TOEFL Booster / Know the score on speaking rubrics
Lawrence J. Zwier Special to The Daily Yomiuri
Last month, we began looking at the independent speaking tasks on the Internet-based TOEFL (iBT). We discussed some strategies for building the right content into your responses. Now let's turn our attention to some features other than content that will help your responses get high scores from the iBT raters.
Your responses to speaking items are sent via the Internet to raters trained by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the makers of the iBT. In their training, the raters have been taught to use certain rubrics--lists that assign numbers to responses with certain characteristics.
There are two separate rubrics, one for independent responses and another for integrated responses. You can view and download these rubrics through ETS Web site, at the following page: www.ets.org/Media/Tests/TOEFL/pdf/Speaking Rubrics.pdf.
As we mentioned last month, the main difference between the two rubrics lies in their content requirements. To put it simply, the independent rubric allows you a wider range of content choices than the integrated rubric does. As long as your content is relevant to the task, it is unlikely to be considered wrong.
What does the independent speaking rubric emphasize? What should you pay attention to in order to get a high score? As ETS rubric classifies them, these features fall into three general areas--delivery, language use and development of content. We'll consider the last of these three areas first
Development refers to how well you structure information. Even a response that is factually correct and relevant could be poorly developed.
Imagine a prompt that says, "Think of a room that was special to you as a child and describe why it was special. Describe specific aspects of the room in your response."
A poorly developed response might start something like:
"My bedroom was special to me when I was a child. It had a window and a closet. My bed was in there too. I slept there. My clothes and toys were in my bedroom too..."
No one can say, "You're wrong!" As far as any listener knows, everything you have said is true. But you can see that this response is not going anywhere. Unless it goes deeper, unless it actually gives an idea of why the room was special, the raters are unlikely to consider it very good.
Another category in the rubric deals with delivery--not so much what you say as how you say it. Pronunciation, volume, pauses, rhythm, stress, and all the other factors that affect clear speech are matters of delivery.
The raters should not have to work hard to understand which words you are saying or how they fit together. The more work--in other words, the more "listener effort"--the lower your score. Listener effort is not even an issue in a response that gets a score of 4, the highest possible. For a response that scores 3, the rubric says there may be some listener effort "at times." In a response scoring 2, according to the rubric, "listener effort is needed because of unclear articulation, awkward intonation, or choppy rhythm/pace. At level 1, these problems "cause considerable listener effort."
One more point about delivery: The rubric often mentions "flow" or "fluid ｅxpression!." Fluidity is hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. When speech flows well, all the elements work together to create a smooth, somewhat natural-sounding stream. It is not choppy, not full of repetitions or placeholders like "uh," and not just a string of words or phrases. Things fit together and move along steadily.
The rubric says that a response scoring 4 should have a "generally well-paced flow." At level 3, there is "some fluidity of ｅxpression!." At lower score levels, however, fluidity is not a feature. The response is too choppy to seem like a well-connected whole.
When you practice for the iBT, improve your fluidity by paying attention to sentence stress and rhythm. Practice thinking in terms of phrases and word groups, not individual words. Use contractions (for example, "they're" instead of "they are"). As you learn how to work new vocabulary into your speech, master common groups of words in which the item appears. If you're learning "period," for instance, notice that it sounds slightly different in the common phrases "time period" and "period of time."
And, of course, the best way to gain fluidity in speech is to speak a lot--even if only into a tape recorder or a computer.
The final category in the rubric is language use. We've already hinted at one import!ant aspect of language use: vocabulary. The other main one is grammar. In both of these areas, the emphasis is on range and control. If you can use vocabulary about a large number of topics, your vocabulary has a good range. For grammar, range relates to the variety of grammatical structures you can use. If you can only build one type of sentence, your range is very limited.
Control, as you can guess, refers to how accurately you can apply your vocabulary and grammar. To truly have a wide range, you have to effectively control the words and structures you use. If you can't control them, you may find yourself saying things you did not mean to say.
Just as fluidity was a feature in delivery at the two highest score levels, "automaticity" is import!ant in language use. If your language use is high in automaticity, vocabulary and grammatical structures seem to come to you very naturally. You choose them and use them without a lot of search or hesitation. In the rubric, the two highest score levels, 4 and 3, are characterized by automaticity, while responses scoring 2 or 1 fail to show it.
Everyone makes "mistakes" in speech. It can't be edited for exact precision. By calling for fluidity and automaticity, the rubric emphasizes that a smooth spoken response is better than a more "correct" but choppier one.
Next month's TOEFL Booster will look at how fluidity and automaticity are also import!ant in responses to the iBT's writing tasks.
Zwier teaches at Michigan State University and is an author of "The Michigan Guide to Academic Success and Better TOEFL Scores."
