2014
ELL S UMMER I NSTITUTE SECTION
TOEFL iBT Speaking
R EQUIREMENTS FOR SAVING AND SUBMITTING DOCUMENTS
1.
Filename: Save your document with your first and last name plus the ELL Summer Institute section and the year “2014”.

Example: Jane Doe TOEFL iBT Speaking 2014.doc
2.
Identifying Info: Your name should not appear anywhere inside the document. It should only appear in the filename.
3.
Submission Format: Create a separate Word document for your work sample. Do not include the instructional material or the accompanying socialization source material in your submission. Include both your Listening/Speaking item and your
Reading/Listening/Speaking item in your document. Insert a page break between the two assignments.
OVERVIEW
The TOEFL iBT
®
Speaking test is designed to evaluate the English speaking proficiency of students whose native language is not English but who want to pursue undergraduate or graduate study in an English-speaking context. The Speaking test is one of four sections of the TOEFL iBT test. In the TOEFL Speaking section, examinees are asked to speak in response to material that they read and/or hear.
During the ELL Summer Institute, Speaking interns will write speaking prompts on topics that are familiar to students. Interns will also research academic or campus-based topics and write various kinds of scripts used in the Speaking test. The Speaking interns might also continue after the Summer Institute in a freelance capacity as off-site writers of Speaking items.
For this work sample, you will write two samples of Speaking items that are like those that appear in the Speaking section of the TOEFL test. A complete item consists of a stimulus, which is the material the examinee hears or reads; a prompt, which is the instruction that indicates the kind of spoken response the examinee is to make to the stimulus; and the key points, which are used by scorers as guides to the kinds of responses a high-ability examinee should make. The work samples are described as follows.
W
ORK SAMPLE TASKS
Part I: A Listening/Speaking Item

The listening/speaking stimulus you are asked to write consists of a self-contained excerpt from an academic lecture, similar to a lecture a student would hear at a university. The stimulus is roughly 230 to 280 words in length. Examinees listen to the lecture stimulus and are then directed to give a spoken summary of the main points of the lecture. The listening/speaking item evaluates an examinee’s ability to speak about the content of an academic lecture.
You will find source material at the end of this packet to use in developing this item.
Item Specifications
In a lecture, the professor does the following.

Introduces a concept or claim

Elaborates the concept or claim by presenting two aspects, perspectives, parts, or stages that help further characterize or explain the concept or claim

Illustrates each of the two differentiating aspects, perspectives, parts, or stages with a concrete, vivid example
Example of a Listening/Speaking Item
The following lecture script is an example of an academic listening/speaking item. The lecture takes place in a biology class. In the script, underlining indicates spoken emphasis. The scripts are recorded by professional readers.
Lecture/ stimulus
(script)
Human beings aren’t the only animals that use tools. It’s generally recognized that other animals use tools as well . . . use them naturally, in the wild, without any human instruction. But when can we say that an object is a tool? Well, it depends on your definition of a tool. And in fact, there are two competing definitions—a narrow definition and a broad one.
The narrow definition says that a tool is an object that’s used to perform a specific task . . . but not just any object. To be a tool, according to the narrow definition, the object’s gotta be purposefully changed or shaped by the animal, or human, so that it can be used that way. It’s an object that’s made. Wild chimpanzees use sticks to dig insects out of their nests . . . but most sticks lying around won’t do the job . . . they might be too thick, for example. So the sticks have to be sharpened so they’ll fit into the hole in an ant hill or the insect nest. The chimp pulls off the leaves and chews the stick and trims it down that way until it’s the right size. The chimp doesn’t just find the stick . . . it . . . you could say it makes it in a way.
But the broad definition says an object doesn’t have to be modified to be considered a tool. The broad definition says a tool is any object that’s used to perform a specific task. For example, an elephant will sometimes use a stick to

