Are you looking to set your students up for success for the Cambridge A2 Key, A2 Key for Schools, B1 Preliminary or B1 Preliminary for Schools Speaking exams?
Preparing your students for speaking in Cambridge English tests involves more than practising sample questions. It’s also about understanding the assessment criteria and how to connect the criteria to your classroom activities and the feedback you give.
At A2 Key and B1 Preliminary, students are still developing spoken language in English. They might find it hard to expand ideas and use structures accurately. Some may also feel shy about speaking in another language, so it’s key to give them lots of opportunities to exercise their skills.
Let’s take a look at the assessment criteria and how you can use them to guide and encourage your learners.
How are speaking skills assessed in the A2 Key and B1 Preliminary exams?
The A2 Key Speaking test is made up of two parts and lasts around eight to 10 minutes for two people or 13 to 15 minutes for a group of three.
The B1 Preliminary Speaking test is made up of four parts and lasts around 10 to 12 minutes for a pair or 15 to 17 minutes for a group of three.
Understanding the assessment criteria
The Cambridge Speaking tests assess four main criteria, each playing an equal part.
- Global achievement: This is the overall impression of how well the candidate communicates about the topics in the test. It’s the “big picture” view of their performance.
- Grammar and vocabulary: This looks at the grammatical structures, words and phrases that the candidate uses to express themselves in the test.
- Pronunciation: At A2 Key, the main focus is on whether the candidate can be understood. For B1 Preliminary, pronunciation also includes features like word stress, sentence stress and intonation, as well as the individual sounds within words.
- Interactive communication: How well the candidates interact with one another and the examiner. This covers whether the candidate can keep a conversation going, and at the B1 Preliminary level, how they start a conversation and respond appropriately.
For B1 Preliminary and above, there is one extra criterion:
- Discourse management: This looks at how clearly and logically candidates organise their ideas. It includes the length of their response and whether their answers are relevant and easy to follow.
Activities to help learners prepare for the A2 Key and B1 Preliminary Speaking tests
Use these creative and fun activities to keep your students engaged and ready for the A2 Key or B1 Preliminary Speaking test.
Start classes with warmers based on exam questions
Open every class with two or three Part 1-style questions, so your students can build their confidence and develop fluency.
For example, start with simple questions like ‘What do you do at the weekend?‘ or ‘Where do you live?‘. To help your students develop, you could introduce a spinner or random question cards for spontaneity.
Bring drama and movement into pronunciation drills
Adding physical actions to your pronunciation can really help your students understand and remember the sounds. Try using gestures to mark stress and intonation, stepping to mark syllables or miming emotional statements.
Practise questions and statements like ‘What’s your name?‘, ‘Do you like school?‘ or ‘I like playing football‘ by drawing lines with your hand (or on the board) to show the rhythmic rise and fall between words. Invite students to repeat and do the same.
You can also show how emotion changes intonation in speech by asking students to say a neutral sentence with different emotions. For example, say ‘That’s my book!‘ and pretend to be angry, surprised, happy or sad (you could use emoji cards here) and encourage them to notice how their intonation changes.
Arrange pair discussions with different timings
Ask students to discuss the same conversation prompts under different time limits to foster fluency and turn-taking control, all at the real test pace. You can use questions from the exam such as ‘What are your favourite hobbies?‘ or ‘Describe the photo‘.
Let students discuss in pairs with changing time limits – one minute, two minutes, then 30 seconds – reminding them to use natural turn-taking phrases like ‘What do you think?‘ or ‘Why do you like it?‘.
Model good dialogues for the test
Students often don’t know what a ‘good’ answer looks like until they hear it. Use sample recordings such as our Speaking test videos or scripted role-plays to show strong exam dialogue.
Try roleplaying strong and less strong examples with another teacher or confident student, then ask students to identify strengths and suggest improvements.
Use checklists and success criteria
Success criteria are a great tool to help learners boost their speaking skills. They show your students what they should aim to do or include in their tasks.
In part 2 of the B1 Preliminary Speaking test, each candidate should describe a colour photograph in about one minute. Before the exam, share the criteria for success or agree on these criteria with the learners for this section. For example, learners will be successful if they:
- Describe the people and activities in detail
- Describe where people and things are
- Use connectors to organise what to say
- Speak for one minute
You can include other points depending on the activity since success criteria can be easily customised. Here are some tips for creating success criteria:
- Include no more than three or four points. A short checklist will help learners to focus.
- Keep it simple – use language learners can easily understand.
- Use action verbs e.g. use, describe, include.
Give feedback on specific criteria
Rather than overwhelm students with general feedback about the entire test, focus each task or practice on just one area – pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, interactive communication or discourse management.
Targeted feedback can help learners better understand their strengths and gaps. You can invite them to assess themselves and their peers using simple checklists or assessment rubrics linked to the criteria.
Linking practice to performance
The key to Speaking test success is giving your learners regular opportunities to practise. This means not just doing exam tasks, but also varied activities that target each criterion and key sub-skills – like the ones above.
Resources
Learn more about assessing speaking for higher level students and other ways of using our Speaking test videos with teens.
Download ‘Assessing speaking for Cambridge English Qualifications: A guide for teachers’ for A2 Key and B1 Preliminary to help your students best prepare for their Speaking exams and make the best use of your classroom time.
Be sure to watch our webinar on A2 Key and B1 Preliminary speaking skills assessment, where we guide you through how to apply the criteria in practice and give your learners effective feedback.