hello everyone good morning good afternoon good evening wherever you are welcome to this webinar about uh how to teach an exam class for b2 first for schools and c1 advanced my name is alberto costa and i work for cambridge assessment english in the assessment services team and with me today is my colleague sarah ellis hello everyone and welcome to today's session thank you very much yes so i'm sarah and i work for the assessment services team based in italy in in fact today i'm talking to you from just outside florence and tuscany and thank you to everyone who's telling us where you're watching us from it's great to see where you're joining us from so thank you for doing that absolutely i am speaking from brazil i'm based in sao paulo so let's get started over to you alberto thank you sarah so once again everyone thank you very much for joining us today this is an overview of what we're going to talk about we'll start talking about smart goals very briefly because i mentioned smart goals in my last session we will also talk about the importance of knowing the exam well so we can better prepare students for the exam we will also talk about exam classes for b2 first for schools and c1 advanced and we have some more right sarah absolutely lots of ideas and activities we hope you'll be able to take away from the session um as well as the resources we have here sarah and i have put together a number of resources that we are going to share with you so that you can get ready to start preparing learners for the exams right okay we're going to start talking about uh preparation for an exam when we look at uh preparing for an exam it seems like we are going on a long journey so in order for us and our learners to feel that this journey is nicer more pleasant smoother it's very important that we start creating uh and setting goals along the way so that we can better prepare learners based on their needs based on the time that we have between now and the day of the exam and as we said goes along the way students will feel more confident when they come to the day of the exam so it's very important that we help them set smart goals and that we as teachers set goals as well for our learners for example for this session uh sarah and i have a lot to cover so we we had to set some very smart goals right sarah in order to try and speed as much as possible and give you as many ideas as possible in these 60 minutes so when we're talking about smart goals we are talking about this acronym here making goals for example relevant so what are my students learning needs one of the first questions and also it's about making goals specific what do i want my students to achieve and making goals time-bound as well what do i want my students to achieve this year this term this class uh we are at different moments of the academic year around the world for example i'm in the southern hemisphere so we are just this week just now starting our academic year whereas i'm in the northern i'm in the north so hemisphere of course we're actually in the middle of the academic year so it's obviously we're looking at this from two different perspectives yes so this is important to make the goals time-bound as well because our students since we are talking about uh an international audience will be taking the exams at different dates right also it's important to make the goals achievable so is what we are going to propose to learners level appropriate and what support do i need to give them and making goals measurable and accessible so how will i how will my students know that they are making progress so this is what we talk about and this is what we mean when we talk about creating smart goals also it's very important that we know the exam well and sarah will tell you a few things about this yes absolutely so even whether you're new to cambridge english qualifications or a very experienced teacher i think for all of us uh the first place to go is the teachers handbooks so you'll see on the next slide here that you can download um a b2 first for schools handbook or a ca one one advanced sandwich whichever you need and of course this is a real treasure trove of information it's very important and you can see that each part of the test is included and there is information about how it's tested the types of tasks that each part has the way it's marked the time of it so all the kind of essential information that will help you in planning your your program let's say and of course unfortunately today we haven't got time to go through each part but you will be able to find information about all the parts which we don't manage to cover today but we've chosen a few parts from each part of the exam so that you get a flavor of some ideas as well and you can also see how it relates and each skill relates to each other as well so please start with reading alberto yes uh well when you're talking about reading for b2 first four schools in c1 advanced we are talking about a paper that has actually had two components there we have the reading component and we have the use of english component when we look at the structure of the this paper for the two exams they have some similarities so for example some of the exam items are similar so we have this task alignment between the two exams and we also have the fact that uh this paper weighs 40 percent of the total because uh 20 is for reading and 20 is for use of english and then we have the other percentages for the papers we are going to talk about very soon yeah but we also have some differences like for example the length of the paper one hour and fifteen minutes for b2 first for schools and uh one hour and thirty minutes for um c1 advanced we can also see some differences in terms of parts and number of questions as well yeah and of course yes and of course in your results you will actually get a score for your use of english part and your reading skills um separately so we talked about teachers getting to know the exam the other thing of course is helping our students really um see where they're going and have a direction so there are some great new free lesson plans which you can use with your students um to help them get no to know the exam so if you're at the beginning of a course you might decide to get them to have a look at a sample paper you've got some questions here to help them look at that paper and find out if the information is true or false of course you've got the answer key here if you're already doing the