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