scratch its back . . . it just picks up a stick from the ground and scratches its back with it . . . . It doesn’t modify the stick, it uses it just as it’s found. And it’s a tool, under the broad definition; but under the narrow definition it’s not because, well, the elephant doesn’t change it in any way.
Prompt
Key points
Using points and examples from the talk, describe the two different definitions of tools given by the professor.
Narrow definition of tool: an object that has been purposefully changed or shaped or somehow made by an animal or human in order to perform a specific task. For example, when chimps use sticks to find insects, they first modify the sticks by pulling off leaves and sharpening them. They cannot use just any stick.
Broad definition of tool: any object that is used to perform a specific task. It does not have to be modified (it can be used as found). For example, elephants use sticks to scratch their backs, but they use those objects just as they find them and do not modify them. Such sticks are not tools under the narrow definition.
Additional Example of a Academic Listening/Speaking Item
The following lecture is another example of a listening/speaking item. The lecture takes place in an education class. In a script, italicized words in brackets indicate recording directions for the professional reader.
Lecture/ stimulus
(script)
One of the hardest parts of teaching is keeping your students’ attention.
Now, the key to doing this is understanding the concept of attention.
Basically, there are two types of attention.
The first type is active. Active attention is voluntary—it’s when you intentionally make yourself focus on something. And since it requires effort, it’s hard to keep up for a long time. OK, so um, let’s say you’re teaching a—a biology class. And today’s topic is frogs. Alright, you’re standing at the front of the room and lecturing: [ in a boring, robotic voice—“a” is pronounced “ay”
] “A frog is a type of animal known as an amphibian . . . .” Well, this isn’t necessarily going to keep the students’ interest. But most of them will force themselves to pay active attention to your lecture . . . but it’s only a matter of time before they get distracted.
Now, the other type of attention is passive attention—when it’s involuntary. Passive attention requires no effort, because it happens

Prompt naturally. If something’s really interesting, students don’t have to force themselves to pay attention to it—they do it without even thinking about it.
So back to our biology lecture. You start talking about frogs, and then you pull a live frog out of your briefcase. You’re describing it while you hold it up . . . show the students how long its legs are and how they’re used for jumping, for example. Then maybe you even let the frog jump around a bit on the desk or the floor. In this case, by doing something unexpected . . . something more engaging, you can tap into their passive attention. And it can last much longer than active attention; as long as the frog’s still there, your students will be interested.
Using points and examples from the talk, explain the difference between active and passive attention.
Key points Active attention is voluntary; it occurs when people force themselves to pay attention to something. A dry, boring lecture about frogs will require students to pay active attention, but they will not be able to maintain their attention for long.
Passive attention is involuntary; it occurs when people are naturally interested in the material at hand, and it requires no effort. If a teacher pulls out a live frog, the students’ passive attention can be maintained.
Work Sample Assignment for the Listening/Speaking Item
Use the accompanying source material on socialization to construct an academic listening/speaking item of your own. The item should include a stimulus, a prompt, and a sample response. Do not attempt an exhaustive synthesis of the sources. Rather, the task is to find material within the source that meets the requirements of the item. The two examples in your items should be based on the source material as well as your own background knowledge.
In writing your lecture, keep the following in mind.

The examinee will hear the lecture only once and will not see the script. Unnecessary details should therefore be kept to a minimum so as not to tax a test taker’s memory.

The purpose of the item is to determine how well test takers can speak, not to test their listening proficiency (a separate section of the TOEFL test). Consequently, the structure and exposition of the lecture need to be very clear. The main idea or topic, the two elaborated aspects, and their respective exemplifications need to be transparent on a single hearing. The lecture should be kept simple, should stay focused, and should be memorable.

 The lecture’s style and syntax should reflect spoken academic language. For example, there can be hesitations or filler words (“um,” “uh,” etc.), contractions, and even false starts. However, be careful that such aspects do not interfere with communicating the lecture.

The central topic should be clearly identified, and the relationship between the main topic and its two aspects, perspectives, parts, and stages should also be presented clearly.

The two examples should be concrete and vivid.
Before submitting your writing sample, you might find it helpful to test your lecture by asking someone to record a response to it.
Part II: A Reading/Listening/Speaking Item
The reading/listening/speaking item you are asked to write consists of a reading passage about a campus-related issue and a listening stimulus in which speakers comment on the issue presented in the reading. The examinee first reads the passage, then listens to the commentary, and finally, in accordance with the prompt, provides a spoken response.
You will find your own source for this item.
Specifications
Reading passage
The reading passage is a short passage of 75 to 100 words that can be read and processed within
45 seconds. It can be an announcement, a memo, the opening paragraph of an editorial or news article from a campus newspaper, and the like.
The reading passage briefly sets forth a campus-related issue by describing a proposed or intended plan or course of action along with the rationale for it, the way the example below about a campus bus service does.
The reading passage should be focused, making only two points in support of the plan or course of action. The situations and rationales or opinions presented in the reading should not be so outlandish or extreme that the arguments against them are obvious before one has even heard the commentary of the listening stimulus.
The plan or course of action and supporting rationale should be accessible to an international audience and not presume familiarity with North American university parlance or procedures.
Additionally, plan or the course of action should be sensitive to the customs and beliefs of an international audience. For instance, do not include references to romantic relationships, the consumption of alcohol/drugs, campus parties, campus security issues, or religious holidays.
Listening stimulus