already in the middle of your course and you're getting towards the exam time you might use this activity also just to re remind the students about what to expect in each part of the paper how and also looking at the questions and the task types etc so that's available to download and we'll make sure that you have the links to these um after the session so if we just look briefly at a couple of sections from the use of english and the reading just to remind you that the first four tasks in the reading and use of english paper are if you like focusing on vocabulary and grammar and the second part focuses more on the reading skills of course reading is involved in all parts of this paper and it's important to get your students to think about understanding the text and not just about trying to fill in the gaps for example in this first part part one tests mostly vocabulary you can see that you have to select one suitable word um which from a group of semantically similar words and obviously it's a multiple choice for option question here so what we're testing here of course is the meaning and use of words and of course words can mean different things in different contexts so we're kind of exploring that meaning and how they're used and students will need to practice recognizing differences in meaning where they're very similar so we just got an example here we've got the difference between cut and tear and so we've got the two very semantically similar but obviously the meaning and use will be different and of course you've also got to watch out for things like tear so the same spelling but different pronunciation and pronunciation and of course different meanings so getting students to really look at recognizing um differences in meaning is important also for this part of the paper we need to look at collocation um and set phrases and you can see here of course we're talking about the context of applying for a job and of course all these words would be suitable but what we're trying to get students to look at is that collocation looking at the way it's used in context so here of course they're looking at what's before the gap and what's after the gap which is very important and of course here the preposition is going to help them choose the correct word now it's understanding those text attack skills if you like um are important equally at b2 and c1 and you can see at c1 like um alberto was saying you've got task alignment so the difference says um exams levels have similar tasks obviously the level of challenge increases but the actual task alignment helps the fact that maybe they've done b2 first they've had experience of this kind of task and as they go through their learning path it will help but as i said obviously the level of challenge changes so if we look at this next activity we can see this is again something you can download um it's a lesson plan to use with students to help them understand how to determine which option is correct now we can see in the example here that the the correct answers are circled and we're going to get our students to think about what does the reader have to know about these words so that they can actually choose the correct answer and this takes them through that process so let's look at the example zero so we've got the the lexically similar words they're all similar but the use is different now what does that mean and we can see some examples to help student so they look at the text and they can see four so he swapped his black belt for ballet shoes so obviously that's key um i know that varied for example isn't followed by preposition whereas we have uh two other words which have prepositions let's have a look at those so we have differed from and replaced with or by so of course these are the kind of clues that students need to start being where looking before the gap and after the gap so of course this takes us to the correct structure swap for but um again this lesson plan will help you do that with the students and there's some other examples as well now part two of the uh the reading paper is an is an open close so there are no options available so the students need to think of the words the suitable word to go in the gap now again we've got the task alignment between b2 first and c1 advanced so similar activity level of challenge a little bit more difficult now of course here we're testing grammatical or if you like lexical grammatical uh language so looking at things like phrasal verbs linkers and words in fixed phrases so again students really need to be looking at their knowledge of structure of the language but also understanding the text and not just going for that gap they've got to look at the text so when we're working with students perhaps at the beginning it can be quite challenging so we can provide a bit more scaffolding so for example here we have the answers but they're mixed up and we ask the students to obviously read the text choose from the from the from the words that are available then as they get more confident of course they're going to be working on choosing the words without your help but i think this can be a step in between then of course we can have a look at the next slide there that i think one of the things that helps students enjoy exploring uh if you like lexus in this sense and grammar together is creating their own closed tests so taking a paragraph like this for example get them to create their own clothes and again you can do that gradually perhaps starting with something like removing the articles and here is a free app there are many others this is just one which allows you to paste the text into the box as you can see on the left and then choose what you're going to use for making the clothes so as i said you could choose to do articles or you may choose to do every fifth word every sixth word of course um and of course others as well including letting you choose which words you you take out and of course students can create it for their peer and get them to be thinking about that so here's the example with the articles removed using the same text so the students are working with that text let's have a look at the prepositions though you might take out something else as well so again using the same text they kind of develop that confidence and explore language um of course we've got our stronger and weaker learners to think about uh for weaker learners or perhaps learners are new to this type of task you might provide more support