Assessing Speaking Skill The Teaching of Speaking

commit to user 32

d. Assessing Speaking Skill

Assessment is an integral aspect of the teaching – learning process and happens everyday in the classroom as teachers continually make judgments about the performance of their students Burns and joyce, 1999: 102. All good language teachers constantly evaluate their learners as the lessons actually taking place, thus teachers should consider assessment even as initial class planning is started. In line with Burns and Joyce in Folse 2006: 210 state that the most obvious feedback for teachers is the students` performance. Teachers use the information about the students` performance day to day to inform the students about their progress as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching materials and activities. Furthermore, Folse 2006: 210 explains that continued assessment during instruction help teachers know who is having problems, what kind of problems need to be addressed through repetition of a particular activity, or even when to move on form this particularly activity. This feedback informs the teachers of the learners` progress as well as of the teachers` own progress in teaching. Good assessment is built into all good teaching. It does not just `happen` because, according to Folse 2006: 207, it takes careful planning as well as knowledge of the subject matter, the learner and general testing. According to O’Malley and pierce 1996: 61, the implication for assessment is that assessment for oral language should focus on a student`s ability to interpret and convey meaning for authentic purpose in interactive context. It should include both fluency and accuracy. Cooperative learning activities that commit to user 33 present students with opportunities to use oral language to interact with others are optimal for assessing oral language. Considering the notion of assessment given here, language teachers should be careful in planning for the assessment. Teachers need to identify the assessment purposes before planning it. After identifying the assessment purposes, teachers may begin planning for classroom-based assessment for oral language by identifying instructional activities or tasks the teachers are currently using that can also be used for assessment. One important step in planning for assessment is to outline the major instructional goals or learning outcomes and match these to learning activities andperformance tasks. Deciding whether or not to make an audio or video recording of students` performance is important to take into account as a part of planning for oral assessment. Brown and Yule in O`Malley and Pierce 1996: 61 suggest that a tape for each students can be used if oral language is an essential part of instruction. Besides, another important part of planning for assessment is deciding how often to collect information. Teachers whose purpose is to monitor students` progress will need to collect information more often than those whose purpose is for reclassification decision, which may require assessment twice a year. Teachers who wish to monitor students` progress should plan to incorporate assessment into their instruction regularly so that a small amount of information can be collected on individual students periodically over time across a variety of oral language task. commit to user 34 A final key component in planning for assessment is deciding when and how to provide feedback. Teachers need to consider how soon after oral language assessment learners should be provided with feedback on their performance. Certainly, students want to know how they did immediately after a task, but there is another reason for providing feedback as soon as possible after assessment; the feedback will have more meaning and perhaps will make more of an impact. An essential step in preparing for oral language assessment is planning how to engage students in `self-assessment`. According to O`Malley and Pierce 1996: 66, by providing learners with the skill needed to independently monitor their learning, teachers enable them to take a greater responsibility for that learning. Self-assessment may take various forms. It can take the form of yes no statements, questionanswer, rating scales, sentence completion, and learning logs. These are not typically graded or scored by teachers. Instead, they are used to focus learners to their performance and progress in learning. Additionally, setting criteria is a crucial part of assessment; without criteria or standards of performance, performance tasks remain simply a collection of instructional activities Herman, Aschabacher, Winters in O`Malley Pierce 1996: 65. Teachers can establish criterion level of oral language proficiency based on the goals and objectives of classroom instruction before using instructional activities for assessment. Teachers then can set criterion level by designing a scoring rubric, rating scale, or checklist. Teachers need to check the dimension or aspects of oral language that they want to assess. Gonzales Pino reminds us, in O`Malley Pierce 1996: 65 that the dimensions or features of commit to user 35 oral language to be assessed depends on the level of proficiency of the class and instructional goals. Besides, for classroom teachers, standards may be used to monitor students ` performance, to determine who needs extra help, or to assign grades. If instead of holistic scale, teachers are using analytical scales, they will need to determine what scores meet the criteria or each dimension of performance. Brown, 2004: 173 proposes oral proficiency scoring which might be used to assess oral language. The following scoring scales are actually suitable to use in the Senior High School students. The learners are tested on content, organization, grammar, pronunciation and fluency. They may get a maximum of twenty five points on each of these five points and one hundred points in all. The scale score of testing speaking can be seen in table 2. Table 2. The analytical scoring rubric of oral language Assessment Content Score Indicators 1 Students can not relate content to own experience topic 2 Students can relate content to some own experience topic 3 Students can relate content to many own experience topic 4 Students can relate content to all own experience topic 5 Students can highly relate content to all own experience topic commit to user 36 Organization Score Indicators 1 Has speaking is inadequate to express anything and not be understood. 2 Introduction extremely underdeveloped or missing 3 Introduction either underdeveloped or awkward 4 Effective introduction brings audience to topic 5 Highly effective introduction brings audience to topic Grammar Score Indicators 1 Errors in grammar are frequent, but speaker can be understood by native speaker used to dealing with foreigners attempting to speak his language 2 Can usually handle elementary constructions quite accurately but doesn’t have thorough or confident control of the grammar 3 Control of the grammar is good. Able to speak dealing with sufficient structural accurate to participate effectively in most formal and informal conversation on practical, social, and professional topics 4. Able to use the language accurately on all levels normally pertinent to professional needs. Errors in grammar are quite rare 5 Equivalent to that of an educated native speaker. commit to user 37 Pronunciation Score Indicators 1 Errors in pronunciation are frequent that can be understood by a native speakers used to dealing with foreigners attempting to speak his language. 2 Accent intelligible though often quite faulty. 3 Errors never interfere with understanding and rarely disturb the native speakers. Accent may be obviously foreign. 4 Errors in pronunciation re quite rare. 5 Equivalent to and fully accepted by educated native speakers Fluency Score Indicators 1 No specific fluency description. 2 Can handle with confidence but not with facility most social situation. 3 Can discuss particular of competence with reasonable ease 4 Able to use the language fluently 5 Has complete fluency in the language such that his or her speech is fully accepted by the educated native speaker Maximum score: 4x25 = 100 Table 2. shows the analytical scale for oral language assessment. The points listed above are 25 multiplied by four. Therefore, a top score in all five areas would result in 100 percent or, in other words, native proficiency. Some sort commit to user 38 of scale like this accompanies almost all speaking tests using holistic grading based on assessment for five criteria. The rubric is made simply with a maximum of 25 points on each of these 5 aspects, 100 points in all.

2. Critical Debate a.