The listening stimulus is a response to the reading passage in the form of a conversation between two people (one man and one woman). One of the two interlocutors is the primary speaker, and the other serves mainly as a foil to draw out the primary speaker’s opinions. The language should be in the form of spontaneous, nonacademic conversation.
Relationship between content of the reading passage and the conversation
The purpose of the reading/listening/speaking item is to see how well the test taker integrates in spoken English certain information from two different sources. Therefore, the listening stimulus of the item should be constructed in such a way that the test taker cannot derive the full answer from the listening stimulus without incorporating material from the reading passage. Neither speaker in the listening passage should restate the points made in the reading. In effect, each of the speakers in the conversation assumes that the other is familiar with the content of the reading.
Thus, in order to follow the conversation and respond according to the prompt, the examinee will need to integrate the content of the reading passage with that of the conversation.
In the conversation you write, the primary speaker should disagree with the proposal or opinion in the reading passage. The primary speaker should engage the rationale of the reading by making two concise points that directly address the two reasons given in the reading the way the male speaker does in the example that follows. The speaker may also introduce new information, but the new material must serve to directly undermine the position or rationale of the reading passage.
Example of a Reading/Listening/Speaking Campus-based Item
Reading passage
(an article from a university newspaper)
Bus Service Elimination Planned
The university has decided to discontinue its free bus service for students.
The reasons given for this decision are that few students ride the buses and the buses are expensive to operate. Currently, the buses run from the center of campus past university buildings and through some of the neighborhoods surrounding the campus. The money saved by eliminating the bus service will be used to expand the overcrowded student parking lots.
Listening stimulus
(script of a conversation between two students discussing the article)
(Man) I don’t like the university’s plan.
(Woman) Really? I’ve ridden those buses, and sometimes there were only a few people on the bus. It did seem like kind of a waste.
(Man) I see your point. But I think the problem is that the route’s out of date. It only goes through the neighborhoods that’ve gotten too expensive for students to live in. It’s ridiculous that they haven’t already changed the

Prompt route—you know, so it goes where most off-campus students live now. I bet if they did that, they’d get plenty of students riding those buses.
(Woman) OK, but at least what they’d do with the money they’d save is a good thing. Sometimes it’s really tough to find a space in the student lots .
. . .
(Man) That’s the other part I don’t like, actually, because it’s just gonna encourage more students to drive on campus.
(Woman) Because there’ll be more parking?
(Man) Yeah, and that’ll just add to the noise around campus and create more traffic . . . and that’ll increase the need for more parking spaces . . .
(Woman) Yeah, I guess I can see your point. There are a lot of cars on campus already.
(Man) Right. And this would just make it worse. It’s noisy enough as it is now.
The man expresses his opinion of the university’s plan. Briefly summarize the plan. Then state his opinion about the plan and explain the reasons he gives for holding that opinion.
Key points
The man disagrees with the university’s plan to discontinue its free bus service.
He thinks the current route is responsible for there not being many riders on the bus (a reason the university gives for discontinuing the service), and rerouting the bus through neighborhoods where students live would likely increase the number of riders.
He also thinks that building more parking lots will encourage more people to drive on campus and increase traffic/noise (and will create the need for more parking spaces).
Work Sample Assignment for the Reading/Listening/Speaking Item
Write a reading/listening/speaking item of the type described. Include a reading passage, a listening stimulus (conversation), a prompt, and a sample response. You may find it helpful to read through university campus newspapers or to check university Web pages for ideas for a campus-related issue that could be used as a source for your reading passage.

As you write, keep in mind the following considerations.

Setting.
Is the context clear and plausible? Is the scenario realistic and nontrivial? Is the language in the listening passage characteristic of spoken English?

Content.
Are the reasons provided in the reading passage logical and sensible? Is the reaction in the listening passage plausible?

