Testing Speaking

As I write my end-of-year reports for my groups, it's occurred to me that in every school I've worked in (that's about 5 in Barcelona and another 5 in Poland) we test students on their grammar, vocabulary and writing mainly but never on speaking.

As language is very much a spoken phenomenon, and most (if not all) of my students are learning English for the purposes of spoken communication, isn't this situation, bizarre, ridiculous, perverse even in the extreme?

Arguably, it could be said the ONLY yardstick for measuring students' ability in the language is to focus on the spoken English they produce, so how come for so many schools it isn't even a feature?

Even if we are not to take such extreme measures, surely it's obvious that speaking needs to be assessed and graded - both to force our students to use the language and to benefit them in the long run?

So, what do you think? Firstly I'm interested to see who goes along with this argument; how to implement it is another thing but if you've got any ideas on this or use spoken testing as standard, then I'd love to know how you go about it.

Steven

Half Man Half Biscuit for Christmas #1: It's beginning to look a lot like...

Half Man Half Biscuit for Christmas #1: It's beginning to look a lot like...: As a wise man once said, it's cliched to be cynical at Christmas. And surely if anyone is the living embodiment of dead-eyed cynicism, it's ...

London - Frida Hyvonen

Time for a song. And what a song! This song sums up brilliantly the ambivalence London makes you feel.

I love London, but that's probably because I've never had to live there and wouldn't want to either, so whenever I go there there's never any kind of responsibility and I know I'll be able to escape from the "Big Smoke" in a day or two. It's pretty amazing though to think you could go there every week for the rest of your life and never go in the same shop, bar or restaurant twice, and always discover something you'd never realised existed before. So, that's London for me.

Friday Hyvonen is a Swedish singer who I don't know much about, but this is one of the greatest songs I've heard in the last year. Singers like this should be better known instead of the rubbish we're forced to listen to on the radio day in day out...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY31rycFG-I

And here are the lyrics:

Upside down to Italy and then again England
London, you’re not my friend, but you can be
It’s springtime but no trace of it here in London
I wear my cloak like Sherlock Holmes
If you remember him

“Don’t you worry, love!”
“Let me help you, love!”
“There you go, love!”
All this brilliant love
“Will you excuse me, love”
There you go again

London, the way you hate me is better than love and I’m head over heels
London, the way you want to get rid of me makes me weak in the knees
And you think you don’t care about me, you’re wrong!

If I disturb you, what about it?
You keep me hanging on
July
Fly

You showed me a book about the new British dandy
Beautiful boys, exquisite fabrics, oh
I ate it like candy and brushed my teeth in whitening bleach

Oh, I’ll never be like them
I don’t care if they are men
I wanna be rich I wanna be fine and dandy
In a town house in London with art on the walls
And memberships in clubs for gentlemen

Listen to the pipes
They’re singing in the night
It’s raining all the time
Listen to, listen to the, listen to the pipes

In London, the way you hate me is better than love and I’m head over heels
London, the way you want to get rid of me makes me weak in the knees
London, the way you hate me is better than love and I’m head over heels
London, the way you want to get rid of me makes me weak in the knees

Steven

Polish in 2 letters

OK, so this was supposed to be about English, right? So forgive me for talking about Polish this time :-)

Cos Polish is a really complicated language full of really long, impossible-to-pronounce words, isn't it?

But then it occurred to me that there's quite a lot of things you can say using nothing but words of TWO LETTERS. How about these:

1) 'Co ty na to?' ('what you say to that?'/'what d'ya reckon?')
2) 'No bo po co?' ('What for?')
3) 'No co ty?' ('What are you on?')
4) To on go ma' ('He's the one who's got it')
5) 'No to pa pa' ('well bye bye then' or 'ta-ta a bit' as we say in Birmingham :-)).

That's all I could come up with off the top of my head, but then my girlfriend, Aga, chipped in with:
'Co ci to da?' ('What's in it for you?')
'No to co?' ('So what then?')
and 'Na co mi to?' or 'Po co mi to?' (What do I want that for?')

Interestingly enough, most of these seem to be QUESTIONS, for some reason. Have you got any you'd like to add?? Can you make a longer sentence with just two-letter words? There's a beer in it for the best one :-)

Steven

Ice Skating

In England, people don't change their tyres on their cars in the winter. Here are some people who should. This road is covered in what we call "black ice" - because you can't really see it, which makes it even more dangerous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILHcLO-GvNA

Happy viewing!

Learn Something New Every Day

Hello,

Here's a cool site full of interesting and unusual facts, a different one each day.
Did you know that the Eiffel Tower is 15cm taller in the summer? Or did you know that the average chocolate bar has eight insect legs in it? Stuff like that.

http://www.learnsomethingeveryday.co.uk/

Steven

I Love Poland

Hello everyone,

Did you know there's a band from Leeds called I Love Poland? No kidding. Check them out here:

http://www.myspace.com/ilovepolandpopgroup

Have a listen and let me know what you think.

Over and out.

Stevo