so it's saying what kind of word is missing so it's a preposition is missing etc whereas the stronger learners you might ask them to use a text you've already done before take out some words for example prepositions create an open close and again they they would then do that without the same support so you can use the same text in different ways so then we come to part three and part three is looking at word formation so we have a text but this time we have a stem word as you can see on the left again same task at the both levels but the challenge changes and of course this is testing knowledge of prefixes suffixes internal changes as you work with that stem word now again one of the the challenges is that students often go for the gap without looking at the text so here we have the stem word yes they could look at the gap and try and make the word but the problem is that they really do need to be looking at the whole text so one of the things you can do whether you're online or offline of course is cover it with a post-it so there's my digital post it cover it up get them to read the text first tell you about the text they might even start thinking about the potential words in the gap before they look at those stem words and then really think about the knowledge of structure that means that the word will fit into the space so just for the first one some say you need to be very to play it well so obviously we need to look at what kind of word so here would be you need to be very skillful to play it well etc so again it's really using the text to help them choose the right form and again we've got some lesson plans that you can refer to and this one crosses over between b2 and c1 and it works on word formation and on vocabulary development so again very clear instructions for the teacher you can see that there are lesson stages and there are also online options so if you are teaching um online and you want to somehow support with that there are ideas for that too this is the text that is used you can see that we've got the stem words but we've also got some focus and a focus on vocabulary as well so the vocabulary handout which you can download provides the words the students obviously have to match the definition which in itself is an important activity because we're looking at paraphrasing and again that's going to be important for a variety of parts of the of the exam so yes and that lesson plan you can download now the other thing of course is doing little little uh tasks for students give them a stem word ask them to choose a picture that you think um illustrates that that word and then get them to design some questions which they can give to their peers so i can ask you to write in the chat you know what have these people been involved in what do you call a person who takes part in one of these things and how do you describe a person who really wants to win and works hard to do so thank you i can see you writing in the chat that's great and the last but not least how do you describe someone who is not interested in winning or working hard to win and of course it's important to look at the negative um uh suffixes and as well um and prefixes so uh we've got the words there so and very simple but it's nice they create their own exercise and they're thinking about that word development and of course if you're doing it online it's like it's possibly easier to share and if you're not then they're they could still do it and that's an interesting activity to develop word word formation now uh in alberta's last session he talked about b1 a2 and b1 and he showed you the word list that you can download now at b2 and c1 there are no word lists so what can you use to help with vocabulary development one of the fantastic tools is this one on the screen english vocabulary profile online again it's a free tool and you can choose the the cfr level you're interested in so i've chosen c1 here as an example i've actually chosen a topic and then the computer has given me the list of words that it has there at c1 and you can see that i can now click in to get more detail and i get more information i think if you click again then we can see how the word bitter uh is developed and you can see also the levels above and the levels below but also you can see how the word bitter is taste as well as feelings um and again they get sample examples as well to help uh exactly also to practice further so it's a great tool and you can use that for free too now the second part of this paper as we said is focuses on reading skills now because they're going to be seeing a variety of different text types it's very important to encourage students to do as much reading as possible of different text types not always the same kind now we could just look briefly at a couple of examples but thinking about the skills that they need to develop of course it's about the ability to to use a variety of reading skills scaling and scanning of course essential but also being able to manage the ambiguity coping with unfeeling really words and understanding in particular attitude and opinion and of course the tone of the text as you get to see one of course that becomes increasingly important understanding text organization will help them with their reading so again these skills are important for us to develop excuse me so part five in both ex exams is a reading comprehension using multiple choice questions um and of course this is uh focuses on a text where the students will be looking at quite detailed understanding as well as just reading if you like so they do need to do use both skills and again they'll be looking at organization exemplification and reference and of course the challenges for students are that they often don't read the whole text so one of our jobs is to help students appreciate why it's important to read the whole text before they actually look at the questions because otherwise they fall into the trap of not reading the question alongside the text which may be means that they maybe not exploring enough of the text to be able to find the answer and they may be distracted by the multiple choice option perhaps they're spotting a word in the question and then trying to spot it in the in the text when the meaning may be different so again we look at the lesson plans available to you which can encourage you to do your students to do more reading and thinking about how what they already know can help them understand the text so it's reading