Conversation
Students should:
- be prepared to talk about a variety of topics relating to their personal world
- answer the question asked and not just memorise responses on topics and recite them irrespective of the question
- express their ideas and opinions and justify their point of view
- manipulate the language to fulfil the requirements of the question
- avoid repetition of the same vocabulary, phrases and expressions.
In better responses, students were able to:
- use correct sentence structure
- apply correct subject verb agreement to enhance meaning
- answer with a range of appropriate expressions using a variety of vocabulary, adjectives, verbs, sentence structures and grammar
- offer opinions and support their points of view by describing, explaining and justifying
- respond in the tense required by the question
- respond in a fluent and confident manner, and provide relevant information when answering the examiner’s questions.
Areas for students to improve include:
- avoid using English structures with Maltese expressions and phrases.
Discussion
Students should:
- choose a topic that has good quality sources available
- prepare for the discussion by researching at least three texts
- ensure that one of the texts is a literary source
- demonstrate evidence of their research into their topic and the texts that they source
- express and justify opinions and points of view on the in-depth study topic
- apply research findings to support their conclusions
- refer to their texts to analyse, evaluate and reflect on their topic.
In better responses, students were able to:
- refer to all their texts to support their point of view on issues connected with topic of in-depth study
- identify by title and author the sources used in the research
- refer to at least three texts, one of which is a literary text
- present a point of view and support it with evidence from the texts
- demonstrate a link between research and conclusions drawn
- respond appropriately to the questions asked
- compare and contrast information and ideas presented in texts
- synthesise information researched and use it to support their point of view
- demonstrate a high level of grammatical accuracy and use a variety of vocabulary and sentence structures.
Areas for students to improve include:
- avoiding simply recounting information obtained from texts
- avoiding anecdotal evidence or personal experience as a source of reference.
