Can students get help from other people in preparation for the SBA? Will it be considered “cheating”?
It depends on the nature of the help given, not who gives the help. It doesn’t matter whether the help is from another teacher, the subject teacher, a tutor or a parent. Help in terms of teaching the student reading and speaking skills, pronunciation, language structures, etc, anything to really improve the student’s language ability, is strongly encouraged. It is not cheating. However, help which involves writing out a speech for the student to memorise, or writing a script for a group interaction for a group of students, is cheating because such help lets students use work that is not their own. It is also counter-productive as such memorisation and/or rehearsal will lead to very stilted and unnatural language use. It also does nothing to help students to improve their actual English skills. The bottom line is we want to ensure students are taught the kinds of skills that they can transfer to new situations. We also want to assess our students’ true speaking ability and how they can
