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• Speaking exams
• Typical speaking tasks

Talk about yourself

This is a very common task at the beginning of a speaking exam. It is something you can prepare at home and practise. If you know what to say, you will feel more relaxed and confident at the start of the exam.

Instructions

Watch the video of two students talking about themselves in a speaking exam. Then read the tips below.

Examiner : Hi. What’s your name?

Kelvin :  My name is Kelvin.

Examiner : Kelvin, OK. So, Kelvin, I’m going to ask you a few questions. I’d like to ask you about your school. So, what subjects do you like most?

Kelvin : I think I like economics most because I can study different kinds of demand and supply theory and I can use it in my daily life to observe the market. I think that’s very interesting, yeah, and very useful.

Examiner : OK. And are there any subjects that you don’t like so much?

Kelvin : Actually, I don’t like physics too much because I need to calculate many difficult questions and all those mathematics words. I’m not really used to them. So, I don’t like physics.

Examiner : I see. All right. Well, how about in the future? Are you hoping to go to university?

Kelvin : Yeah, sure.

Examiner : OK, and what would you like to study there?

Kelvin : I think I would like to study something about business. So, I think nowadays we can only make a lot of money by participating in the financial sectors. So, I would like to study something about financial business. I want to get rich, yes.

Examiner : OK, that’s great. Thanks, Kelvin.

Melissa : My name is Melissa.

Examiner : Melissa?

Melissa : Yeah.

Examiner : Hi, Melissa. And, can you tell me about your family?

Melissa : I’ve got no sisters and brothers. I live with my father and mother and my dog.

Examiner :  And your dog?

Melissa : Yeah!

Examiner : Great. All right, I’d like to ask you a few questions about your school. So first, what subjects do you like most?

Melissa : I like mathematics the most because I think it’s satisfying to calculate the solution.

Examiner : OK. So, mathematics ... is there any other one?

Melissa : And English, I think, because it’s fun to learn a language.

Examiner : Great, OK. Which subjects do you think are most useful for you?

Melissa : I think accounting is the most useful because every company needs an accountant and to be an accountant I need to study this subject.

Examiner : Sure, OK. And are there any subjects that you don’t like?

Melissa : I hate Chinese because it’s difficult to study the passages. Yeah, and I don’t really understand what it’s about.

Examiner : OK, that’s great. Thanks, Melissa.

Here are our top tips for talking about yourself in an exam.

• Think about the types of topics and questions you may be asked before the exam. School, family, free time, daily routines and future plans are common topics.
• Practise answering simple questions about yourself. Work with a friend to practise or record yourself and listen to the recording.
• Listen carefully to the questions. If you don’t understand the question, ask your teacher to repeat it.
• Give complete answers in full sentences.
• Look at the examiner. His/her face may tell you when you’ve said enough and he/she is ready for the next question.
• Memorise your answers. It’s good to have ideas ready, but it’s better not to memorise long replies to typical questions.
• Just reply with ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
• Panic if you are asked an unexpected question. Take a few seconds to think before you answer it.

Here are some examples of things you can say about yourself:

My name’s ... I’m from ... / I live in ... I was born in ... I’m ... years old. I go to ... school. I like ... because ... I don’t like ... because ... In my free time / After school, I ... My best friends are ... because ... My favourite (school subject, actor, pop group, sport) is ... because ... I have ... brothers and sisters. In the future, I’d like to ... because ...

Check your understanding: true or false

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Everyone loves talking about themselves! Have you ever had a speaking exam like this? Can you think of any other sentences that might be useful?

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• Professional development
• Planning lessons and courses

Public speaking skills

For many people, standing up in public and doing a speech is one of their greatest fears. For many language students in particular, this is the ultimate challenge.

In this article we will look at some ways we can help intermediate level students to overcome the difficulties involved and explore some techniques for making their speeches as impressive as possible.

