ASSESSING SPEAKING

Speaking is a valuable skill to develop in language learners for communicative purposes. Thus, assessing speaking becomes relevant; otherwise, if we neglect assessing it, we would be sending a double message. Nevertheless, objective testing may be challenging due to reliability issues concerning possible subjectivity in grading it by trained (or not) raters, plus other issues like lack of time, number of students, administrative difficulties. But with the importance of Rnglish as a universal language, language teachers must test speaking progress in our students.

THEORY OF SPEAKING ASSESSMENT

Different abilities are simultaneously used when speaking. These are:

-Grammatical competence

-Discourse competence

-Sociolinguistic competence

-Strategic competence

CATEGORIES OF ORAL SKILLS

Oral skills can be categorized as routine skills, which are associated to spoken language that is used for daily routines, such as asking for directions, and improvisational skills, which are used to keep a conversation or for negociation.

DESIGNING SPEAKING ASSESSMENTS

Prior considerations:

-Place and equal focus on fluency and accuracy

-To ensure inter-rater reliability, give relative weight to accuracy (grammar), vocabulary, linguistic ability (pronunciation, intonation, and stress), fluency (ability to express ideas), and content or ideas.

-Use multiple raters for reliability. For the exam, there could be two raters, the interlocutor, who interacts with the student being tested, and the assessor, who writes scores and makes notes. Then, both negociate the final score or take an average of the two marks.

-Simplify by using a scoring sheet with criteria for assessment.

-Leave a space for comments that wil serve as feedback to the student.

DESIGNING SPEAKING ASSESSMENT

Start with a simple task to calm students during the test, and use a variety of methods and techniques.

Formal Speaking Assessment Techniques

All students should be tested under reliable and standard conditions at least once during the course. According to Canale (1984), students perform better if they follow these steps:

-Warm up to relax students and to obtain basic information from the student.

-Level check the assessor gives questions or situational activities to determine the student´s level of proficiency.

-Probe to check the student´s level or to make him/her go beyond his/her abilities.

-Wind down by talking a little to the student. This part is not scored.

VARIATIONS ON THE FRAMEWORK

The following is a list of common tasks that may be used fot the level-check stage.

-Picture cue

-Prepared monologue

-Role play

Information-gap activities

CLASSROOM SPEAKING ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES

-Oral presentations

-Debate on controversial topic

-Reading aloud

-Retelling stories

-Verbal essays

-Extemporaneous speakinG

A LAST TIP REGARDING ADMINISTRATIVE ISSUES

In regular classrooms, a tip is to assess speaking skills by selecting two or three students in a regular class period and focus on their performance. do this regularly to track students´progress.

ASSESSING LISTENING

Although listening is a very important skill to develop, this area is one of the least developed ones. This is a process that is given internally, which makes it difficult to observe and study. In order to teach and assess listening skills, we must be aware of the latest theoretical models of listening. We are following Davis Nunan´s theories into consideration.

According to Nunan, the processing of this skill may be bottom-up or top-down. In bottom-up processing, it is data-driven, linear. Comprehension takes place when learners take and decode phonemes, words, chunks of words, and later sentences, decode them, and link them with other ones.

In top-down listening, meaning is built upon input using background knowledge of situation and context.

APPROACHES TO LISTENING ASSESSMENT

Three major approaches to assess the skill of listening are described.

a. Discrete-point approach, along with the audiolingual method, where two beliefs were the rationale: being able to isolate one element from the stream of speech, and belief that spoken and written language were the same, except for one was presented orally. Tests assessed language knowledge by separating elements, using common question types such as responsive evaluation, phonemic discrimination, or paraphrase recognition.

b. Integrative approach assesses capability to use many little parts at the same time. Tests used dictation and cloze items.

c. Communicative approach assesses capability to understand the messageand then use it in context. Tests include authentic communicative question formats.

General and academic listening are separates with a taxonomy of micro-skills.

