Toolkit 2 - Assessing Speaking

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Assessing Speaking

A toolkit for teacher development


Assessing speaking
These materials provide an overview of Assessing Speaking and its use
in English language teaching. In this module, we discuss how speaking
assessment can be used to support the learning process.

This module aimed at:


• In-service teachers of English as a foreign language at all stages of
education
Learning objectives
By the end of this module, you will have developed an
understanding of:

Challenges of assessing speaking

Types of classroom speaking performance

Important issues in assessing speaking


What is speaking?

Speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that


involves:
• Generation of ideas (conceptualisation)
• Knowledge of grammar
• Knowledge of vocabulary
• Knowledge of sounds
• Articulation
• Self-monitoring
Think

• What can make speaking more difficult to assess than other skills?
• Make notes of your answer
Challenges of assessing speaking

Assessing speaking can be a challenge in classrooms with:


• oversized groups
• limited number of lessons
Teachers may find it hard to assessing speaking as it is:
• Subjective to assess
• Difficult to select criteria to use and how to use them
• Not present in a few local and national tests
What can be done about this?

• Speaking is an essential part of language learning.


• Good assessment can encourage students to speak more.
• If we cannot have formal oral assessment in our class, we can use
different speaking tasks/activities that allow us to teach our students
and at the same time assess their progress to make future decisions.
Think

There are a range of speaking performance types we can use in the


classroom.
Make a list of all the ones you can think of. Compare your list with the
ones which feature on the following slides.
Types of speaking performance
in classroom

• Imitative – traditionally only interested in pronunciation


• Intensive – directed response, reading aloud, dialogue
completion, picture cued tasks
• Responsive – short replies to teacher-or student-
initiated questions or comments
Types of speaking performance
in classroom

• Interactive - longer and more complex dialogue


• Transactional - dialogue to convey or exchange specific
information
• Interpersonal – dialogue to maintain social
relationships
• Extensive – planned or impromptu monologues
Think
• Look at four tasks below and make notes of which type of speaking
each task elicits to assess

Task 1: Reading aloud

You will see 8 sentences on the screen.


Read each sentence aloud after the
tone.
Think
Task 2: Find 5 differences between the two pictures
Think
Task 3: Discuss a topic in a group of two or three
Think
Task 4: Describe a website you have bought something from.
What are we assessing?
Commentary:
Task 1: requires learners to just simply reproduce language => imitative
Task 2: this is a monologue in which learners have to rely on their own
vocabulary and grammar to complete the task => intensive
Task 3: requires learners to go beyond simple reproduction of language,
and beyond talking on their own. This task requires learners to interact
with others to complete the task => interactive
Task 4: requires learners to talk on their own (monologue) to express
complex ideas after preparation time => extensive
What are we assessing?

The following slides include a series of questions we should ask


ourselves before assessing our students. The answers to these
questions will help us to understand the purpose of our
assessments. This understanding will help us to use the
information created by our assessments to improve teaching and
learning.
Issues to consider before
conducting assessment

What are
we
assessing?

How is our
assessment How can
benefiting we assess?
learners?
What are we assessing?

• Different tasks may elicit different aspects


of speaking; none of these are better or
worse.
• There is no “best” way to assess speaking.
What are we assessing?

Please consider
- which aspects of speaking you would like
to assess your learners performing
- which skills and language functions the
task(s) you select/design can elicit
What are we assessing?

Please also consider the context of the


assessment tasks to see:
- what real-life situation we are trying to
represent in our classroom?
- how these situations can be represented,
for example live or recorded performance,
or face-to-face or online?
How can we assess?

The next few slides will present information about how you can assess
speaking by:
- evaluating task difficulty
- having assessment criteria
Task difficulty
• The topic and type of information elicited in tasks can have an impact
on the levels of difficulty.
Less More

Personal Non-personal
Familiar Unfamiliar
Concrete Abstract
Task difficulty

Which topic do you think would be more difficult?


A - “Talking about your favourite school”
B - “Discuss the importance of having a routine when studying.”

Make a note of your answer.


Task difficulty
Answer: B

because it requires learners to talk about more abstract topic – routine


and its impact on studying.
Think

• How do you assess speaking in your class?


• What criteria do you base your assessments on?
• How do your students know their strengths and weaknesses?

Make notes of your answers.


