Assessing Speaking What is Assessing Speaking? Two kinds of speaking performance Basic Types of Speaking Micro and Macro Skills of Speaking Designing Assessment Task: Imitative Speaking Designing Assessment Tasks: Intensive Speaking Designing Assessment Tasks: Responsive Tasks Test of Spoken English Designing Assessment Tasks: Interactive Speaking Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) Designing Assessments: Extensive Speaking
WHAT IS ASSESSING SPEAKING? Speaking is a productive skill that can be directly and empirically observed, those observations are invariably colored by the accuracy and effectiveness of a testtaker’s listening skill, which necessarily compromises the reliability and validity of an oral production. Speaking is the product of creative construction of linguistic strings, the speaker make choices of lexicon, structure, and discourse.
Two kinds of speaking performance: a. Receptive Performance The elicitation stimulus can be structured to anticipate predetermined responses and only those responses. b. Productive Performance The oral or written stimulus must be specific enough to elicit output within an expected range of performance such that scoring or rating procedures apply appropriately.
BASIC TYPES OF SPEAKING a. Imitative It is the ability to simply parrot back ( imitate ) a word or phrase or possibly a sentence This is a purely phonetic level of oral production, a number of prosodic, lexical, and grammatical properties of language may be included in the criterion performance.
b. Intensive It is talking about the production of short stretches of oral language designed to demonstrate competence in a narrow band of grammatical, phrasal, lexical, or phonological relationships ( such as prosodic elements- intonation, stress, rhythm, juncture ) Intensive assessment task include : Directed response tasks Reading aloud Sentence Dialogue completion; Limited picture cued tasks, including simple sequences; and translation up to the simple sentence level.
c. Responsive It includes interaction and test comprehension but at the somewhat limited level of very short conversation, standard greeting and small talk, simple request and comments. d. Interactive It includes multiple exchanges or multiple participants. Interaction can take the two forms : Transactional exchanges It has purpose of exchanging specific information Interpersonal exchanges It has the purpose of maintaining social relationships. e. Extensive ( monologue ) It includes speeches, oral presentations, and story telling.
MICRO AND MACRO SKILLS OF SPEAKING a. Micro Skills The micro skills refer to producing the smaller chunks of language, such as phonemes, morphemes, words, collocations, and phrasal units. Produce differences among English phonemes and allophonic variants. Produce chunks of language of different length. Produce English stress pattern, words in stressed and unstressed positions, rhythmic structure, and intonation contours. Produce reduced forms of words and phrases. Use an adequate number of lexical units (words) to accomplish pragmatic purposes. Produce fluent speech at different rates of delivery. Use grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs), system (tense, agreement, pluralization ), word order, patterns, rules, and elliptical forms. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms. Use cohesive devices in spoken discourse.
b. Macro Skills The macro skills imply the speaker’s focus on the larger elements : Fluency Discourse Function Style Cohesion Nonverbal communication Strategic options
Appropriately accomplish communicative functions according to situations, participants, and goals. Use appropriately styles, registers, floor-keeping and yielding, redundancies, pragmatic conversations, conversations rules, and other sociolinguistic features in face to face conversations. Convey facial features, kinesics, body language, and other nonverbal cues along with verbal language. Develop and use battery of speaking strategies, such as emphasizing key words, rephrasing, providing a context for interpreting the meaning of words, appealing for help, and accurately assessing how well your interlocutor is understanding you.
c.
Three important issues as you set out to design tasks: No speaking tasks is capable of isolating the single skill of oral production. Eliciting the specific criterion you have designated for a task can be tricky because beyond the word level, spoken language offers a number of productive options to test-takers. Because of the above two characteristics of oral production assessment, it is important to carefully scoring procedures for a response.
DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: IMITATIVE SPEAKING To see the inclusion of simple phonological imitation in a consideration of assessment of oral production. Then, endless repeating of words, phrases, and sentences was the province of the long since discarded Audiolingual Method, and in an era of communicative language teaching, many believe that non meaningful imitation of sounds is fruitless.
PHONEPASS TEST The Phone Pass test elicits computer assisted oral production over a telephone. Test takers read aloud, repeat sentences, say words, and answer questions. Test takers are directed to telephone a designated number and listen for directions.
DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: INTENSIVE SPEAKING a. Directed Response Tasks The test administrator elicits a particular grammatical form or a transformation of a sentence. b. Read Aloud Tasks It includes reading beyond the sentence level up to a paragraph or two. The technique is by selecting a passage that incorporates test specs and by recording the test taker’s. Reading aloud is somewhat inauthentic in that we seldom read anything aloud to someone else in the real world, with the exception of a parent
reading to a child, occasionally sharing a written story with someone, or giving a scripted oral presentation. c. Sentence / Dialogue Completion Tasks and Oral Questionnaires Dialogue completion tasks An advantages of this technique lies in its moderate control of the output of the test takers. One disadvantage of this technique is its reliance on literacy and an ability to transfer easily from written to spoken English. Directed response tasks It helps to unlock the almost ubiquitous link between listening and speaking performance. d. Picture cued Tasks It is the way to elicit oral language performance at both intensive and extensive level that requires a description from the test taker. Kinds of picture cued : picture cued elicitation of minimal pairs Picture cued elicitation of comparatives
Picture cued elicitation of future tense Picture cued elicitation of nouns, negative responses, numbers, and location. Picture cued elicitation of responses and description Test takers are not only identify certain specific information but also to elaborate with their opinion, to accomplish a persuasive function, and describe preferences in paintings. e. Translation ( of Limited Stretches of Discourse ) Translation is a part of our tradition in language teaching that we tend to discount or disdain. Translation methods of teaching are certainty passé in an era of direct approaches to creating communicative classrooms. It is a well proven communication strategy for learners of a second language.
DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKSO: RESPONSIVE SPEAKING a. Question and Answer Question and answer tasks can consist of one or two questions from an interviewer : Intensive in its purpose It is a display question intended to elicit a predetermined correct response. Question at the responsive The test taker is given more opportunity to produce meaningful language in response. Responsive questions may take the following forms : Questions eliciting open-ended responses Elicitation of questions from the test taker To assess test-taker’s ability to produce questions, prompts. b. Giving Instruction and Directions Using such a stimulus in an assessment context provides an opportunity for the test-taker to engage in a relatively extended stretch of discourse, to be
very clear and specific, and to use appropriate discourse makers and connectors. c. Paraphrasing Example Paraphrasing a story Paraphrasing a phone message Use short paraphrasing tasks as an assessment procedure, it’s important to pinpoint the objective of the task clearly.
TEST OF SPOKEN ENGLIS (TSE) The tasks on the TSE are designed to elicit oral production in various discourse categories rather than in selected phonological, grammatical, or lexical. TSE represent the discourse and pragmatic contexts assessed in each administration : 1. Describe something physical 2. Narrate from presented material 3. Summarize information of the speaker’s own choice 4. Give instructions
5. Give an opinion 6. Support an opinion 7. Compare / Contrast 8. Hypothesize 9. Function “interactively” 10. Define
DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: INTERACTIVE SPEAKING a. Interview The interview, which may be tape-recorder for re-listening, is then scored on one or more parameters such as : accuracy in pronunciation or grammar, vocabulary usage, fluency sociolinguistic / pragmatic appropriateness, task accomplishment,
and even comprehension Michael Canale (1984) suggested that test-takers will perform at their best: Warm-up The interviewer directs mutual introductions, helps the test taker become comfortable with the situation, apprises the test takers of the format, and allays anxieties. Level check This stage could also give the interviewer a picture of the test taker’s extroversion, readiness to speak, and confidence. Probe Probe question and prompts challenge test-takers to go to the heights of their ability, to extend beyond the limits of the interviewer’s expectation through increasingly difficult questions. Wind-down The test-taker to relax with some easy questions, sets the test-taker’s mind at ease, and provides information about when and where to obtain the result of the interview.
The success of an oral interview will depend on : Clearly specifying administrative procedures of the assessment (practicality) Focusing the questions and probes on the purpose of the assessment (validity) Appropriately eliciting an optimal amount and quality of oral production from the test-taker (biased for best performance) Creating a consistent, workable scoring system (reliability) b. Role play It is a popular pedagogical activity in communicative language teaching classes. It allows some rehearsal time so that students can map out what they are going to say. It has the effect of lowering anxieties as students can, even for a few moments, take on the persona of someone other than themselves.
c. Discussion and Conversations It may be especially appropriate tasks through which to elicit and observe such abilities as: Topic nomination, maintenance, and termination. Attention getting, interrupting, floor holding, control Clarifying, questioning, paraphrasing Comprehension signals (nodding “uh-huh”, “hmmm”) Negotiating meaning Intonation patterns for pragmatic effect Kinesics, eye contact, proxemics, body language Politeness, formality, and other sociolinguistic factors. d. Games Types of games: “Tinkertoy” game A tinkertoy (or lego block) structure is built behind in a screen. One or two learners are allowed to view the structure.
Crossword puzzles are created in which the names of all members of a class are clued by obscure information about them. Each class member must ask questions of others to determine who matches the clues in the puzzle. Information gap grids are created such that class members must conduct mini-interviews of other classmates to fill in boxes City maps are distributed to class members
ORAL PROFICIENCY INTERVIEW (OPI) The OPI is carefully designed to elicit pronunciation, fluency and integrative ability, sociolinguistic and cultural knowledge, grammar, and vocabulary.
DESIGNING ASSESSMENTS: EXTENSIVE SPAKING a. Oral Presentation The rules for effective assessment must be invoked: Specify the criterion Set appropriate tasks
Elicit optimal output Establish practical, reliable scoring procedures. For oral presentations, a checklist or gird is a common means of scoring or evaluation. Holistic scores are tempting to use for their apparent practicality, but they may obscure the variability of performance across several subcategories, especially the two components of content and delivery. b. Picture Cued Story Telling One of the most common techniques for eliciting oral production is through visual pictures, photographs, diagrams, and charts. Every assessment of speaking ability, the objective of eliciting narrative discourse needs to be clear. c. Retelling a Story, News Event Test-takers hear or read a story or news event that they are asked to retell. d. Translation (of Extended Prose) Translation of words, phrases, or short sentences was mentioned under the category of intensive speaking.
The advantage of translation is the control of the content, vocabulary, and to some extent, the grammatical and discourse features. The disadvantages is that translation of longer texts is highly specialized skill for which some individuals obtain post-baccalaureate degrees.
