Conducting a speaking test

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.