DESIGNING LISTENING TASKS

Before we design listening tasks, we must consider the course objectives. Also, we should focus on meaning rather than on form. Other aspects we must consider are background knowledge, test content (take texts you like and infuse oral characteristics into them,), vocabulary (lexical overlap can affect difficulty), test structure (questions in the order information is heard), formats (do not use new formats in tests), item writing (place items separately to give time to respond, frame new sections, record specific instructions.), timing (give time for pre reading the question.), and skill contamination, or skill integration (first read the question,then write the answer.)

TECHNIQUES FOR ASSESSING LISTENING COMPREHENSION

-Phonemic discrimination

-Paraphrase recognition

-Objective formats: MCQs and T/F, short answer questions, cloze, dictation.

-Information Transfer tasks (transfer information to a chart or visual)

-Note-taking

LISTENING TEST DELIVERY

The equipment used, as well as the conditions of the room where the test is taken influence in the validity and reliability of the test. The modes of delivery used may also affect these. Also, non standard procedures.

SCORING

The most reliable tests are are dichotomous scoring.

ASSESSING WRITING

The following is a summary of chapter 4 in the book, "Assessing English Language Learners," by Christine Coombe et al., Michigan Teacher Training.

PRACTICAL ISSUES TEACHERS FACE ASSESSING WRITING

Good writing abilities are highly appreciated in students who aspire for higher education and/ or better jobs. That is why language teachers must assure that our writing assessment practices be valid and reliable.

There are two major approaches in assessing writing, which are:
a. indirect measures of writing assessment, and
b. direct measures of writing assessment.

Indirect measures of writing assessment is the approach that refers to the correct use of sentence construction, spelling, punctuation, through multiple choice and cloze test formats, to measure writing sub-skills in accuracy of sentence construction and grammar.

Direct measures of writing assessment is the approach is the approach which assesses the ability to communicate through production of written texts, integrating all elements of writing, such as organization of ideas, use of appropriate vocabulary, and syntax.

There are four basic elements in designing good writing assessment tests, according to Hyland (2003), which follow.

1. Rubric: the instructions to carry out the writing task and/ or the set of criteria by which a paper or a project is evaluated. Most of the information comes from the test specifications like topic, text type, length, areas to be assessed, timing, weighting (percentage), and pass level.

2. Prompt: the writing prompt, which can be base prompt - states the entire task in direct and simple terms, framed prompt -presents the frame to interpret the task, and text-based - presents a text to respond or use in their writing.

3. Expected response: description of what the teacher intends students to do with the task.

4. Post-task evaluation: assessing the effectiveness of the writing task.

Some relevant issues in writing assessment are the following.

Time allocation. This is how much time is allowed for the sttudent to complete the task.

Process versus Product. More value has been given to the process of writing, so the process approach, such as working with a portfolio that includes all drafts, is suggested.

Use of Technology. The use of technology allows grammar and spelling checkers, which could plasce students with no access to technology in a disadvantage, so be consistent with all students.

Topic restriction. Some teachers provide a list of topics for students to select one, which allows them to write about what they like and know, while limiting to one topic does not produce variance in scores. It is recommended to select topics of same genre and rhetorical pattern.

READING: FACTORS THAT AFFECT IT

Towards the insights that any language teacher may reflect upon reading, I have chosen to briefly comment on three factors that may affect this interactive skill. These factors are the following.

1. The metacognitive knowledge.
Any person may take a reading and analyze it from top to bottom - the process whole texts, from the largest parts to the smallest ones- or bottom-up - the recognition of letters, words, and sentences - or both at the same time.

2. The schemata.
Readers bring background knowledge - schemata - which is constantly incorporating with knew information. The degree of differences between the native language of the learner and the target language, includes all cultural differences involved.

3. The proficiency.
Reading skills that have already been acquired by the individuals in their native language are going to be transfered to process the texts.