• What is public speaking?
• Why is public speaking useful for students?
• What techniques can we teach our students?
• Common problems and solutions
• Giving and encouraging feedback

What is public speaking? Public speaking involves talking in front of a group of people, usually with some preparation. It can be in front of people that you know (e.g. at a family celebration) or a crowd of strangers. Unlike a presentation there normally isn’t a lot of opportunity for interaction between the audience and the speaker – the speaker speaks, and the audience (hopefully) listens. Speeches have different functions. These include being persuasive (e.g. trying to convince the audience to vote for you), informative (e.g. speaking about the dangers of climate change), entertaining (e.g. a best man’s speech at a wedding) or celebratory (e.g. to introduce the winner of an award). Some speeches may have more than one of these aims. Why is public speaking useful for students? Most people, at some point in their life, will need to stand up and speak in front of a group of people. Teaching students the necessary skills for doing this will therefore help them to do this more successfully. As a result of the practice, students often report an increase in general confidence as well as a marked sense of achievement. Many students get incredibly nervous the first time they have to do a speech in front of their classmates but with practice the nerves subside and they usually begin to enjoy the whole process. Working on public speaking also helps to develop students’ overall fluency and requires them to consider how they speak as well as what they say. This is useful for speaking in any situation, public or otherwise. What techniques can we teach our students? a) Ideas / content generation Lots of students find getting started quite difficult. It’s a good idea to give students either a type of public speech that you would like them to do, or a particular topic. It’s often useful to get students working in groups at the planning stage, helping each other to come up with ideas. Showing students a variety of ways of making notes of ideas works well as not everyone likes the same methods. These could include mind-mapping, making lists or writing ideas on post-it notes and then arranging them on a piece of paper into groups. b) Structure Stress the importance of having a beginning, middle and end and keep reminding them of this. You might then like to give them a standard introduction to use for their first speech. For example, “Good evening. My name is x and today I am going to talk about y. I will talk about three main areas, x, y and z’. This then gives them a focus for the structure of the rest of the speech. It can seem a little dry, however, so once they get the idea it’s worth experimenting with different styles of beginning – e.g. using jokes and anecdotes. Many students are so relieved to have got to their end of their speech that they rush the conclusion or sometimes completely forget to do one. Again, a suggested format may help them to summarise what they have said. c) Body language There are various statistics for how much of our communication is done through our body language – they seem to hover around 70%, which is a massive chunk, so some work in this area is a very good idea.

• Posture: Doing an activity where you get everyone to stand up and then suddenly ‘freeze’ works well. You then ask everyone to stay still but look around at how everyone is standing. Then try getting everyone to stand straight and well-centred, behind the podium if you have one to use. You’ll be surprised how many people rock from side to side or slouch. Sounds pretty basic but it can make a big difference to how confident and in control someone appears to be.
• Gestures: One way to practise these is to give out some sentences with key words in them, such as “I caught a fish and it was this big!” or “there are three important reasons why you should vote for me”. Ask the students to practise saying these sentences while standing up and work out what gestures might be the most appropriate. Stress the importance of keeping gestures controlled.
• Eye contact: It’s very important that speakers make eye contact with all areas of the room, ideally with every person but with large audiences that isn’t possible. Many students tend to look at one spot or at the teacher. One way to practise this is to ask each student to do a short 30 second introduction and then at the end get any student who feels the speaker did not look in his/her direction to raise their hand.