Integration.
Is integration of the reading and listening passages necessary to answer the prompt, or is the item answerable only by summarizing the listening?

Accessibility.
Is the information presented accessible to an international student?
Before submitting your writing sample, you might find it helpful to try it out by asking a native speaker of English to give a spoken response to your prompt after reading your reading passage
(within 45 seconds) and after listening to a dramatization of your listening script.
S
OURCE MATERIAL FOR
P
ART
I
Use the following information as source material to as the basis your academic listening/speaking item.
Socialization : the process by which, through contact with other human beings, one becomes a self-aware, knowledgeable human being, skilled in the ways of a given culture and environment
Agencies of Socialization
Agencies of socialization are structured groups or contexts within which significant processes of socialization occur. Such agencies also influence gender socialization: the learning of male roles versus female roles.

Primary socialization occurs in infancy and childhood and is the most intense period of cultural learning. Family is the main agent of socialization during this phase.

Secondary socialization takes place later in childhood and into maturity. Main agents of socialization include schools, peer groups, organizations, the media, and the workplace.

The family is the principal socializing agency of the child during infancy.

Schools are institutions in which students pursue a definite curriculum of subjects.
Students also learn about certain subtle behavioral expectations that will later be related to their job experience.

Peer relationships are social group attachments among children of similar age and with similar social backgrounds.


Mass media include printed documents, radio, television, recordings, and videos. Few societies in current times remain completely untouched by mass media.
 Work is an area that may require major adjustments in a person’s outlook or behavior.
Through the process of individualization, individuals learn about social roles—those socially defined expectations that a person in a given social position accepts and conforms to.
In terms of psychology, socialization is the process by which children and others adopt the behavior patterns of the culture that surrounds them.
Sociologists may distinguish between:

Primary socialization, which is the upbringing of a dependent infant and initiation into a mother tongue

Secondary socialization, which consists of training for specialist roles in society through education systems and social groups by building on the basic assumed primary socialization
Creating the Person
“Socialization” is the term sociologists use to describe the ways people learn to conform to their society’s norms, values, and roles. People develop their own unique personalities as a result of the learning they gain from parents, siblings, relatives, peers, teachers, mentors, and all of the other people who influence them throughout their lives. From the viewpoint of society as a whole, however, what is important about the process of socialization is that people learn to behave according to the norms of their culture. How people learn to behave according to cultural norms—that is, the way they learn their culture—makes possible the transmission of culture from one generation to the next. In this way the culture is “reproduced” in the next generation.
Socialization occurs throughout life as the individual learns new norms within new groups and in new situations. However, for purposes of analysis, socialization can be divided into three major phases. The first is primary socialization, which refers to all the ways a newborn individual gets molded into a social being—that is, into a growing person who can interact with others according to the expectations of society. Primary socialization occurs within the family and other intimate groups in the child’s social environment. Secondary socialization occurs in later childhood and adolescence, when the child leaves the family for schooling and comes under the influence of adults and peers outside the household and the immediate family. Adult socialization is a third stage, in which a person learns the norms associated with such new statuses as wife, husband, journalist, programmer, grandparent, or nursing-home patient.
There are a number of unresolved and highly controversial issues surrounding the study of socialization. First, what is the relative strength of biological—meaning, genetic— characteristics and of social influences in the creation of a person? This issue, often referred to as

