Another weekend, so, fortified with two cups of coffee I made the long journey (about 10 minutes, actually) to another session for teachers at the British Council's main building on Paseo Martinez Campos. Here it is at 1015 on Saturday morning!
This morning there was some more useful information direct from the horse's mouth about the updated writing exam.
Marking your work
There was an excellent summary of how your marks are decided. To summarise for you:
2 points - unsatisfactory because it's not easy to understand in parts and/or you've not answered the question in some way
3 points - satisfactory because your errors don't affect communication
4 points - your writing makes a postive effect on the reader
5 points - you manage a very positve effect because you've been ambitious in your language
Preparing to write
The presenter (who is hiding behind the lady in the black coat in the next picture!) suggested you always ask yourself 4 questions about any task:
- What type of text do they want?
- Who's going to read it?
- What's it about?
- What must it say?
Common Problems
Finally, she gave us a list of examples of reasons why candidates give poor answers.
- People do the wrong task (see number 1 above)
- people fail to include everything the quiestion asks for (see number 4 above!)
- not enough suitable vocabulary for the topic of the question
- too much language copied directly from the question in the set question
Miles & I will have a copy of some materials from this session soon which we'll be able to pass on to you during the course.
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