• Body language
• Timing
• Asking and answering questions

Body language is very important to successful oral communication-speaking and listening-whether taking part in a group interaction or in making a presentation to classmates, parents, teachers, etc. The kinds of body language we use in the two kinds of situations are a bit different.

First, what is body language?

The key aspects of body language are:

• gaze (eye contact with individuals; looking around a group to show awareness of the audience and to create a feeling of inclusion; NOT looking at others when speaking creates a very negative impression);
  
  
• facial expression (positive feeling/negative feeling [smile/frown]; taut facial muscles instead of lax ones [taut suggests interest and lax suggests detachment]; strength of facial expression [the larger the audience, the more 'dramatic' or obvious expressions needs to be]);
  
  
• head movement (nodding indicates interest and encouragement; absence of head movement suggests lack of attention);
  
  
• body direction (leaning forward suggests participation, leaning back suggests detachment, lack of interest, lack of confidence).

A score for body language comes from the way the student puts all these aspects together and maintains good body language all the way through the task. Students need to learn that the more they rely on notes or memorised material, the weaker their body language is likely to be (see also Domain III).

Timing

Timing is important to getting any task done well; but when the task is being assessed it's even more important. In the HKCE English oral language SBA tasks each student has a limited amount of time to do the task: somewhere around 2-4 minutes for an individual presentation, and a fair share of 3 minutes multiplied by the number of students taking part in a group interaction. If one student takes too long for an individual presentation the audience may get bored; if the student is too brief s/he won't be able to give enough ideas or support. If a student takes too long for his/her turns in a group interaction, groupmates will feel that they haven't had their own proper shares; if a student contributes too little s/he makes the other group members work harder, and doesn’t show enough evidence that s/he can participate in group discussion.

Asking/responding to questions

Teachers should refer to the Framework of Guiding Questions (see Appendix VI on the Introductory DVD) to see the kinds of questions that can be asked, and how these may be adapted to students of different language levels. Students scoring at 4 or higher are expected to be able to show some degree of ability to ask useful questions in a group discussion, and to answer questions their groupmates ask about what they say in their own turns. Students scoring 3 or 4 may ask simple questions, but that is appropriate to their level.

Students scoring at 5 or 6 on an individual presentation should show that they can elicit responses from the audience, can answer them if they are clearly-formulated, or that they can make a suitable comment on a point made.