ASSESSMENT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING (ASSESSING SPEAKING)

ASSESSING SPEAKING
(PART. 2)
PAPER

ASSESSMENT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING)

DOSEN MATA KULIAH:

DR. SUHURI, M.Pd

Nama Mahasiswa:
Erisa Kurniati
Eva Nurmagdalena

PROGRAM PASCA SARJANA

PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS
UNIVERSITAS PGRI PALEMBANG
2011/2012
 ASSESSMENT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING (ASSESSING SPEAKING)

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

While speaking is a productive skill that can be directly and empirically

observed, those observations are invariably colored by the accuracy and

effectiveness of a test takers listening skill, which necessary compromises the

reliability and validity of an oral production test.

As task become more and more open ended, the freedom of choice given

to test-takers creates a challenge in scoring procedures. For example, in a pictures

series task, the objective of which is to elicit a story in a sequence of events, test

takers accurate. How can such disparate responses be evaluated? One solution is

to assign not one but several scores for each response, each score representing one

of several traits (pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary use, grammar,

comprehensibility, etc)

1.2 Problem Formulation

Based on the explanation, the problem formulation is:

1. How to asses oral language without the aural participation of an

interlocutor?

2. How can such disparate responses be evaluated?

 ASSESSMENT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING (ASSESSING SPEAKING)

CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

2.1 Assessing Speaking

Speaking competence is colored by the accuracy and effectiveness of a test

takers listening skill. We must remember that The assessment of oral production

test should pay attention to :

Aural intakes

Construction creativities

Example: choice of lexicon, structure, and discourse

2.2 Basic Types of Speaking

Some basic types of speaking assessment include :

1. Imitative

At one 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.

The only role of listening here is in the short-term storage of a prompt, just

long enough to allow the speaker to retain the short stretch of language

that must be imitated.

Example: phonepass test

ASSESSMENT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING (ASSESSING SPEAKING)

2. 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 or

phonological.

Example:

- directed response task

- read aloud tasks

- sentence/dialogue completion tasks and oral questionnaires

- picture-cued tasks

- translation (of limited stretches of discourse)

3. Responsive

Responsive assessment task include interaction and test comprehension

but at the somewhat limited level of very short conversations, standard

greetings and small talk, simple request and comments, and the like.

Example:

- question and answer

- Giving instructions and directions

- Paraphrasing

- Test of spoken english

ASSESSMENT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING (ASSESSING SPEAKING)

4. Interactive

Interaction can take the two forms of transactional language, which has the

purpose of exchanging specific information, or interpersonal exchanges,

which have the purpose of maintaining social relationship.

Example:

- Interview

- Role play

- Discussions and conversations

- Games

- Oral proficiency interview

5. Extensive (monologue)

Extensive oral production tasks include speeches, oral presentations, and

story-telling, during which the opportunity for oral interaction from

listeners is either highly limited or ruled out altogether.

Example:

- Oral presentations

- Picture-cued story-telling

- Retelling a story, news event

- Translation (of extended prose)

 ASSESSMENT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING (ASSESSING SPEAKING)

2.3 Micro and Macroskills of speaking

Micro and macroskills of oral production:

a. Microskills

Produce differences among English phonemes and allophonic

variants.

Produce chunks of language of differences lengths

Produce English stress patterns, word in stressed and unstressed

positions, rhythmic structure, and intonation contours.

Produce reduce forms of words and phrases.

Use an adequate number of lexical units (words) to accomplish

pragmatic purposes.

Produce fluent speech at different rates of delivery.

Monitor ones own oral production and use various strategic devices-

pauses, fillers, self-corrections, backtracking-to enchance the clarity

of the message.

Use grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc), system (e.g, tense,

agreement, pluralization), word order, patterns, rules, and elliptical

forms.

Produce speech in natural constituents: in appropriate phrases, pause

groups, breath groups, and sentence constituents.

Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms.

Use cohesive devices in spoken discourse.

ASSESSMENT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING (ASSESSING SPEAKING)

b. Macroskills

Appropriately accomplish communicative functions according to

situations, participants, and goals.

Use appropriate styles, registers, implicature, redundancies, pragmatic

convention rules, floor-keeping and yielding interrupting, and other

sociolinguistic features in face to face conversations.

Convey links and connections between events and communicate such

relations as vocal and peripheral ideas, events and feelings, new

information and given information, generalization and

exemplification.

Convey facial features kinesics, body language, and other nonverbal

cues along with verbal language.

Develop and use a battery of speaking strategies, such as emphasizing

key words, rephrasing, providing a context for interpreting the

meaning of words, appealing for help, and accurately assessing how

well your interlocutor is understanding you.

 ASSESSMENT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING (ASSESSING SPEAKING)

CHAPTER III
CONCLUSSION

Speaking competence is colored by the accuracy and effectiveness of a test

takers listening skill. The assessment of oral production test should pay attention

to aural intakes and the construction creativities (i.e. choice of lexicon,

structure, and discourse) of the test taker. Some basic types of speaking

assessment include simply imitating prompt of short-term storage (imitative

speaking), directly responding to or completing a cue (intensive speaking),

interacting in very short conversation (responsive speaking), interacting in a

longer or more complex conversation (interactive speaking), and giving relatively

stretches of discourse (extensive speaking). Assessing micro skill of speaking may

refer to smaller chunks of language (i.e. phonemes, morphemes, words,

collocation, and phrasal units) or to larger ones (i.e. fluency, function, style,

cohesion, non-verbal communication, and strategic options). Some issues to be

considered are that no speaking task is capable of isolating single skill of oral

production, eliciting specific criterion for a task can still offer a number of

productive options to test takers, and scoring procedure for a response must be

specified carefully to achieve as high reliability index as possible.

Interactive speaking includes interpersonal interviews, role plays,

discussions, and games. For oral interview it is the best if the test takers are led

through explicit stages of warming up, level checking, probing, and winding

down. One standard oral interview is Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). Role
 ASSESSMENT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING (ASSESSING SPEAKING)

playing which creativity and complexity approach real-world pragmatics requires

some rehearsal time for students to map out what they are going to say.

Discussion is appropriate to elicit and observe how speakers talk about a topic

(nomination, maintenance, and termination), how to manage the discussion

(getting attention, interrupting, floor holding, controlling, clarifying, questioning,

paraphrasing, negotiating meaning), and other factors (comprehension signals,

intonation patterns, kinesthetic, eye contact, politeness, formality, etc.). And for

games some that are used to assess speaking are tinker toy game (constructing

something from various parts), crossword puzzles, information gap (guessing

what other parties know or have), and city maps.

Extensive speaking is a variation of monologues, usually with minimal

verbal interaction, such as oral presentation whose holistic scoring appears

practical, but may obscure performance variability. For picture-cued story telling

it is the best to be clear what the examiner is hoping to assess. The other examples

are retelling a story/news event and translating extended prose.

ASSESSMENT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING (ASSESSING SPEAKING)