Toolkit 2 - Assessing Speaking
Toolkit 2 - Assessing Speaking
Toolkit 2 - Assessing Speaking
• What can make speaking more difficult to assess than other skills?
• Make notes of your answer
Challenges of assessing speaking
What are
we
assessing?
How is our
assessment How can
benefiting we assess?
learners?
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?
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
• 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
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?
• 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.