strategies um to help them be successful and then we have an example here this problem of students rushing in and looking at the questions and trying to choose the answer again the famous post-it note cover up the answers get them to read the text and just the question can they find the answer to that question without the options um and then look at the options so it again it's it's a strategy that they can start using as well if you're encouraging them to think differently about the way they're reading and again we recommend there is a reading for each part there is an activity for this part um in part five and there are also other lesson plans for the other parts which we haven't had time to mention the reason it's useful is you can use them also to encourage student independence and you will find that there are some lesson plans for self access like this one which you can give to your students to help them develop their strategy it helps them look at what they need to do and reminder of a strategy for exam tips so again we recommend you to have a look at those so that's a kind of quick look there now the other thing that we'd like to mention is the updated information for candidates um pdfs which is downloadable again available for both levels but this i've just chosen this one because we're looking at reading and you can see on the next slide how the what kind of information it provides so there are lots of common questions you know what do i do if i don't understand the text and there are some answers to help with that plus some do's and don'ts to help the student approach this paper and they're really practical and very helpful so again downloadable from the website we'll let you have the links thank you sarah there are so many ideas in those i mean two components of the exam reading and use of english and i think the great the lesson plans will be a great asset for us teachers now we're going to talk about the writing paper uh the writing paper has a task alignment as well uh between the two exams we can see uh some differences for example b2 first for schools is a bit shorter but in the two papers uh you have to write an essay as a compulsory task for part one so we have an essay for between first four schools we have an essay for c1 advanced and uh we're going to see some differences between the those two tasks right well in both papers you have two parts one compulsory task and then the second part has options of texts that the candidate can choose uh to write so there are other text genres that they need to to have practiced so that they can make better choices for part two in this paper right so we're going to look at uh part one for for those two papers so as we as i mentioned we have task alignment here they both have an essay for part one in b2 first for schools uh they have the essay and they also have the option to add one more idea of their own uh in the topic of the uh they can add to the topic of the essay whereas in c1 advanced they have some bullet points and they have to choose two of the bullet points in the list of ideas there to write about of course because of the levels we can say that there are differences in the number of words that the learners have to produce in each paper and we also have a slight difference in the length as well of the uh part one 40 minutes for b2 first for schools 45 minutes for uh c1 advanced right so here we can see images of the tasks in the two exams we can see on the left b2 first for schools as i said the learner has to include to add another idea to the list of ideas in the topic and we are going to talk about how we can best help learners to prepare for those tasks right so some of the ideas can be applicable to either b2 or c1 so we're going to start by looking at for example expressions that we use when we write an essay well we have to deal with a number of language functions when we are writing the essay for example we have to agree or disagree give opinions give examples we need to compare and contrast ideas we also need to draw conclusions so one idea uh to help learners is to give them a list of expressions and then they you give them also a table with some categories so the purpose is for the learner to start organizing the expressions under each of the headings here in the categories and later they can start creating sentences and then starting putting paragraphs together using those expressions this idea comes from one of our lesson plans which you can download from the website and when we're talking about um writing an essay it's very important that in the classroom we help the learners to generate ideas before they get down to writing so here is an idea that i'm going to share with you c1 advanced but you can also adapt it for b2 first for schools as well we're going to start this discussion on using technology in class so a combination of technology and education so first we could start by uh surveying the students getting them to work in pairs and find out about the benefits or dangers to society in terms of technology so they can decide uh they can talk about things like artificial intelligence social media online learning which everyone is involved at the moment and then after we do this initial conversation we can give the learners the topic of an essay and then uh we can help them put the topic together by choosing one of the points we discussed previously so they insert it in the title and then they can start they can start considering uh uh other ideas about the topic so for example how social media has influenced society what are the benefits the drawbacks the ways to improve it etc etc so helping the students to generate a lot of ideas before we ask them to simply write a text in the code without warming them up for this activity right so it's very important that we use the power process right sarah so absolutely this is a very nice acronym that sarah and i really like uh sharing with teachers when you say the power process we're talking about p for prepare so getting the students to do the research narrow down the topic brainstorm ideas organize uh so they choose their best ideas write a plan or outline of the the essay think about paragraphing as well and then they write the answer so once they have written the answer it's a moment for them to check carefully for errors and necessary repetition and they can also edit their work and then finally r for review and reflect when the learners practice for the exam and then they have someone