Learners at some types of Upper Secondary Vocational Colleges also have the opportunity to take a plurilingual oral exam.
At the moment, this exam combines the mandatory school subject of English with a mandatory second foreign language (e.g. French, Italian, Spanish, Russian) presently taught at Austrian schools and chosen by the student. As this concept is rather new to the majority of Austrian teachers, the Framework for Designing and Implementing Plurilingual Oral Exams was developed. It is an attempt to encourage teachers and learners to work on plurilingual competences and to embrace the challenge of plurilingual exams; it does, by no means, pretend to cover the full complexity of task design and assessment.
Please download the whole framework for a full picture of test specifications, assessment grid and task design.
The exam consists of a sustained monologue and an interactive dialogue. The candidate will demonstrate two different types of speech – from planned to spontaneous – in two foreign languages. Paramount for the assessment is the successful communication in a plurilingual context.
Both examiners have one vote and must agree on a joint final result. The following criteria must be taken into consideration:
Two examples of plurlilingual exam papers can be found in the brochure. For our Austrian students the rubrics would always be in the language of instruction (German). The input/impulses which accompany the exam papers would usually also be in the language of instruction, but actually could be in any one of the languages used in the exam, depending on the situation.
For our international readers we have translated the tasks into English and give additional information when necessary.