Name __________________________________________

Class ______________________________

SECTION 4: SPEAKING
Instructions to the teacher:
Use the following questions or discussion points to assess a students level. Begin with the general opening
questions. The aim of these is to put the student at ease and for you to begin to form an overall impression of
their speaking ability. Do not spend more on this section than approximately one third of the time you have
available for the whole interview.
Then, move on to the questions and discussion points listed in the Elementary level section. Ask two or three
questions. If the student answers effectively and confidently, choose two or three questions from the Preintermediate section. If the questions in the Pre-intermediate section prove too difficult and the student begins
to make frequent pauses to search for words or clearly becomes less communicative overall, go back to
questions or discussion points from the Elementary section. Switch level again if necessary until you establish
the level of questioning or discussion the student can confidently handle.
General opening questions
Do you have a job or are you a student?
Whats your job?/What are you studying?
What do you do in your job/on your course?
What does your company do? What kind of company do you work for?
When did you start learning English? Why do you need English?
Elementary
Where do you live? What do you like about living in __________ ?
What do you do in your free time?
What do you want from work? (If necessary, rephrase as Whats a good job, in your opinion?)
How often do you travel for your work? Where do you like to go?
In your country, how do you entertain businesspeople who come from other countries?
What kind of people do you like to work with? (If necessary, rephrase as Whats a good colleague, in your
opinion?)
What sort of business would you like to start? Where would you start it?
How is your business/school changing?
How is life changing in your country?
What successful global companies do you know? Why are they successful?
What do you use the Internet for? What sites do you recommend? Why?
What good advice could you give to people who want to do business in your country?
Pre-intermediate
What makes people successful at work?
How ambitious are you?
Where do you want to be in ten years time?
What qualities and skills does a person need to be a good manager?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of shopping online?
In your opinion, are meetings useful or are they a waste of time? Why?
What kind of situations do you find stressful at work/at school?
How has your company/your country changed over the past five years?
Tell me about a marketing campaign that has impressed you.
In what ways is planning important when you work/study?
Which companies or products from your country are you most proud of?
What can people gain from working/studying abroad for a few years?
What can companies/schools do to encourage new ideas/to make people more creative?

Scoring the speaking component of the Quick Placement Test

In some situations, teachers will use this kind of interview simply to determine whether the students oral
performance is on a par with his or her performance on the other components of the test. With this
information, it may then become easier to decide on borderline cases. For example, on the evidence of a
students particularly good performance during the interview, the teacher may decide to place him or her at
Pre-intermediate level, even though the student needed an extra two or three points on the other components
of the test to be placed at that level.
In other situations, however, the teacher may want to have a separate score for speaking, add this score to the
scores obtained on the other test components, and calculate the average.
In addition, the teacher may want more than a global, impressionistic mark.
A simple way of moving towards analytic marking is to give each student a mark on a number of criteria. For
example:
Accuracy

Range of
lexis and
structures

Fluency

Pronunciatio
n

(Marks range from

1 to 5.)

Coherence
and
discourse
management

Student A

Student B

etc
The average is then calculated for each student.
A more sophisticated version of this method consists in defining what each mark on each criteria means by
using band descriptors, as in this simple example:
Coherence and
discourse
management

5
4

Answers
consistently fully
developed and
coherent.
Answers
mostly
developed
mostly
coherent.
Answers
frequently
developed
frequently
coherent.
Answers
very limited
often
incoherent.

Accuracy

Range of lexis and

structures

Fluency

Pronunciation

Very good control Wide and appropriate

of grammar and
range of lexis and
lexis.
structures

Speaks with very

few pauses.

Very easy to
understand.

Good control of
grammar and
lexis, with a few
minor lapses.

Few gaps in lexis and

structures.

Occasionally
pauses, searching
for words.

Easy to
understand.

Good, but
occasionally
difficult to
understand due to
ineffective control
of grammar and
lexis.
Very difficult to
understand due to
density of errors.

Mostly adequate, but

insufficient for
slightly more abstract
topics.

Pauses and
hesitations
sometimes demand
patience of the
listener.

Rarely difficult
to understand.

Insufficient, except for Frequent pauses and Often difficult

a few very familiar
hesitations
to understand.
topics.
sometimes make
answers
unintelligible.
Very little communication possible. Very little assessable language produced except for a few memorised
chunks.