Language Testing and

Assessment:
Oral Language Assessment

Presented by group 2
Nature Of oral Language
Difference between Oral and Written Language
• Considering the nature of them:
1. In Oral, People don’t typically use complete series while in
Written, it’s the opposite.
2. Oral uses less specific vocabularies than written.
3. Oral’s information is packed less than in written.
4. Oral language varies depending on the age, gender, and dialect
of the speaker.
Oral Language in School
Capture students’ ability to communicate fot both basic communicative and
academic purposes and Develop various skills like face-to-face interaction,
where meaning can be negotiated and supported by the situation itself, gestures,
facial expression, and intonation.
Language Functions
• Language functions refers to how individuals use language to accomplish specific
tasks.
• Communicative language functions are those used to express meaning in a routine
social context that is not cognitively demanding ( ex: greeting, requesting, giving
information, etc)
• Academic language function are those that are critical for succes in grade level
classroom. ( describing, explaining, informing, debating, etc)
Implications for assessment
• Using authentic language in listening or speaking activities
• Setting real world, tasks, such as getting the gist of message listening selectively,
giving directions, and giving opinion.
• Giving students oppurtunities to use language in situations based on everyday life.
Authentic assessment of oral language
Steps in preparing oral language assessment are :
1. Identifying purpose
2. Planning for assessment
3. Developing rubrics or scoring procedures
4. Setting standards
5. Involving students in self and peer assessment
6. Selecting assesment activities
7. Recording information
1. Identifying purpose
Planning for assesment
After knowing the purposes, next is planning. You can begin it by identifying instructional
activities or task. Part of planning for assesment is deciding when to asses students individually
when to asses them in groups. And how might teacher use this activity for assesment.

Note:
Before using instructional activities for assessment, you can establish criterion levels of oral
language proficiency based on goals and objective of your class.

Set criterion levels of performance by designing a scoring rubric, rating scale, or checklist: do it,
revise, upgrade, do assess again, revise again. Don’t forget to ask colleagues or students for
feedback.
Devloping rubrics/ scoring procedures
Teachers can establish criterion levels of oral language proficiency based on the goals
and objective of classroom interactions before using instructional activities for
assessment.
set criterion level of performance by designing a scoring rubrics, rating scale or
checklist.
Setting standard
setting standard involves clearly specifying what students shold know and be able to
do at different level of oral language proficiency. For the classroom teacher standards
may be used to monitor students performance, to determine who need extra help or
assign grade.
Involving students
• Self assesment
self assesment may take varios forms, depanding on the age, language
profocoency and reading skill of each learnes. It can take forms of yes/no statement.
Quetion/answer, writing scales, sentence completion, and learning logs
• Peer assesment
for pair or team activities, students can be asked to rate each other as well as
their functioning as a group.
Selcting assessment
• Identfying instructional activities that can also be used for assessment.
• Assessment activities:
1. Oral interviews
2. Picture-cued description or stories
3. Radio broad cast
4. Video clips
5. Information gap
6. Story telling
7. Improvisations/role plays/simulations
8. debates
Recording teacher observation
• Teacher obsevation
taechers are not stranger to assessment by obsevation. What may be relatively
new. However, is documenting the result of obsevation for assessment purpose.
• Anecdotal records
• Anecdotal records have been most typically used to assess progress in literacy in the
elementary schools. It consist of brief notes, made shortly after students has been
obeserved making progress in key area.