Assess speaking with exam criteria and official videos

Know the examiners’ criteria, calibrate by scoring official speaking test videos against Bands 1/3/5, teach specific subskills, and give balanced, specific, actionable feedback. (B2 First upwards.)

Strategies

1. Learn the criteria (at C1/C2, grammar and vocabulary split into Grammatical and Lexical Resource).
2. Calibrate: score sample videos, starting with Global Achievement.
3. Teach subskills: a “schwa hunt” (pronunciation); polite-disagreement role-play (interactive communication); 30-second mind-map talks (lexis).
4. Feedback: balanced, specific, actionable.

Limits

• Publisher blog: practical and partly promotional; no research cited. Verify criteria wording against the official teacher guides and handbooks.
• The criteria grouping differs from the A2/B1 post. Check the official guide.

Apply in my context (Claude)

• Teacher calibration with official videos is a strong CPD session for the FCE team, and it improves reliability of internal mock speaking scores across branches.

Connections

Plan KET and PET speaking around the assessment criteria · DELTA Module 1 Paper 2 - task-by-task technique (reliability)