else check their work and think about what they can improve on next time right so this is the power process we like talking about right sarah so in order to help us teachers with uh assessing learners writing um we have now uh developed some writing guides assessment of writing guides which are available from the website they are brand new they are great resources and they are full full of ideas for both teaching and assess writing so here is an example of uh the points in the criteria we need to consider when we assess right and so we can see the four uh subscales here content communicative achievement organization and language and then we can see a description of what each of those points are and what each of those points are not so it's very important that we look at content for example and decide content is about this but it's not about that so this is one of the things the uh criteria uh and those uh guides for assessing writing help us with so uh in terms of organization for example it's very important that at b2 level learners understand that they shouldn't be writing individual sentences but also but they need to master uh paragraphing skills so how to join ideas together put them in paragraphs in the case of c1 advanced understand this specific attacks genre uh for the exam for example one of the things you have in c1 advanced that you don't have in the uh b2 is for example if you're writing a report or a proposal you need to know how this is structured and all those things you need to give feedback on and prepare learners for for the task giving them uh the skills and the the tips so in terms of the criteria one of the things you can find in those guides is um sample texts from learners so you can see those simple answers and also you can find detailed descriptions of the wording in the rubrics for uh assessing writing here is an example of the rubric for communicative achievement in b2 first for schools you will see the criteria and the the descriptors on the left you have definitions of what they mean and you have a sample answer with examiner's comments it's the same for example for c1 advanced where we have descriptors for organization we have a description of what they mean and a sample answer with examiner's comments you can even use those sample answers to work with the learners and for them to spot why this or that area actually needs to it's working on needs improving right so here are the the guides that we are talking about they are um available and they are downloadable from our uh website we highly recommend looking at them because they bring lots of ideas as i said not only for assessing but also for teaching writing one other point about b2 first for schools is that for part two in b2 first for schools only one of the options the candidate has is to write about a set text so uh set texts are recommended by cambridge and the set text but for this year and next year is rebecca by daphne du maurier and uh this um set text is an option right it's not a compulsory task but it's for b2 first four schools only so sarah anything else you would like to add yes yeah i'd just like to say about the guys they are fantastic and it's also interesting because they look at teacher assessment self-assessment and peer assessment and also how you can obviously encourage your students to become more confident and understanding the criteria so yeah absolutely i agree with you they're wonderful wonderful and suggestions for online teaching as well right yes that's true as well so online and offline and uh yes so yes super one of my favorite resources at the moment um looking at listening um some of the things that we've said about reading are equally important when we talk about listening so for example making sure that the students know how much they themselves bring to the listening is an important thing but let's just have a look at the structure first um we can see that like the other papers there is commonality between the b2 and the c1 invites in fact very similar because they have four parts and they have similar tasks what's different is that they're slightly longer text at c1 because obviously the speed of delivery also changes so with the level of challenge so you will see um that the texts are slightly longer at c1 you can download the audio files um to accompany the the teachers handbooks that we talked about at the beginning so again if you want to use those materials they are free to download as well we talked about students understanding the the paper and again this is a slightly different variation of getting the students to be thinking about what's involved in each paper there's a student a has some questions and student b has some questions or let's say group a and group b they do their research and answer the questions and then of course they can exchange information with their partner or with another group but it's a really important way to make sure they know what to expect um in each part of the test now preparing to listen includes getting your students to do as much listening as possible thanks to things like netflix and the and youtube and there are there are lots of opportunities for many people who have access to those um but of course we also in class need to be making sure that we're doing different kinds of listening so maybe sometimes we're listening for gist sometimes we're listening for more detail and of course the skills that are really important to developing our students is that preparing to listen predicting answers using what they already know thinking about the topic so that when they go into the listening mentally they're much better prepared for prepared and also using the question to help them do that so if we look at this one we can see um that in again in paper part one in both both levels we have multiple choice uh questions and they are um actually and here's the b2 example we have eight different situations and the students obviously have to look at each situation think about that situation and then listen out for the answers we're looking at gist we're looking at listening for detail we're looking at function opinion and purpose in both levels and you can see that the c1 paper has just three extracts so but two tasks per extract now of course we need to develop those skills again perhaps looking at the context without the answers thinking about the kinds of things that they might hear so they get used to predicting expectation what might they hear and will