(Jun. 1, 2007)
Lawrence J. Zwier Special to The Daily Yomiuri
Last month, we began looking at the independent speaking tasks on the Internet-based TOEFL (iBT). We discussed some strategies for building the right content into your responses. Now let's turn our attention to some features other than content that will help your responses get high scores from the iBT raters.
Your responses to speaking items are sent via the Internet to raters trained by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the makers of the iBT. In their training, the raters have been taught to use certain rubrics--lists that assign numbers to responses with certain characteristics.
There are two separate rubrics, one for independent responses and another for integrated responses. You can view and download these rubrics through ETS Web site, at the following page: www.ets.org/Media/Tests/TOEFL/pdf/Speaking Rubrics.pdf.
As we mentioned last month, the main difference between the two rubrics lies in their content requirements. To put it simply, the independent rubric allows you a wider range of content choices than the integrated rubric does. As long as your content is relevant to the task, it is unlikely to be considered wrong.
What does the independent speaking rubric emphasize? What should you pay attention to in order to get a high score? As ETS rubric classifies them, these features fall into three general areas--delivery, language use and development of content. We'll consider the last of these three areas first
Development refers to how well you structure information. Even a response that is factually correct and relevant could be poorly developed.
Imagine a prompt that says, "Think of a room that was special to you as a child and describe why it was special. Describe specific aspects of the room in your response."
A poorly developed response might start something like:
"My bedroom was special to me when I was a child. It had a window and a closet. My bed was in there too. I slept there. My clothes and toys were in my bedroom too..."
No one can say, "You're wrong!" As far as any listener knows, everything you have said is true. But you can see that this response is not going anywhere. Unless it goes deeper, unless it actually gives an idea of why the room was special, the raters are unlikely to consider it very good.
Another category in the rubric deals with delivery--not so much what you say as how you say it. Pronunciation, volume, pauses, rhythm, stress, and all the other factors that affect clear speech are matters of delivery.
The raters should not have to work hard to understand which words you are saying or how they fit together. The more work--in other words, the more "listener effort"--the lower your score. Listener effort is not even an issue in a response that gets a score of 4, the highest possible. For a response that scores 3, the rubric says there may be some listener effort "at times." In a response scoring 2, according to the rubric, "listener effort is needed because of unclear articulation, awkward intonation, or choppy rhythm/pace. At level 1, these problems "cause considerable listener effort."
One more point about delivery: The rubric often mentions "flow" or "fluid ｅxpression!." Fluidity is hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. When speech flows well, all the elements work together to create a smooth, somewhat natural-sounding stream. It is not choppy, not full of repetitions or placeholders like "uh," and not just a string of words or phrases. Things fit together and move along steadily.
The rubric says that a response scoring 4 should have a "generally well-paced flow." At level 3, there is "some fluidity of ｅxpression!." At lower score levels, however, fluidity is not a feature. The response is too choppy to seem like a well-connected whole.
When you practice for the iBT, improve your fluidity by paying attention to sentence stress and rhythm. Practice thinking in terms of phrases and word groups, not individual words. Use contractions (for example, "they're" instead of "they are"). As you learn how to work new vocabulary into your speech, master common groups of words in which the item appears. If you're learning "period," for instance, notice that it sounds slightly different in the common phrases "time period" and "period of time."
And, of course, the best way to gain fluidity in speech is to speak a lot--even if only into a tape recorder or a computer.
The final category in the rubric is language use. We've already hinted at one import!ant aspect of language use: vocabulary. The other main one is grammar. In both of these areas, the emphasis is on range and control. If you can use vocabulary about a large number of topics, your vocabulary has a good range. For grammar, range relates to the variety of grammatical structures you can use. If you can only build one type of sentence, your range is very limited.
Control, as you can guess, refers to how accurately you can apply your vocabulary and grammar. To truly have a wide range, you have to effectively control the words and structures you use. If you can't control them, you may find yourself saying things you did not mean to say.
Just as fluidity was a feature in delivery at the two highest score levels, "automaticity" is import!ant in language use. If your language use is high in automaticity, vocabulary and grammatical structures seem to come to you very naturally. You choose them and use them without a lot of search or hesitation. In the rubric, the two highest score levels, 4 and 3, are characterized by automaticity, while responses scoring 2 or 1 fail to show it.
Everyone makes "mistakes" in speech. It can't be edited for exact precision. By calling for fluidity and automaticity, the rubric emphasizes that a smooth spoken response is better than a more "correct" but choppier one.
Next month's TOEFL Booster will look at how fluidity and automaticity are also import!ant in responses to the iBT's writing tasks.
Zwier teaches at Michigan State University and is an author of "The Michigan Guide to Academic Success and Better TOEFL Scores."
(Jun. 1, 2007)