Have you been asked to test your students' speaking skills?
Some of you have been asked to do speaking tests with your
students. In order to successfully run a speaking test you need prompts for
speaking and criteria against which you are assessing the students. Ask your
school if they have these.
If not, you can use published materials for public tests
such as the Cambridge ESOL exams (Movers, KET, FCE etc) or you could make up
your own tests using picture prompts or questions that you have chosen. If you need some
speaking test materials, I have created a Dropbox with some in (including tests
for teenagers that are copyright to my school – ELC – so you are welcome to use
them). Just send me an email and I will invite you to join the Dropbox and you can
then download the materials.
It is difficult to be the interlocutor (the person speaking
to the student) as well as the assessor (the person grading the student). If
possible, ask if you can conduct the tests with another intern or colleague.
However, if this is not possible, you will need to make sure that you give the
students the chance to take a long turn when you can listen without interacting
much with them. You can do this by asking two students to speak to each other
while you listen or by giving an individual a task such as describing a
picture.
Below is an example of assessment criteria for speaking
tests. This is quite a basic guide but it’s actually easier to stick to
something simple if you have a lot of students to test and especially if you
are doing it on your own. This is a guide for all levels so you will need to
determine what is an acceptable pass mark for your students depending on their
level. For example for a low-level class, a mark of 5 might be the highest you
would award and they might be given a grade A for this.
Example marking guidelines for speaking tests
Mark the students from
1-10.
|
9-10
|
Communicates
message effectively with a minimum of grammatical mistakes and
natural-sounding delivery, uses repair strategies if he/she makes errors.
|
|
7-8
|
Communicates
message effectively but with some grammatical mistakes, some pronunciation
errors, uses repair strategies if he/she makes errors.
|
|
5-6
|
Communicates
message with some effort, makes quite a lot of grammatical mistakes, with
some pronunciation errors that interfere with message, some pauses and
silences.
|
|
3-4
|
Communicates
some of the message, with great effort. Makes quite a lot of grammatical
mistakes, some of which interfere with comprehensibility, some pauses and
silences, and use of own language.
|
|
1-2
|
Tries to
communicate, needs great effort, makes a lot of serious grammatical mistakes,
many of which interfere with comprehensibility, many pronunciation errors
that interfere with intelligibility, many pauses and silences, and use of own
language.
|
You could also adjust the assessment rubric according to
your expectations of students at a particular level, for example:
Upper Intermediate speaking task
Students are given a list of jobs and are asked to discuss the pros and
cons of each job, concluding with the one they would most and least like to do.
For a high mark the student should
communicate a complex message effectively. The student uses natural
intonation and appropriate sentence stress and pronounces individual sounds
correctly.
Elementary speaking task
Students are asked to talk about
their free time – What do they like doing?
For a high mark the student should
communicate a simple message effectively. Pronunciation of simple
words and phrases should be intelligible with appropriate stress.
We do
inform the schools that you are not experienced teachers and should not be
asked to examine in high-stakes tests or you should have the support of a
Vietnamese teacher.
