example, I was walk(ing) to the store. Sentence structure refers to the word order of a sentence (i.e., ‘I go home’ as opposed to ‘I home go’.
12. Variety of sentence structure: This simply means that the speakers should use different types of sentences when they respond; they should use a variety of simple, compound, complex sentences, or even compound-complex sentences in any given response.

Task Fulfillment:

13. Relevance: Is the test-taker response ‘relevant’ to the question prompt? This criterion refers to whether or not the test-taker remained on the subject or not. Sometimes, a speaker will speak off-topic (tangential response) – i.e., the question prompt asked for ‘prediction’ and the response ‘described’ the picture in the past tense – this response would have no relevance to the question prompt. Whereas if the speaker would have used the future forms of some verbs ‘to predict’, the answer would have been relevant to the question prompt. Also, the test-taker should try to use detail and examples that are truthful/proper/factual to the question prompt. In these ways, answers remain relevant and accurate.

 

14. Completeness: Did the test-taker answer the question prompt? Again, if the test-taker used an introduction and responded with supported (examples and/or details) ideas, the answer would be considered complete.

 

15. Tone: Tone is always ‘best’ when it is consistent or not changing or varying too much. A test-taker never wants to show too much emotion – being angry (or crying) – the emotion is expressed through words but also the tone of voice used… do not be loud when speaking into the microphone to show that a particular subject angers you (or makes you feel sad). ALWAYS speak in a neutral tone when Expressing an Opinion or describing a situation or giving advice – you can use words to suggest you are upset (i.e., I had a terrible time last weekend) but never raise your voice to express this (i.e., I HAD A TERRIBLE TIME LAST WEEKEND).

 

16. Word Count: This criterion is almost useless in a Speaking exam. A level 12 speaker might answer a question prompt with very few words but be extremely accurate. A level 7 speaker may use many words to answer the same question prompt and be accurate as well. The only way ‘Word count’ is relevant is if the speaker uses too few words and, therefore, cannot answer the question prompt sufficiently. So, as a substitute, test-takers should try to speak for the complete time limit if possible.