Oral: repairing breakdown without leaving Italian
Candidate: Sofia. Oral exam, 10 minutes, two parts. Part 1: describe a photograph of a street market for about two minutes. Part 2: role-play at a station ticket office - buy a return ticket to Verona, ask about departure times, and ask why the 17:10 train is marked with an asterisk. Her prepared opener is 'Vorrei un biglietto per Verona, per favore.'
At the counter the examiner says 'Andata o andata e ritorno?' Sofia does not know the phrase, says 'Sì, sì' and moves on. Later the examiner uses the word 'sciopero'; she does not recognise it, falls silent for six seconds, then says in English 'Sorry, I don't know this word.' In Part 1 she avoids the stalls altogether because she cannot recall 'bancarella', and lists colours for 40 seconds instead. Her teacher has told her that fluency and interaction carry marks. She has four weeks.
1. Give her the repair tools for the ticket-office moment and for the unknown word, with the reasoning behind each.
Read the worked answer
'Andata o andata e ritorno?' is answerable without knowing the phrase, but only if she reacts instead of agreeing: 'Scusi, non ho capito. Può ripetere più lentamente?' followed by 'Solo andata' or 'Cosa vuol dire...?'. The examiner will rephrase, and the exchange stays in Italian. Agreeing blindly ('Sì, sì') risks buying the wrong ticket and earns nothing.
Three repair tools worth drilling to automaticity: 'Scusi, non ho capito'; 'Può ripetere, per favore?'; 'Come si dice... in italiano?'. For 'sciopero' the correct move is circumlocution plus a question, not apology: 'Non conosco questa parola. È un problema per il treno?' - which keeps the transaction alive and produces an explanation.
The English sentence is the one genuinely costly move: it takes the exchange out of the target language and shows the examiner nothing about her Italian. Six seconds of silence is survivable; a switch to English is scored as breakdown. Rehearse the three phrases aloud until they arrive before the panic does.
2. Show how she should describe the stalls without the word 'bancarella'.
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Use a three-step ladder.
- Superordinate: 'Sono dei piccoli negozi, dei posti...'
- Function: '...dove si compra la frutta e la verdura.'
- Description: '...con il tetto rosso, in mezzo alla strada, sotto il sole.'
One of the three normally triggers the word from the examiner or makes the meaning clear without it: 'Qui ci sono delle bancarelle - dei piccoli posti dove vendono la frutta, sotto i tetti colorati.'
She should also build a fixed frame before the exam so that a gap becomes a slot rather than a stoppage: foreground and background ('In primo piano... sullo sfondo...'), quantity ('ci sono molte persone, molta frutta'), activity ('la gente compra, parla, cammina'), and one opinion ('Secondo me è un mercato vivo'). Listing colours for 40 seconds costs range and interaction marks: the descriptors exist, but nothing is being said about people or activity, and description is what Part 1 rewards.
3. How should she balance risk-taking against accuracy in the four weeks left?
Read the worked answer
In an oral, an error inside a delivered message costs less than a message not delivered. Her behaviour shows the opposite instinct: she prefers safe listing to risky description, and silence to a wrong guess.
The correction is to rehearse risk in low-stakes conditions - record two minutes on a new photograph each day, allowing up to three errors but no English and no silence longer than three seconds - then listen back for the repairs she actually managed. Four or five recordings are enough to show her that a paraphrase works.
Grammar repair should be narrow and oral: the passato prossimo forms she uses most, and 'c'è' versus 'sono'. Not a general revision of articles, which she can monitor in writing but not in speech. In the exam she should ask for repetition freely (it is not penalised), accept imperfect sentences, and complete all three role-play sub-tasks, because task completion is what the interaction marks actually reward.