ASSESSING SPEAKING

Assessing speaking
Issues

in assessing speaking

skills;
Depend on the accuracy and
effectiveness of a test-takers
listening skills (which might
compromise the validity and
reliability of the test)
How do we know for certain that a
speaking score really measure the
oral production

Basic types of speaking

Taxonomy

for speaking skills;

1. Imitative
- The simplest: Is simply the ability to
imitate a word/phrase/ sentences
- A number of prosodic (intonation,
rhythm, etc), lexical, and grammatical
properties of language are included in
the performance criteria.
- Interested in what is traditionally
labelled as pronunciation.

Basic type of speaking

2. Intensive
- second type; frequently employed in
assessing speaking
- Production of short stretches of oral
language designed to demonstrate
competence in a narrow band prosodic
- The speaker must be aware of semantic
properties to be able to respond, but
interaction with an interlocutor or test
administrator is minimal at best.
- Example, directed response tasks
(requests for specific production of
speech), reading aloud, sentence and
dialogue completion

Basic types of speaking

3. Responsive
- Include interaction and test
comprehension but at the somewhat
limited level of very short conversations,
standard greeting and small talk, simple
requests and comments.
- The stimulus is spoken prompt with only
one or two follow-up questions or retorts:
- Mary: Excuse me, do you have the time?
- Doug: Yeah. Nine-fifteen

Basic type of speaking

4. Interactive
- Different from responsive; in terms of the
length and complexity of the interaction
- Includes multiple exchanges and/or
multiple participants
- Interaction can be broken down into two
types;
- i. Transactional language has the purpose of
exchanging specific information
- ii. Interpersonal exchange has the purpose of
maintaining the social relationship (there is a
need to use slang, humor, other informal
sociolinguistics conventions).

Basic type of speaking

5. Extensive
- The opportunity for oral interaction
from listeners is either highly
limited or ruled out altogether.
- Language style is well planned and
formal for extensive tasks
- For instance, giving speeches, oral
presentations and storytelling