Consejos académicos: Preparación de sus presentaciones orales

The second part of your end of term assessment is a speaking presentation. As part of the presentation, you should prepare a topic. The topic should be something you like and are familiar with.

It is a speaking presentation, so reading off of a page will affect your score. You can look at notes from time to time if you need to, but these notes should be simple and organised. The speaking presentations are no longer than three minutes per person.

Trust me, it’s not that long.

This is a example of a Trinity speaking test topic page.

In the centre of the page, you should write your topic. This could be something simple at lower to mid levels, like Liverpool Football Club, or The Food From My Country. At higher levels the topic is expected to be more complicated to show a greater range of vocabulary and grammar.

Below you will find an example of a topic, prepared and with notes.

This is not a typical form, but it is well organised and prepared. There are six smaller points about the main topic Playing the guitar. Surrounding these smaller points is the information the student might use in their presentation. As the presentation is only three minutes, this is a lot of information to get through. Organise your presentation so that no matter where you have to end, it sounds complete.

Be sure to practise and time yourself giving your presentation so you know how long each part should take.

Giving your presentation

1. Stay calm, and focus on your teacher if you’re nervous. While this might affect your scores slightly by not addressing the “audience”, it will get you through it.
2. Breathe. Long sentences are great, but don’t forget to breathe.
3. Slow down. Don’t speak fast to get it done quicker, that’s not how it works. Make yourself heard and understood.

Assessment criteria

Below you will find the assessment criteria.

A1 and up

• Communicative effectiveness (completing the task)
• Pronunciación
• Grammar and Vocabulary

A2 and up

• Organisation and Delivery (other students’ understanding and your fluency)

B1 and up

• Discourse management (sequencing, connecting and contrasting ideas, a mix of long and short sentences)

Each area is marked out of 5, with different levels and expectations for each level. This information is being given to you here so that you know what you need to focus on before your test.