Download - Assessing Speaking and Listening Skills
Assessing Speaking and Listening Skills
Assessing speaking skills
What is speaking?• “Speaking is an interactive process of
constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing information”
(Brown, 1994; Burns & Joyce, 1997).
Basic Types of Speaking
Imitative
Intensive
ResponsiveInteractive
Extensive
Source: Brown, D (2004)
Imitative: Word repetition Task (repeat after me…)
Intensive: Read-Aloud Tasks, Sentence Dialogue completion tasks and oral questionnaires, Picture-
Cued Tasks, translation.
Source: Brown, H., 2004. Language Assessment Principles and Classroom Practices.
Responsive: Question/answer, giving instructions and directions, Paraphrasing.
Interactive: Interview, Role Play, Discussions and Conversations, Games
Set up an interview
Interviews: (stages)
Warm up: 1. small talk
Level check: the test taker
2. answers Wh-questions
3 produce a narrative without interruptions
4 reads a passage outloud
5 Tells how to make something or do something
6 engages in a brief, controlled, guided role play Probe: The test-taker:
7 responds to interviewer´s questions about something the test taker doesn´t know and is planning to include in an article or paper.
8 talks about his or her own field of study or profession.
9 engages in a longer, more open-ended role play (e.g. simulates a difficult of embarrassing situation) with the interviewer.
10 gives an impromptu presentation on some aspect of test-taker´s field.
Wind down:
11 feeling about the interview, information or results, further questions
Extensive: Oral presentations, Picture-Cued Story-Telling, Retelling a Story or News Event
Oral Presentations
• Specify the criterion• Set appropriate tasks• Optimal output• Practical, reliable scoring
Source: Brown, H., 2004. Language Assessment Principles and Classroom Practices.
ORAL PRESENTATION CHECK LIST
Assessing Listening Skills
Types of Listening
• Intensive: phonemes, words, intonation
• Responsive: a greeting, command, question
• Selective: TV , radio news items, stories
• Extensive: listening for the gist, the main idea, making inference
Designing Assessment Tasks : Intensive Listening
1. Recognizing Phonological & Morphological Elementsa. Phonemics pair, consonants
Test-takers read : a. He’s from California b. She’s from California
b. Phonemics pair, vowels
c. Morphological pair, -ed ending
Test-takers read : a. Is he leaving ? b. Is he living?
Test-takers read : a. I missed you very much b. I miss you very much
d. Stress Pattern in can’t
e. One-word stimulus
Test-takers read : a. My girlfriend can’t go to the party b. My girlfriend can go to the party
Test-takers read : a. vine b. wine
2. Paraphrase Recognition
a. Sentence paraphrase
Test-takers read : a. Keiko is comfortable in Japan b. Keiko wants to come to Japan
c. Keiko is Japanese d. Keiko likes Japan
b. Dialogue paraphrase
Test-takers read : a. Tracy lives in the United States
b. Tracy is American c. Tracy comes from Canada d. Maria is Canadian
Designing Assessment Tasks : Responsive Listening
1. Appropriate response to a question
Test-takers read : a. In about an hour. b. About an hour
c. About $10 d. Yes, I did
2. Open-ended response to a question
Test-takers read write or speak :_______________
A number of techniques have been used that require selective listening.
• Listening Cloze• Information Transfer• Sentence Repetition
Listening Cloze(cloze dictations or partial dictations)
• It requires the test-taker to listen a story monologue, or conversation and simultaneously read the written text in which selected words or phrases have been selected
• In a listening cloze task, test-takers see a transcript of the passage that they are listening to and fill in the blanks with the words or phrases that they hear
Test-takers write the missing words or phrases in the blanks
• Flight to Portland will depart from gate at P.M
• Flight to Reno will depart at P.M from gate seventeen
Information Transfer
• Information transfer: multiple-picture-cued-selection
• Information transfer: single-picture-cued-verbal-multiple-choice
• Information transfer: chart-filling
Information transfer: multiple-picture-cued-selection
Information transfer: single-picture-cued-verbal-multiple-choice
Information transfer: chart-filling
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Weekends
8:00 get up get up get up get up get up
10:00
12:00
2:00
4:00
6:00
Sentence Repetition
• The task of simply repeating a sentence or a partial sentence, or sentence repetition, is also used as an assessment of listening comprehension
Some extensive listening comprehension tasks
1. Dictation: widely researched genre of assessing listening comprehension> 50 – 100 words> recited 3 times: normal speed, long pauses between phrases, normal speed
Difficulty can be manipulated by:
• The length of the word group• The length of pauses• The speed• Complexity of the discourse, grammar and vocabulary• Scoring (spelling, grammatical, additional
words, replacement)
Thank You