Six Memorised Sentences and a Silent Partner
Zsófi and Tamás take the paired speaking exam: 12–14 minutes, including a 4-minute interaction task in which they must choose three items for a class trip from a list (tent, first-aid kit, board game, map, portable speaker). Zsófi has memorised six sentences about her hobbies and reuses them when asked about the trip. In the interaction she names her three choices in about 20 seconds, then stops and waits. She asks Tamás nothing and does not respond when he suggests a map. Her speech is fast, around 190 words per minute, and she fills gaps with “hát” and “izé”. When the examiner asks “Why a tent?”, she repeats “Because a tent is good”. Tamás has sensible ideas but is interrupted twice and then goes quiet.
1. Map her symptoms onto the speaking criteria and identify the one criterion that is most damaged. Justify the choice.
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Mapping
- Task achievement: memorised hobby sentences do not answer the trip question; “because a tent is good” is an unsupported opinion.
- Interaction: she neither asks nor responds; the exchange is two monologues.
- Fluency: 190 wpm is not fluency but speed, and “hát / izé” shows planning happening out loud.
- Lexical resource: limited to safe generic words; no negotiation language.
- Pronunciation: not the main issue from the evidence given.
Most damaged: interaction. In a paired task it is assessed separately, and her failure is structural rather than lexical: a candidate with simple vocabulary who asks, answers and builds would score well here, while she does not enter the exchange at all. Task achievement is a close second, but it is partly a consequence of the memorised material.
2. Give her three concrete interaction moves with example utterances she could use in the trip task.
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- Invite: “What do you think we need most?” or “Which three would you take?” This creates a turn for Tamás and costs one sentence.
- Respond and build: “A map is a good idea - we could get lost on the way. Shall we take that instead of the speaker?” This acknowledges his suggestion, gives a reason, and moves the decision forward. It directly repairs her failure to react to “map”.
- Negotiate or concede: “I’d rather take the tent, but the first-aid kit is more important. What about you?” Disagreeing politely is a scored function, not a risk.
Why these three: each one converts a monologue into an exchange, uses language she already controls, and gives the examiner evidence for interaction and task achievement at the same time. She should practise them as fixed frames, not as a script.
3. Tamás has now said nothing for ten seconds. What should she do, and what is not her job?
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Do: use one prompt and then a specific one - “Tamás, tent or first-aid kit first?” A named, closed question is easier to answer than “What do you think?”. If he still does not answer, state a decision and leave a space: “OK, I’d take the first-aid kit because someone always gets hurt. Do you agree?”
Not her job: to fill every silence, to carry the whole task, or to interview him for the examiner. The examiner manages the pairing and can prompt; a candidate who talks continuously to cover a quiet partner loses marks for interaction just as surely as one who says nothing.
Reasoning: the criterion rewards managing an exchange, including silence, with appropriate turn-taking. One good prompt plus one fallback decision shows exactly that, and it protects her own task achievement if the discussion has to move on.