Today I want to pass along a few details from the Virtual Seminar for English Language Teachers hosted by ETS last night.

One of the presenters provided new details about how the speaking questions are scored. He prefaced these details by sharing a sample type 3 speaking question.  Here is the reading part:

And here is a transcript of the listening part:

 

A standard question, right?

Then we were shown the “answer sheet” that is given to raters so they know how to assess topic development.  This is new information.  Here it is:

That’s interesting, right?  My assessment of this is that for an answer to receive a full score for topic development it must explicitly or implicitly reference the term and its definition.  It must also broadly summarize the example.  And then it must include just two of the four main details given in the example.  The last part is new to me.  Generally, I push students to include all of the details.  Perhaps I should reassess my teaching methods.

There you go, teachers.  Some new information about the TOEFL… in 2022.

A few questions remain:

  • Is this always the case?  Will there always be four main details in the example?  Will we always need to include just two of them?  Probably not.  Surely there are cases where more than two details are required.
  • How does this work in lectures which have two totally unique examples?  Often the reading is about a biological feature in animals, while the lecture describes two different animals that have this feature.  Is it okay to ignore one of them?  Probably not.
  • Can any of this learning be applied to TOEFL Speaking question four?  Probably not.
  • Does order matter?  Probably not.

 

 

 

Subscribe
Notify of

2 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments