Lesson 6 – Testing Speaking Skills

Learning Objectives

In this lesson, you are expected to:

 Describe the different types of speaking tests

 Determine the appropriate use of a speaking test for a particular competency
 Construct varied types of speaking tests

Speaking Skills Teaching-Testing Link

The ability to put words in a comprehensible manner in order for the learners to convey
thoughts, opinions, and emotions put them to an advantage. It is argued that speaking is basic to
every human communication. For this reason, the possession of speaking skills can make one
stand out above the rest. For Harmer (2007), if learners desire to speak English fluently, they
need to possess the abilities to pronounce phonemes correctly, to use appropriated stress and
intonation patterns and speak connectedly. In addition, they need to survive in a typical
functional exchange, where learners are able to carry out a conversation in a daily life.

Speaking Activities. The English teacher should well prepare for appropriate activities in
speaking class. Appropriate speaking activities must make students active in speaking and
interaction in English. Nunan (2015) explained that three some important speaking activities in
the English as second language classroom:

a. Interactional uses of language – The emphasis is on creating harmonious

interactions between participants rather than on communicating information. The goal
for the participants is to make social interaction comfortable and non-threatening and
to communicate good will. Examples of interactional uses of language are greeting,
making small talk, telling jokes, giving compliments, making casual chat of the kind
used to pass time with friends or to make encounters with strangers comfortable.

b. A Short Turn – it consists of only one or two utterances, a long turn consists of a
string of utterances which may last as long as an hour’s lecture. As soon as a speaker
takes the floor for a long turn, tells an anecdote, tells a joke, explains how something
works, justifies a position, describes an individual, and so on, he takes responsibility
for creating a structured sequence of utterances which must help the listener to create
a coherent mental representation of what he is trying to say.

c. The Use of Role play – The use of role play has added a tremendous number of
possibilities for communication practice. Students can be shopkeepers or spies,
 grandparents or children, authority figures or subordinates; they can be bold or
frightened, irritated or amused, disapproving or affectionate; they can be threatening,
advising, apologizing, and condoling. The language can correspondingly vary along
several parameters: according to the profession, status, personality, attitudes or mood
of the character being role-played, according to the physical setting imagined,
according to the communicative functions or purpose required.

Related to types of speaking activities, Scott Thornbury (2019) suggested some

appropriate activities that can be applied in English classroom, namely: drilling and chants,
writing tasks, reading aloud, assisted performance and scaffolding, dialogues, and
communication tasks. Assessment is an ongoing process that encompasses a much wider domain.
Whenever a student responds to a question, offers a comment, or tries out a new word or
structure, the teacher subconsciously makes an assessment of students’ performance.

Types of Speaking Performance. Related to the precedent arguments, three types of

speaking performance are described by Brown (2004). These types help the language teacher to
specify the objective and criteria in designing appropriate listening assessment tasks.

a. Imitative – at the lower end of a continuum of types of speaking performance is the

ability to simply parrot back (imitate) a word or phrase or possibly a sentence. While
this is purely phonetic level of oral production, a number of prosodic, lexical and
grammatical properties of language may be included in the criteria performance.

b. Intensive – a second type of speaking frequently employed in assessment contexts is

the production of short stretches of oral language designed to demonstrate
competence in a narrow band of grammatical, phrasal, lexical of phonological
relationship (such as prosodic element-intonation, stress, rhythm, juncture). Examples
of extensive assessment tasks include directed response tasks, reading aloud, sentence
and dialogue completion limited picture-cued task, including simple sequences and
relationship up to the simple sentence level.

c. Responsive – responsive assessment tasks included interaction and test

comprehension but at the somewhat limited level of very short conversations,
standard greetings and a small talk, simple request and comments and the like.

Speaking Text Types. The topics to situate the speaking tasks may involve either of the
several texts identified by language educators. The four types of texts needed for speaking skills
are monolog text, functional text, transactional text and interpersonal. Interpersonal text
involves introducing self, friend, parents; expressing congratulations. Transactional Text covers
asking somebody to do something, expressing intentions on what to do. Functional Text may
involve describing recreational/tourism places; giving information about a public announcement,
while Monolog Text includes narrating a folk story, explaining the meaning of a song, telling an
unforgettable experience.

Criteria in Assessing Speaking Skills. There are two general elements in assessing
speaking: accuracy and fluency (Brown, 2004). Accuracy refers to the use of vocabulary,
grammar, pronunciation, stress, and intonation. It deals with someone’s ability to produce correct
sentence using correct grammar and appropriate vocabulary. On the other hand, fluency involves
the meaning and the spontaneity of language use. Fluency deals with someone’s ability to
produce sentences easily with ease and confidence. Brown also notes that the aim of oral
language assessment in school is to capture students’ ability to communicate both for basic
communicative and academic purposes.

In most schools, assessing speaking skills is a challenge in terms of preparation,

administration, and scoring (Madsen, 1983). For this reason, speaking skills are rarely tested
among students.

Assessing Speaking Skills

Some measures to assess speaking skills are recommended by language testing experts
(Hughes, 2003; Harmer, 2007; Nunan, 2015 ). These include

1. Limited Response Tests

These are speaking tasks that require simple responses from the students. They include:

a. Sentence Repetition – The teacher reads a sentence then the learner repeats,
following the manner it was stated.

b. Simple Response – The teacher asks the learner a question. The learner responds.
Teacher: Do you keep your toys after playing?
Learner: Yes, I do.

c. Directed Request – The teacher asks the learner to do something which the latter
performs.
Teacher: Ask Maria what he does on Saturdays?
Learner: Maria, what do you do on Saturdays?

d. Picture Cues – The teacher presents to the class a picture, then asks the learners to
tell something about the picture?
 Teacher: What is the girl doing in this picture?
Learner: The girl is helping little brother.

2. Authentic Assessment of Speaking Skills

The test of the pudding is the tasting, so to speak. Speaking abilities are better assessed
in real-life situations where students interact as they communicate ideas and thoughts. An
authentic assessment paves the way for direct measurement of students' achievement on tasks
through flexible methods (Nasab, 2015). It emphasizes what students know rather than what they
do not know, and it requires students to develop responses instead of selecting them from
predetermined options (Ojung'a & Allida, 2017). Besides, authentic assessment is a reliable and
valid method of evaluation for assessing speaking.

Following are the speaking assessment activities recommended by language educators, as

proven by varied researches on their effectiveness and efficiency.

a. Role Play - Role-playing is defined as pretending to be someone else in a specific

situation. Roleplaying can be done by the students in groups with some activities like
greeting/leave-taking, giving and asking information, and also suggesting something.
In this case, the key to this model is that students actively make conversation where
one delivers a question, and others answer the question. The scoring rubric to
measure the students' achievement may have five indicators: task accomplishment,
fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.

b. Act Out - Act out means to represent in action, such as students act out what they
read. Act out is to` express something directly in overt behavior. The scoring rubric
that can be used to measure the students’ achievement may have three indicators: task
accomplishment, comprehension, and pronunciation.

c. Pair Dialogue or Question-and-Answer - Students are grouped in pairs. Each pair

has a list of questions to ask to his/her pair. After a student asks the question, the
other student must answer with a correct pattern and vocabulary.. The teacher can
change up the pair partners for each round of questions and answers. The scoring
rubric to measure the students’ achievement may have five indicators: task
accomplishment, fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.

d. Oral Interview - The oral interview is a direct speaking assessment that can be used
to assess students' level of speaking proficiency. The teacher and student do a simple
interview; the teacher asks the oral question to the students about a topic such as
students' background, activities, and students' interests. The scoring rubric to measure
 the students' achievement may have five indicators: task accomplishment, fluency,
pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.

e. Picture-cued Description - A picture is a valuable resource as it provides a shared

experience in the classroom, a variety of tasks, and a focus of interest for students.
Pictures are ideally suited for eliciting oral language from students. Picture-cued
provides the students with multiple picture cues. Teachers may ask students to
describe, give information, and give the opinion about the picture. The scoring rubric
to measure the students' achievement may have four components: fluency,
pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.

A speaking task similar to this is Prepared Monologue. The teacher posts on

the board or flashes on screen a meme or photo mashup. The learners are asked to
give their one-minute reactions to the message contained in the materials shown.
They are given time to organize their inner thoughts which they verbalize before the
class.

A more complex task related to the above tasks is the Information Gap. Information
gap is suitable and applicable in assessing speaking at the high school level. Teachers
use some media such as picture, photo, diagram, map, and other supported media as
stimuli to trigger communication. Information gap promotes two purposes: solving a
problem and collecting information. Information gap activities require students in
small groups to communicate each other to solve a problem or complete a task. In
these activities, an individual student does not have all of the information needed to
achieve the activity’s goal, which creates a “gap” that can only be overcome by
speaking with other students to exchange information.

f. Story/Text Telling - Story/text retelling is an activity to encourage students to retell

the events that occur in the story/text, which has been read/listened by the students.
Students retell the main ideas or selected details of text experienced through listening
or reading. The scoring rubric to measure the students' achievement may have four
components: fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.

A variation of this mode of assessing speaking skills is Sequencing Events in a story.

As students lack vocabulary and are anxious to speak in class, they may just use the
Story Map to help them retell the major events in the story.

g. Oral Reports - An oral report is an oral presentation usually done for teachers and
classmates. An oral report is an opportunity for students to practice their speaking
skills in front of the class. Students do an oral presentation about their project that has
 been done previously. The scoring rubrics to measure students' achievement may
have four components: fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.

Scoring Rubrics for Speaking Assessment Activities

The assessment activities require students to perform their language individually and in
pairs. Those activities are needed in real-life communication (Zaim & Refnaldi, 2017), and
promote speaking skill (Razali & Isra, 2016). Besides, these assessment activities are also in line
with the requirement of the K to 12 curriculum.

The scoring rubrics are limited to fundamental indicators to measure their speaking skills
in producing oral languages, such as pronunciation, fluency, grammar, vocabulary,
comprehension, and task accomplishment.

In general, the components of scoring rubrics are pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary,

grammar, and comprehension (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2010). Each component has a
description of the level of achievement that possibly achieved by the learners so that the teacher
can judge in which level of ability the students are now in the assessment given (Adnan, et al.,
2019). Clear scoring rubrics will make a subjective measurement to become objective.

These four indicators of speaking skill should be given attention in order to enable
students to speak correctly in the language being learned (Pareja, 2015). The scoring rubrics used
are holistic rather than analytic since the abilities to be measured are limited to specific simple
tasks (Zaim & Amri, 2012).

The speaking assessment activities present a learning opportunity. Students should be

informed before giving an assessment of what and how to assess their speaking ability. By
knowing the way how to assess authentically to the learning process, the students will be
challenged to achieve the performance required. Assessment can change the way students learn.

Teachers have to develop and use scoring rubrics for each speaking assignment/task.
They can give students a copy of assignment rubrics so that the students can do the assignment
well. The scoring rubrics, together with the models of authentic assessment, can be used by
teachers in assessing students' speaking skills.

Checking for Understanding

Minds On
 1. Under the new normal education set-up, teachers are encouraged to teach the Most
Essential Learning Competencies. What is the place of speaking activities in the set-up?
How best to achieve the MELCs in speaking?

2. Should listening and speaking be taught together or separately? Cite the three advantages
or disadvantages, if any. Illustrate by giving a situation, if possible.

3. Should authentic or interactive speaking assessment tasks be the sole focus of assessing
speaking in the high school level. Where/when is limited response speaking tasks
allowable in high school? Justify your arguments.

4. Findings reveal that of the 100 applicants for a call center jobs, only 10 could pass the
test. One language skill singled out as a factor is poor speaking . How do you reconcile
this fact with the teaching and testing of speaking skills in the schools? What redirection
in teaching speaking skills can you propose so that senior high school students could
make the cut in the call center score?

This, I Do

1. Among the authentic speaking assessment tasks, identify three authentic assessment
modes that you have used with your learners. Describe each, then determine the learners’
ease or difficulty of accomplishing the tasks. Explain what modifications (adding,
deleting) have you done to meet the needs of the learners?

2. What personal innovation have you developed to assess speaking among your learners?
Describe its goal and how it was used and its efficacy in assessing the desired learning
skills.

3. What are your practices in scoring/grading speaking performance among your learners?

4. If you have used scoring rubric in assessing learners’ speaking performance, attach one as
part of your Lesson outputs.

Now, I Realize

Give three realizations (affirmation, learning, and afterthought) this lesson has impacted on your
language teaching and testing practice. Describe and explain.

References:
Adnan, S., Nurkamto, J., & Setiawan, B. (2019). Teacher competence in authentic and
integrative
assessment in Indonesian language learning. International Journal of Instruction, 12(1),
701-716.

Brown, H. D. (2004). Language assessment: Principles and classroom practices. White Plains,
NY: Pearson Education.

Brown, H, D., & Abeywickrama, P. (2010). Language assessment principles and classroom
practices.
New York: Pearson Education, Inc

Harmer, J. (2007). The practice of English language teaching. Chap. 22. Evaluating assessments
and tests: Not just an add-on. New York: Pearson & Longman

Madsen, H. S. (1983). Techniques in testing. New York: Oxford University Press.

Nasab, Fatemeh Ghanavati. (2015). Alternative versus Traditional Assessment. Journal of

Applied
Linguistic and Language Research. Volume 2, Issue 6.

Nunan, D. (2015). Teaching English to speakers of other languages. New York: Routledge

Ojung‟ A. J & Allida, D. (2017). A survey authentic assessment used to evaluate English
languagae
learning in Nandi central sub-country secondary school. Interdisciplinary Research
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Pareja, T. P. (2015). Language needs assessment of selected Filipino learners in second language
classrooms. International Journal of Arts & Sciences, 8(2), 479-492.

Razali, K., & Isra, M. (2016). Male and female teachers' roles in assessment of speaking skills.
Gender Equality: International Journal of Child and Gender Studies, 2(1), 1-10.

Thornbury, S. (2019). How to teach speaking. New York: Longman.

Zaim, M., & Amri, Z. (2012). Implementasi authentic assessment dalam pembelajaran bahasa
Inggris
SMPN RSBI Kota Padang. Padang: FBS UNP

Zaim, M. & Refnaldi. (2016). Teachers’ need on authentic assessment for speaking skills.
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International Seminar on Languages and Arts (ISLA) 5. Padang: FBS UNP Press.