Commentary
There are lots of different ways to assess speaking. Having clear criteria
helps you to assess your students. Sharing criteria with your students
can help them to understand what they need to do in assessments and
so take more control over their language learning.
In the following slides we look at the benefits of using criteria and
consider the advantages and disadvantages of different types of
assessment scales.
Assessment criteria

• Giving learners the assessment criteria is a way of encouraging


learner autonomy.
• It also means the learners know what is expected of them and what
areas to work on.
What type of criteria can be used?

• When deciding what criteria to use, think about the objectives of your
syllabus or course and use these to decide on the criteria you want to
assess.
• Each criterion might have different levels – for example, the learners
demonstrate them ‘completely’, ‘to some extent’ or ‘not at all’.
What type of criteria can be used?

Here are some ideas for criteria to assess different aspects of speaking:
• Fluency – this describes the flow of speaking. Is it natural? Does it
continue without a lot of hesitation?
• Accuracy – is the speaker using accurate and appropriate
grammar/vocabulary for the task?
• Pronunciation – is the pronunciation clear? Remember,
comprehension is the most important aspect – can the speaker be
easily understood?
Assessment criteria
• When deciding assessment criteria, you may consider if all criteria are
equally important or
• You may decide pronunciation is more important for the purpose of
the task/course.
• What you decide should be based on what aspects of speaking you’d
like to assess.

The next few slides will provide information on how you can put those
criteria onto an assessment scale.
Types of scales
• Holistic
• General impression
• One overall mark
Types of scales
• Analytic
• Broken down into
separate features
• Several marks – one
for each assessment
criterion
Think

• Think of advantages and disadvantages of each type of scale.


• Make notes of your ideas and compare them with the ones on the
following slides.
Types of scales
Holistic scales

Strengths
- Practicality: faster to assess

Limitations
- Not much useful information about learners
- Difficult to use when skills are unevenly developed
Types of scales
Analytic scales

Strengths
- Provide useful information for teachers to understand where learners are

Limitations
- Time-consuming
- Cognitive load – there is a lot for the assessor to think about
How an assessment scale
can be used with students?
You could:
1. Refer to the scales as you observe students carrying out a speaking
task.
2. Note down examples of performance in terms of the listed criteria.
3. Give students feedback on their strengths and weaknesses.
4. Think about how they could improve and use your ideas when
planning future lessons.
Activity

• Use the analytic rating scale in slide 33, let’s focus on Grammar and
Vocabulary
• Watch the video from about 10 minutes to 12minutes 40
• Note down examples of what Camilla does well and not so well in
terms of Grammar and Vocabulary
Activity
Commentary: Grammar Good Not so good
Does the speaker use • I like relaxing • it was so much people
on Camilla’s simple grammatical forms • London is too big (there were so
performance with control? • actually, I’ve never many people)
been there • it was a lot of noise
(there was a lot of
noise)
Does the speaker use • I could live in a big city in - it’s not that big to be a
complex grammatical Norway ’cos they are not capital (it’s not that big for
forms? that big a capital)
• when I went to bed at - if you have half an hour
the hotel … I couldn’t sleep to your nearest neighbours
• I heard that it’s a really (if you’re half an hour
beautiful city so I would away from your nearest
like to see it neighbours)
Activity

Commentary:
Vocabulary Good Not so good
on Camilla’s Does the speaker use a • a lot of pollution
performance range of appropriate • noise pollution
vocabulary? (everyday • nightlife
situations / • one million inhabitants
familiar topics / wide • cosy and charming
range of familiar topics?)
How is our assessment
benefiting our learners?

• As we become more familiar with the assessment criteria and gain


more experience in analysing our students, we will find it easier to
focus on all of the criteria during classroom practice tasks
• Being able to refer to the assessment scales will help us to analyse
our students’ strengths and weaknesses and to adapt our teaching to
improve students’ ability.
• Good assessment can help students to speak more and better.
Reflect

• What task(s) and criteria will you use in your class to assess speaking?
• Which type of scale are you going to use in your class, holistic or
analytic? Why?
• Please share your experience of using these materials with us on our
Facebook page.
Reference
• Brown, H. (2010) Language Assessment: Principles and
classroom practices. New York: Longman. Ch. 10
• Luoma, S. (2004). Assessing speaking. Cambridge University
Press.
• O’Sullivan, B. (2012). Assessing speaking. The Cambridge
guide to second language assessment, 234-246.

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