- Isaac D'Israeli
The topic of exams has always been popular with our students. Now we know the new format of the National Exam, which includes Speaking consisting of four parts.
Let's have a closer look at each part and discuss its structure, requirements and skills to be assessed.
Dasha has chosen to speculate about the importance of the first part of the exam. We will be glad to hear your ideas about it.
Test reading part in speaking: advantages and disadvantages
One of the recent changes in the
National State Exam format is introducing Speaking part. The first task of it
is test reading, which some people believe to be useless, while others oppose their
opinion.
From my point of view, test reading
is an essential part of exam speaking practice. First of all, reading is one of
the basic skills a language learner should possess that is why it is a
necessarily needed thing to evaluate students’ abilities in it. Secondly,
reading a specially selected text out loud after just a 1.5 minute preparation
is a perfect demonstration of how a pupil can manage words and word
combinations he has probably never seen before.
However, there’s an idea that test
reading shows no real knowledge and skills, and that is why it should be
excluded from the list of the examination tasks. Some people claim that real
life speaking does not require managing a typed text, modern way of
communication and work is more about talking, so it is far more important to
pay more attention to “live speech”.
I strongly disagree with such
statement. The way I see it, people who choose English as a subject for their
National State Exam are going to deal with the language in many ways, including
working with papers and texts typed on them orally, which is what reading is
about. As the following, test reading is an important item of speaking part.
To sum it up, though many people consider test
reading to be a useless task in the National
State Exam, I still believe that it is an essential part of it, since it is
necessary to evaluate students’ skills in such a basic but yet extremely
important activity.
Thank you, Dasha, for sharing your ideas about the first part of Speaking. Let's see what our readers think about it.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Dasha, for report about this new type of activity in the National State Exam. It is really essential for us to realize the importance of reading. I entirely agree with your opinion, and I support your idea about that not only our manner of speech and “live speech” is important in real life, but also experience in reading papers and documents. Without this experience, I am sure, it will be difficult for us to concentrate on English texts and develop our speech in general.
ReplyDeleteSo, good job, I like it! You usually have creative ideas and it is not only interesting to listen to you, but also to read your reports:)
Thank you for the comment, Polina!
DeleteHere is Kira's idea about this topic:"The topic of test reading part in the National State Exam is really actual today, especially for class 11 as we have to take part in this activity soon. So, thank you, Dasha, for sharing your opinion with us and suggesting some curious ideas on this topic.
ReplyDeleteI do subscribe under your opinion, saying that test reading is one of the most important tasks in the speaking part of the exam to check students' knowledge and assess their ability not to be confused in situations they've never faced before. I also believe that reading various unknown texts in English develops students' oratory as well as forms their linguistic flair. Furthermore, this type of activity takes the first place in the number of speaking tasks of the exam, that is why I also consider it to be like a great practice and preparation before speaking aloud in the next three tasks."
Vika wants to leave her comment, too. "It was really interesting for me to read about your ideas, girls. I do agree that reading is an essential activity in language studies. Still, I do not suppose that it was vital to include the reading part in our NSE as, to my mind, there are some more important skills which should be checked. Furthermore, nobody has a clear idea of how this all will happen."
ReplyDeleteI think that the topic of the National State Exam is not only intersting for discussion but also very important and
ReplyDeleterelevant for all of us. I really liked the girls' ideas about the importance of the test reading part in the exam and I
share their points of view in the ways why it's necessary for students to pass this new part of speaking. Kira's bright idea
that reading is a great way for a examinee to "warm up" his tongue and put his thoughts in order before forthcoming three tasks of speaking is one more advantage of this activity. Besides, reading in general is an opportunity for pupils to expand their vocabulary and improve pronunciation, as it seems to me.
Dasha, thanks for your wonderful and informative work!