really help them and be able to approach the listening more confidently so if we look at um this lesson plan here again just to remember to remind you that what really are lots of lesson plans for each level uh this can be used um uh with it as a teacher but it also can be used for self-study in ca including recommending that the kind of things that students should be doing about listening on their own so again i think those strategies are very important to develop preparation now as i said for part one we're listening for opinions so students need again not just word spots but they need to start listening around the word perhaps as a paraphrase um and for example here we can see the expressions from the dialogue on the left and they match with what the expression actually means in practice and you can see that these are actually about expressing an opinion very useful task and again creates awareness of what they might be listening for rather than trying to do word spotting and in the second part of the paper uh we have a gap fill if you like it and they have to complete the text obviously they need to be able to look at the grammatical or look at the structure of the text and make sure that the words they're fitting into the gaps also make sense in the tense of the of the um actual text but before we even get there i think it's very important that again we think about the preparation for listening and so you might decide to do something like this so we're going to be listening about puffin so hey do they know what a puffin looks like so that might be quite useful and then what do they already know about uh puffins let's activate their prior knowledge so that they can start anticipating something that what they might hear you can do that very simply by asking them to uh think of three things that they know about puffins and three things that maybe they would like to know then away from the exam task just listen to the text and see if they can find out any answers to those those um three questions or whether three facts in the text then we can go to the exam task so we've already kind of warmed up to the topic um and of course now we need to fill in those gaps so we need to make sure that we look before the gap and after the gap and of course then we would listen and try and to try and predict the answer and then listen to the to the text again but again we've already done some warming up in that prior task and again it's the principle which is important now the um information for candidates again has some really useful tips on do's and don'ts for students for the listening paper so again recommend you have a look at that and i think that brings us on to the next skill yes thank you sarah oh lots of good ideas you know you just feel like going to the lesson plans and digging into all those wonderful resources that are available so speaking of um the speaking paper again we can see that those two papers they have lots of alignment lots of similarities so they both have four parts each i mean this paper is worth twenty percent of the total of uh uh the the score in the exam um they have a slight slight difference in terms of length so 14 minutes for b2 first four schools 15 minutes for uh c1 advanced and the sequence of the the tasks are also very similar as we can see from this table here so for part one uh the candidates will be uh having this conversation with the the examiner the interlocutor asking them questions for part two they have an individual long term and then there is a slight difference there so in b2 first four schools they have two images that they need to compare and contrast and for part two in c1 advance they have two images they have to choose two images out of three that are given to them part three it's a two-way conversation where they need to talk together and come to a conclusion or a decision or a consensus uh it's important that they look at all the visual prompts before they come up with a decision and part four in the two cases it's a discussion which follows up from follow zone from part three in uh each of the exams so here is an example of part two for b2 and part 2 for c1 you can see b2 two images for each candidate and part uh uh c1 advanced they choose two images out of three it's very important to highlight that the images uh in the exam are colored images those are black and white images because they come from our handbooks for teachers which you can download right but one of the things um isn't the truth error that we can find today is images we can find images in many places on the internet we can take photographs and bring our images to the classroom as well so there are images everywhere and a recommended site is unsplash.com and because obviously they're copyright free so you're allowed to use those so definitely recommend unsplash.com absolutely so we have here some ideas to help you prepare your learners for part two we have an example here for b2 first for schools but it can also be used with c1 advance which is asking the learners to do this individual long term on their own using a mobile device so what students can do is they can use an image or take take a photograph and then they can find time to look at the photograph start describing it and then they can make a recording of this uh image and they can share it uh with a friend or they can share it with the teacher so they can get feedback on their description right so we have here uh one example that that students can do using mobile devices especially now that many students are studying remotely and then they can send it to their teacher so learners can for example choose a pair of images in this case we have two images which are about people trying to win a sporting event and then they uh talk about what is similar what is different and it's very important that they time themselves while they are doing it so they set the timer they start the recording they speak about the photos and then they record themselves speaking and then they can record themselves again and then they save their favorite recording and this is a very interesting strategy nowadays that we have access to those devices because students even without knowing as they record and record themselves again they are using the language they are repeating the language they might be improving their pronunciation of their choice of vocabulary etc so there's loads that they can do with a mobile device and a set of images which is so easy to find so once they