Designing assessments: Extensive Speaking

Extensive speaking tasks involve complex, relatively lengthy stretches of discourse. They are frequently variations on monologues, usually with minimal verbal interaction.

ORAL PRESENTATIONS

Rules for effective assessment:

(A) Specify the criterion

(B) Set appropriate tasks

(C) Elicit optimal output

(D) Establish practical, reliable scoring procedures

For oral presentations, a checklist or grid is a common means of scoring or evaluation. Holistic scores are tempting to use for their apparent practicality, but they may obscure the variability of performance across several subcategories, especially the two major components of content and delivery.

PICTURE-CUED STORY-TELLING

One of the most common techniques for eliciting oral production is through visual pictures, photographs, diagrams, and charts. A picture is considered as a stimulus for a longer story or description.

RETELLING A STORY, NEWS EVENT

In this type of task, test-takers hear or read a story or news event that they are asked to retell. The objectives of this task are to produce a number of oral discourse features, fluency, and interaction with the hearer.

TRANSLATION (OF EXTENDED PROSE)

Here, longer texts are presented for the test-taker to read in the native language and then translate into English. The advantage of translation is in the control of the content, vocabulary and, to some extent, the grammatical and discourse features. The disadvantage is that the translation of longer texts is a highly specialized skill for which some individuals obtain post-baccalaureate degrees.