the nature/nurture problem, is raised most strikingly by a certain case involving triplets. Each of the three young men had been brought up in a different home, and yet each had similar mannerisms, similar—and very positive—outlooks on life, vibrant senses of humor, and even the same way of expressing ideas. This suggests that biological influences can play extremely important parts in forming an adult’s personality, especially when the basic qualities of love, security, and stead nurturance are present in the home environment, as they seem to have been for each of those triplets.
A second controversy in the study of socialization involves the question of how a person’s sense of self becomes established. What influences are exerted by others, and how do they form an individual’s sense of self? How do people learn to conform to society’s norms and to take the roles that society makes available to them? This process is often referred to as the social construction of the self.
Third, how do different social environments—such as that of an affluent suburban school or of a slum neighborhood or of a military boot camp—influence socialization? That is, how-do different social environments, especially the intimate environments of home and family, produce different kinds of people?
Fourth, what are the limits on what socialization can accomplish for individuals who experience extremes of deprivation and abuse, and what are the influences throughout the life of different agencies of socialization and different experiences with other people?
The fifth and final major subject is gender socialization, which refers to the ways we become the girls and boys and, gradually, the men and women of our society and culture. All of the controversies over whether behavior is innate or learned are intensified when we consider the differences and similarities in the socialization of males and females.
In this chapter we explore each of these questions in detail. We will be concerned primarily with the socialization of so-called normal members of society—people who are able to perform roles, to feel empathy for others, to express emotions and yet control feelings that are antisocial, to nurture others, and to raise children who will in turn be able to nurture and to take on new roles as they grow older. But the failures of socialization can also tell us a great deal about what is involved in creating the social being…
Culture and Socialization
How individuals come to master language as well as develop the other capacities that make us human is referred to as socialization. Socialization is the process whereby helpless infants gradually become self-aware, knowledgeable people, skilled in the ways of the culture into which they are born. Socialization is not a kind of cultural programming whereby children passively absorb the influences they come into contact with. Even the most recent newborn infants have needs or demands that affect the behavior of those responsible for their care: a child is from the beginning an active being.

Socialization connects the different generations to one another. The birth of a child alters the lives of those responsible for that child’s upbringing—and those responsible parties themselves also therefore undergo new learning experiences. Parenting usually ties the activities of adults to children for the remainder of the lives of both. Older people remain parents when they become grandparents, of course, thus forgoing another set of relationships connecting different generations with each other. Although the process of cultural learning is much more intense in infancy and early childhood than it is later, learning and adjustment continue throughout the whole life cycle.
Agencies of Socialization
We can refer to the groups or social contacts within which significant processes of socialization occur as agencies of socialization. In all cultures, the family is the main socializing agency of a child during infancy. But at later stages of an individual’s life, other socializing agencies come into play.
The Family
In modem societies, most early socialization occurs within a small-scale family context. The mother is almost always the most important individual in the child’s early life. The majority of
American children spend their early years with a parent or parents and one or two siblings. In other cultures, by contrast, aunts, uncles, and grandchildren are often part of the same household and help look after even young infants. And within United States society, there are many variations in the makeup of families. Some infants are brought up in single-parent households; some are cared for by two pairs of mothers and fathers (divorced parents and stepparents). A small number are brought up by homosexual parents. The range of contacts an infant experiences is thus by no means standard across or within cultures.
Peer Relationships
Another socializing agency is the peer group. Peer groups consist of children of a similar age. In some cultures, particularly small traditional societies, peer groups are formalized as age grades and normally confined to males. Often there are specific ceremonies or rites that mark the transition of men from one age-grade to another. Those within a particular age grade generally maintain close and friendly connections throughout their lives. A typical set of age grades consists of childhood, junior warriorhood, senior warriorhood, junior elderhood, and senior elderhood. Men move through these grades not as individuals but as whole groups.
The family’s importance in socialization is obvious, since the experience of the infant and young child is shaped more or less exclusively within the family. It is less apparent, especially to those who live in Western societies, how significant peer groups are. Yet even without formal age grades, children older than four or five years of age usually spend a great deal of time in the company of friends the same age. Given the high proportion of women now in the workforce, whose young children play together in day care centers, peer relations are even more important today than before.
Particularly in geographic areas without much mobility, individuals may be members of the same informal clique or may keep the same group of friends for all of their lives. Even when they do

not, peer relations are likely to have a significant impact beyond childhood and adolescence.
Informal groups of people of similar ages—at work and in other situations—are usually of enduring importance in shaping individuals’ attitudes and behaviors.
Schools
Another important socializing agency is the school. Schooling is a formal process, and students pursue a definite curriculum of subjects, yet schools are agencies of socialization in more-subtle respects. Children are expected to remain quiet in class, to be punctual for lessons, and to observe certain rules of school discipline. And they are required to accept and respond to the authority of the teaching staff. Teachers’ reactions also affect the expectations children have of themselves, and those expectations in turn become linked to the children’s eventual job experiences once they leave school. Peer groups are often formed at school, and the system of keeping children in classes according to age reinforces peer groups’ impact.
Mass media
Newspapers, periodicals, and journals flourished in the West from the early 1800s onward, but they were confined to a fairly small readership. It was not until a century later that such printed materials became part of the daily experience of mill ions of people, influencing their attitudes and opinions.