have submitted this recording they can use a number of questions too either for peer assessment purposes or self-assessment purposes for example were you able to speak for a minute or were you speaking for too long or for a very short time did you pause or repeat yourself how easy or difficult was it to speak for one minute and if you want to have access to uh those tasks and those uh questions you can download the lesson plans from our website right yeah and just add just so you can sorry but so just to mention if you also want to use an app uh voicespice.com uh it's easy to use for audio recording so if you if you have got students who haven't got a mobile device and you can use an online program something like voicevice.com works very well yeah very nice sarah another idea we were talking about structuring writing skills at the beginning and then students would need to structure what they're going to say if they are describing images for example so again a similar idea to the one we talked about we have a number of expressions and then we give students the opportunity to categorize those expressions into three sections organizing their response describing photos comparing photos and then again they are given a set of images then they can start describing the images using those expressions they can do it in pairs they can construct this little by little until they feel they are ready to uh record themselves and uh use as much language as possible in a way that the description makes sense and it's well organized and well sequenced so this is one idea that you can use with learners right another thing again going back to what we discussed uh before with writing is uh helping the students to generate ideas if we want them to uh to do well in a task where they will be talking to each other negotiating ideas trying to come to a decision together so here is an example for you to prepare learners to speak this is good for c1 advanced because they can go through a number of questions and lots of ideas before they start practicing with the exam tasks for part three where they have this uh two-way conversation right so here we have a number of questions which are related to education and technology because we're all living in this reality nowadays it's students will uh easily familiarize and uh will easily empathize with the the situation with the thing so we have a number of questions students can talk about them and then we can get share ideas get the answers etc and then one suggestion is for example using videos uh related to the topic one suggestion that they bring to you is this ted talk about uh a virtual lab which will revolutionize science class it's all about virtual reality so it's a very interesting video to watch so students watch the video and then they read the questions first and then talk about the questions watch the video and here we have a set of questions that they can use to answer while they are watching the videos then they can do the pair check then we can get the answers and um now together with the students we are going to construct the the task for which is very similar to the exam task so for example they can after going through all the stages they can complete this mind map with five benefits that virtual reality can have for education using the ideas discussed in class so they add their uh ideas to this mind map and then we can use the mind map for them to start having this conversation in pairs or in small groups and then practicing for part three and the idea is that they come to a conclusion or to a decision together but making sure that they talk about all the five uh topics before they decide on anything right so this is one idea to share so as i mentioned we are going to go back to smart goals because you know after all this time we had so much to to cover right sarah we had to kind of uh make decisions along the way uh preparing a lot then chopping a lot of the materials as well but we we have been giving you the paths for you to access all those resources so it's important that you set goals with your learners and that the goals are specific measurable achievable relevant time bound and in order to also help learners set goals this is an idea that you can use with the learners is a simple grid give them this or you can do it using your virtual room or a whiteboard so get the students to consider after you've given them feedback on their tasks get them to consider what they need to work on so then they can make their own decisions for example i need to work on building my vocabulary then get them to uh to set themselves a task so what is it that they're going to do to address this we're going to start a word list for example and what is the time frame for them to do that it's very important to negotiate deadlines with learners set deadlines negotiate deadlines so that they can keep on task and develop the skills they need to develop and you can agree together on those goals right we have so many resources to share with you right sarah it's not enough we have simple tests yeah absolutely sample tests with all the parts of the of the exam and again you can download the audio files to go with them you can also if you're thinking about doing the computer-based version of the test you can also try out the computer-based versions again through the website and just because i saw a question in the q a someone was concerned that they thought that the b2 first standard version so not the version for schools is going to disappear that's not the case you can choose between b2 first for schools obviously recommended for school-age students um but you can also choose the standard b2 first which have similar tasks just the context is slightly for first for schools is slightly aimed at the younger age group that's all but you can choose whichever you want and it's not going to disappear absolutely now one of the things that we can share with you as well is when we say for example the exam is b2 first for schools or c1 advanced those cfr levels they encompass a big a big number of competencies and skills so cambridge has organized the i mean a summary of those can do statements to each of the exams and you can find those can do summaries in the handbooks for teachers so this is an example of the can do summary for b2 first for schools you can download the handbooks for teachers right sarah absolutely and more as you can see on the on the on the slide posters as well so what about the posters those