Assessing Speaking and Listening Skills

Assessing Speaking and Listening Skills

Assessing speaking skills

What is speaking?• “Speaking is an interactive process of

constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing information”

(Brown, 1994; Burns & Joyce, 1997).

Basic Types of Speaking

Imitative

Intensive

ResponsiveInteractive

Extensive

Source: Brown, D (2004)

Imitative: Word repetition Task (repeat after me…)

Intensive: Read-Aloud Tasks, Sentence Dialogue completion tasks and oral questionnaires, Picture-

Cued Tasks, translation.

Source: Brown, H., 2004. Language Assessment Principles and Classroom Practices.

Responsive: Question/answer, giving instructions and directions, Paraphrasing.

Interactive: Interview, Role Play, Discussions and Conversations, Games

Set up an interview

Interviews: (stages)

Warm up: 1. small talk

Level check: the test taker

2. answers Wh-questions

3 produce a narrative without interruptions

4 reads a passage outloud

5 Tells how to make something or do something

6 engages in a brief, controlled, guided role play Probe: The test-taker:

7 responds to interviewer´s questions about something the test taker doesn´t know and is planning to include in an article or paper.

8 talks about his or her own field of study or profession.

9 engages in a longer, more open-ended role play (e.g. simulates a difficult of embarrassing situation) with the interviewer.

10 gives an impromptu presentation on some aspect of test-taker´s field.

Wind down:

11 feeling about the interview, information or results, further questions

Extensive: Oral presentations, Picture-Cued Story-Telling, Retelling a Story or News Event

Oral Presentations

• Specify the criterion• Set appropriate tasks• Optimal output• Practical, reliable scoring

Source: Brown, H., 2004. Language Assessment Principles and Classroom Practices.

ORAL PRESENTATION CHECK LIST

Assessing Listening Skills

Types of Listening

• Intensive: phonemes, words, intonation

• Responsive: a greeting, command, question

• Selective: TV , radio news items, stories

• Extensive: listening for the gist, the main idea, making inference

Designing Assessment Tasks : Intensive Listening

1. Recognizing Phonological & Morphological Elementsa. Phonemics pair, consonants

Test-takers read : a. He’s from California b. She’s from California

b. Phonemics pair, vowels

c. Morphological pair, -ed ending

Test-takers read : a. Is he leaving ? b. Is he living?

Test-takers read : a. I missed you very much b. I miss you very much

d. Stress Pattern in can’t

e. One-word stimulus

Test-takers read : a. My girlfriend can’t go to the party b. My girlfriend can go to the party

Test-takers read : a. vine b. wine

2. Paraphrase Recognition

a. Sentence paraphrase

Test-takers read : a. Keiko is comfortable in Japan b. Keiko wants to come to Japan

c. Keiko is Japanese d. Keiko likes Japan

b. Dialogue paraphrase

Test-takers read : a. Tracy lives in the United States

b. Tracy is American c. Tracy comes from Canada d. Maria is Canadian

Designing Assessment Tasks : Responsive Listening

1. Appropriate response to a question

Test-takers read : a. In about an hour. b. About an hour

c. About $10 d. Yes, I did

2. Open-ended response to a question

Test-takers read write or speak :_______________

A number of techniques have been used that require selective listening.

• Listening Cloze• Information Transfer• Sentence Repetition

Listening Cloze(cloze dictations or partial dictations)

• It requires the test-taker to listen a story monologue, or conversation and simultaneously read the written text in which selected words or phrases have been selected

• In a listening cloze task, test-takers see a transcript of the passage that they are listening to and fill in the blanks with the words or phrases that they hear

Test-takers write the missing words or phrases in the blanks

• Flight to Portland will depart from gate at P.M

• Flight to Reno will depart at P.M from gate seventeen

Information Transfer

• Information transfer: multiple-picture-cued-selection

• Information transfer: single-picture-cued-verbal-multiple-choice

• Information transfer: chart-filling

Information transfer: multiple-picture-cued-selection

Information transfer: single-picture-cued-verbal-multiple-choice

Information transfer: chart-filling

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Weekends

8:00 get up get up get up get up get up

10:00

12:00

2:00

4:00

6:00

Sentence Repetition

• The task of simply repeating a sentence or a partial sentence, or sentence repetition, is also used as an assessment of listening comprehension

Some extensive listening comprehension tasks

1. Dictation: widely researched genre of assessing listening comprehension> 50 – 100 words> recited 3 times: normal speed, long pauses between phrases, normal speed

Difficulty can be manipulated by:

• The length of the word group• The length of pauses• The speed• Complexity of the discourse, grammar and vocabulary• Scoring (spelling, grammatical, additional

words, replacement)

Thank You