The Revised ISE Trinity College London Exam

by Valerie Noakes , LiffeyGroup educator

Firma "invitada" recomendada por Julio Morales

Trinity College London has revised its ISE exam  (Integrated Skills in English) in response to changes in the needs of English language students today. The exam has been modified to test and demonstrate the English language skills of a person required to use English in a professional or academic environment. Naturally the teaching of English as a second language is also evolving with the changing needs of learners. Communicative skills are of utmost importance – now in this day and age if you can´t speak a language, you don´t know that language. Both teachers and examiners understand the importance of communicative skills and the  revised  ISE exams provide proof of the ability of a learner to communicate efficiently in English.

A further priority nowadays is to teach skills which are transferable to other areas ,as employers look for workers with multiple abilities and who are able to adapt to a variety of circumstances. The revised ISE exam tests these transferable skills such as the ability to identify the main ideas in a text and also to extract specific information, or the ability to compare several texts and interpret visual support. The exam tasks reflect what a person might be asked to do with their English in a real life situation, and as a result do not include traditional style exam exercises such as multiple choice, which have no relation to how we use our English on a day to day basis.

As well as extending the Reading and Writing part of the exam, Trinity has also introduced an independent listening component which is conducted on an individual basis by the oral examiner. This component varies according to the level of the exam, but rather than answering a series of written questions, the candidate is asked to answer some oral questions posed by the examiner and to give an oral summary of what they have heard.

The new exam ,which will be launched in September of this year, consists of two modules, Reading and Writing and Listening and Speaking, which are taken separately either in the same exam session or at different times. In this way the candidate will recieve a result for each of the four skills.

For more detailed information regarding the revised ISE exam, you should visit the website www.trinitycollege.com/ISE