posters um i think i don't know i cannot judge which one is my favorite resource but i love those poses those poses for b2 uh first for schools they were designed uh with a theme in mind so each poster has a specific topic and you can together with the posters you can download those um class activities booklets where you can find ideas for you to use the posts with the learners both face-to-face classes or in an online environment so you have tips and uh because of the level a lot of the language you will find in the posts for b2 is phrasal verbs so you have the phrasal verbs you have the definitions and examples and you also have ideas that you can use in class to practice language one of them is the categories game where you can have cards with number of words so learners can put words in different categories you can use the cards as well to ask the learners to uh consider how many words can you think for x y zed and then they can try and find which words that you have on your card also you can have the option to get them to write sentences to practice uh those words in context so lots of ideas you can find there as well as lesson plans sarah can you remind us about the lesson plan yes when you go to my your my new english classroom this is the website you'll go into a section where you can find the lesson plans there and you've got self-access study materials to give to work with the students encourage independence and you've also got lesson plans for yourselves as teaching you could see they're available at different levels but we still have more we have the the platforms to help learners practice writing with write and improve this platform helps learners to develop writing skills because they can uh choose tasks in the platform then they can write their answers to those tasks and then the platform will immediately give them feedback on their writing skills and they have the opportunity to edit their work and resubmit a version and get more feedback on the the second version third version etc of their uh task right you have the option to uh practice writing with exam tasks and tasks which are not uh specifically exam related but they are just writing tasks but not necessarily similar to the uh exam right we also have the platform speak and improve which learners can use to practice speaking with a mobile phone or a computer and then they can start talking to the lovely robot sandy who will listen to them ask them questions and give feedback on their writing skills as well it's a great way to practice english sandy is lovely everyone loves her and of course if there are also the the webinars that have previously taken place and you can catch up on the one that alberta did on a2 and b1 preliminary schools if you missed that and of course there's a whole range of other webinars which you will find here and you will also find examples of the speaking tests with candidates which you can also use from the cambridge english tv youtube channel yeah wonderful cambridge english tv well each of our exams will have a preparation page section so if you choose the exam on our website you you have the tab called preparation or you can go to this link and click on one of those rectangles here this will give you access to a number of resources like the sample test that we have mentioned the links to english practice activities that also you can download the information for candidates which sarah mentioned here they have been redesigned with lots of tips for learners questions and answers do's and don'ts etc also you find out information and you can access our games and our social media channels and find out more about the official cambridge english preparation materials from cambridge university press in case you want to have more resources to use with your learners right and we also have the guides for assessment for the assessment of writing which we have mentioned uh a lot and we are really enthusiastic about them aren't we sarah yes and of course this is the uh your new classroom that i mentioned which is where you'll find those lesson plans and much more so lots to explore there and lots of free resources to to download in one to mention specifically is the teacher support pack um which is an interactive pdf and it will allow you to click directly to the resources from this page so we've chosen the older learner resources for b2 and c1 but you get them for the other resources as well i think we've got quest chime for like a couple of questions and then i think we'll have to stop yes okay i can see uh some some questions here um uh sarah about how do you assess speaking and writing i mean how do you give the points in each of these areas i think we have mentioned the the guides for assessing writing we don't have the guides for assessing speaking yet but there's a lot of information about uh assessing speaking skills in the handbooks for teachers which you can download from the site but please go to the writing guides and you will find a lot of information about how to better assess uh writing skills and for speaking go to the youtube channel and you'll be able to see the sample um tests with with candidates and there are also comments on their performance that you'll find there absolutely okay um i would like to have uh uh teacher handbooks where can i download them sarah where can i download well uh absolutely you showed the page but i think you will also find that you'll be you're going to be given links in the follow-up to this webinar where you'll be able to find them directly but yes if you go to our website go there are various ways to access the resources as you can see um but you will find them to download from my new classroom that i said at the beginning yeah well sarah i i would love to answer all those questions but we have run out of time we would like to thank everyone who has taken their time to attend this webinar to share their thoughts send their comments and questions and thank you very much indeed for giving up your time to be with us we hope we've given you a few resources to help you with your journey and with your students learning and thank you and we hope you're joining us for another webinar another time so thank you thank you sarah for being with me in this webinar and thank you alberto it's been great and just amazing that we're in two different hemispheres so i've really enjoyed that so thank you very much thank you it was lovely working with you thank you bye-bye to everyone bye-bye
2021-02-16