In my opinion speaking is very hard to assess since it is a productive skill you as a tester will have to be very receptive in order to see if what the learner has produce is actually what you need to get from him. I believe that, in order to make a valid test you will have to define the treats you wish to evaluate. As Brown suggest (pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary use, grammar, comprehensibility, etc.) are some traits you can use to get part of the score, of course, the more you specified your goal from the speaking test the more “fair” (if could say) your grade would be, and to be specific you can create new traits.
Hi! Juan pablo, I think that one the most stricking aspect of assessing speaking is the pronunciation, if it is really necessary that phonemes would be as native speakers' phonemes; because so many times students fail tests just because did not pronounce the phoneme in a perfect native way, let me exemplify this with 3 cases; a girl who has a vocal tract problem, , a girl who has facial paralysis, or a girl who is from a place where the "r" is not pronounced (Caracas, Puerto Rico, etc) so they won't pass a pronunciation test if we remain stuck to a so radical test criteria. On the other hand, I agree with you, we should create traits to be more specific and to be fair with the variety of people who are in a classroom.
ResponderEliminarHi dude, you are right mentioning that we as teachers need to specify the speaking aspects you are going to assess, considering what of these aspects each student needs to reinforce. But at the same time, we need to respect their own accent, because our work is to help them to improve their language level, not to impose a standarized English accent.
ResponderEliminarI agree with you Juan, We have to be very careful and focused at the time of evaluating speaking, since it is important to have it clear what we really want to measure with students.
ResponderEliminarWe also have to be thoughtful at the time of designing those kind of activities to evaluate speaking; using specific tools to provide students clear instructions that make them sure about the aim we want them to achieve.
In my opinion we should also have in mind their process and their background related to their speaking skill, that way we can have an idea of the issues they're having when presenting a test, taking into account that feelings and attitudes could make the difference just in the moment of the evaluation.