d) Chunking (pauses and stress) This is a technique which can help speakers to sound much more confident and increase the overall effectiveness of their speech. The theory is that when we do this type of speaking we stress the key words in a sentence which carry the meaning, e.g. “I DON’T want you to just SIT there and DO NOTHING” We also pause after many of these key words, and at the end of a sentence. To practise this, try playing your students an example of a speech – Earl Spencer’s eulogy speech for Diana is a good one for this, or Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’. Ask them to listen and identify the stressed words and pauses from a small section of the speech and then practise delivering it in the same manner. They can then mark the stress and pauses on their own speeches and practise incorporating the idea into their own work. It really makes a difference! Common problems and solutions Lack of confidence This is very common and one that only practice, practice and more practice will help to overcome. You could also try getting the students to first speak in front of three or four others, then adding to the number as they become more confident. Reminding students to breath properly while they’re speaking as well as thinking positively about their ability to speak well will also help, along with lots of encouragement! Speaking too fast This is another common one, usually caused by nerves. Try getting them to do the introduction of the speech in an exaggeratedly slow manner. Once they have done this a few times they may find it easier to find a middle ground. Appropriacy of body language If this is a problem, try videoing the speaker and asking them to watch themselves. They will usually be able to identify where the problems lie and then work on improving these areas. Raising awareness is the most important thing here. Boring speeches! It’s really important to get the students to think carefully about their audience when planning their speech. For example, if they want to do a speech about the dangers of smoking, but no one in the class smokes, this probably won’t be very interesting. Encourage the students to think of creative ideas for their speeches - do the planning stage in class so that you and the other students can monitor and give advice on topics that look like they might get a few yawns. Appropriacy of style Here again it is important that the students think about their audience. You might like to play them several different examples of famous speeches and ask them to comment on the style and discuss the purpose of the speech and the audience, before reflecting on their own. Plagiarism of material Unfortunately this is a very common problem. One way to tackle this is to ask the students not to write out their speeches in full but to use only notes or key words to help them deliver their speech. This then increases the chances of them being more original with the delivery. Another option is to collect in the speeches and run whole sentences through an internet search engine to see if it comes up with anything. And of course, impress upon your students the importance of doing their own work! Giving and encouraging feedback This is a very important part of the process and can take three general forms: 1. Peer 2. From the teacher 3. Video-taping and playback

• For feedback from peers and from the teacher it’s best to choose particular areas to give feedback on for each speech, rather than trying to cover everything. This might be based on the techniques you have recently been looking at in class (e.g. using gestures, chunking, structure, etc.) or as a result of feedback on a previous speech.
• It’s a good idea to go through what you expect of the students when giving peer feedback as sometimes students can be very vague. Make up a sheet with a (short) list of the areas to look at to help them focus their comments and encourage them to say positive as well as constructive things.
• Video-taping is an invaluable method of helping students to see where their strengths and weaknesses lie. The only drawback, apart from the technical side of using the camera, is the time it takes to do and playback. This can be partially overcome by videoing sections of speeches, rather than the whole thing for each student.

Conclusion In this article we have looked at a variety of techniques that can be used to help students develop the necessary skills for delivering public speeches. Practice in these areas can help to increase your students’ overall confidence and fluency and provide an interesting and useful diversion from regular language work. Amy Lightfoot, British Council, India

Dear Amy Lightfoot,

Thank you very much for your useful article. Here is given many information how to improve speaking skills. I really get difficulties in speaking. When I do speech at university I feel some butterflies in my stomach. That's why this article was beneficial for me. From this article I knew that body language is important part in our communication. And we have to pay attention on stress too. I have never known about body language's types,it is very interesting. I will try to read all articles and I hopr it will help me for improving english language

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some help or advice please

Public speaking skills.

Research and insight

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B1 speaking

Are you a learner at B1 English level (intermediate) ? This section offers speaking practice to help you learn and practise useful phrases that will help you to speak English clearly and effectively. Each lesson has a preparation task and a video that introduces the language in context and gives you the opportunity to listen to and repeat the useful phrases. There are also tasks to check your understanding of the video and to practise the useful language. Make a start today.

Choose a video

Agreeing and disagreeing

In this video, Emir and Paul discuss a design for a client. Listen to the language they use for agreeing and disagreeing and practise saying the useful phrases.

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Asking a favour

In this video, Noelia asks Paul for some help. Listen to the language Noelia uses to ask a favour and practise saying the useful phrases.

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Keeping a conversation going

In this video, Noelia and Bob talk about Spain. Listen to the language they use for keeping a conversation going and practise saying the useful phrases.

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Meeting face-to-face

In this video, Noelia and Vanya meet each other for the first time. Listen to the language they use for meeting face-to-face and practise saying the useful phrases.

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Responding to news

In this video, Noelia gets good news and bad news. Listen to the language Yuna uses to respond to Noelia's news and practise saying the useful phrases.

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