Speaking About Academic Course Content

GOOD level (3.5-4) presupposes you can easily and clearly develop topics discussed at the lectures (usually at the first years of the university or college study) as well as other academic related themes. Your grammar, vocabulary and sentence structure patterns are diverse, and you make only minor inaccuracies.

A tip for improvement: record yourself summarizing an article, then write down what you have recorded. Read your notes and think of other ways of expressing the ideas.

At FAIR level of speaking skills (2.5-3.0) you are able to develop topics about academic reading and lecture materials clearly, however, not always accurately and phonetically correct. Your grammar and vocabulary correspond to the topic, but sometimes not sufficient as well as intonation patterns may be inappropriate.

Practice talking on short newspaper articles. First, write down some key words from the article, then make up several questions to the article content and then answer the questions including the topical words you’ve written down. Record your answers for better self-evaluation.

LIMITED score (1.5-2.0) means that you respond in a vague and general way to the topic not including enough relevant details and information about the academic studying process, activities, etc. Besides, the mistakes you make often cause distraction to the listeners.

To improve your speaking skills, listen to weather reports writing down the active vocabulary you can use, read newspaper editorials in English. Then share the information you have read and heard with a friend (in English). Enrich your academic vocabulary by visiting lectures and taking notes, then retelling to somebody what the lecture was about using the words you have written down.

If you score WEAK (0-1.0) you can hardly speak on the topic, and your response confuses the listeners with plentiful mistakes.

The points for your consideration are improvements in your grammar and vocabulary. For this study the basic grammar rules to make your speech grammatically correct, and as you learn new words and phrases, practise saying them aloud (you may as well record yourself), so that you can hear what you said incorrectly (not the way native speakers say).