Practice makes...?

Official URL: http://tea.iatefl.org/

One vivid memory from my time as a student was a quirk of a lecturer of mine, who would let us know that our performance in presentations was inadequate by writing ‘5P’ on a piece of paper and handing it to us. The term 5P referred to ‘plenty of practice prevents poor performance.’ Receiving a 5P meant that your performance wasn’t up to scratch and that you should have practiced more. I’m happy to report that I was never the recipient of such a note. The five Ps can of course be applied to any number of contexts throughout our lives, but what do they mean in language learning, and in the assessment of speaking in particular? In what situations do we want our students to practice speaking, and what are the implications on the testing of a learner’s spoken skills? In my presentation I explored the notion of learners practicing the assessment format for speaking, what practice they are exposed to and their perceptions of how this did or did not benefit them in their exam performance. The findings were drawn from the responses given by students attending the Sabancı University School of languages preparatory English program.