The Process of Materials Evaluation

9. Assessing the Four Skills

Assessment Brown, 2004: 4 means an on-going process that covers the wider domain such as when students respond to the questions, offer comments, or try out the new words and structures. In those domains, the teacher usually makes an assessment on the students’ performances. In this case, tasks can be one of the forms of assessment that the teacher can make. However, not every tasks and teaching activities in the classroom involve assessment. Students in the classroom have to have the freedom to experiment and try out the language without feeling that their competence is being judged in terms of trials and errors. In assessing the four skills, teachers have to think about the two interacting concepts of performance and observation Brown, 2004: 117. When students perform the acts of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, they rely on their underlying competence in order to accomplish their performance. In addition, when the teachers propose to assess the students’ ability in one of the combination of the four skills, teachers assess the students’ competences but they observe the students’ performances. Below are the descriptions in assessing the four skills of the language.

a. Assessing Listening

In assessing listening, teachers can provide some tasks to the students. The assessment tasks Brown, 2004: 122-135 can be in the form of intensive listening minimal phonic pair recognition or paraphrase recognition, selective listening listening cloze, information transfer, or sentence repetition, or extensive listening dictation, communicative stimulus- response tasks, or authentic listening tasks. In scoring the listening tasks, one of the approaches in scoring method can be used. The score is defined as the number of the students successfully completed, so that the number of the correct responses added up. For example, there are ten numbers in a task and the teacher gives ten points each for the correct number and then summed up.

b. Assessing Reading

Teachers can design some assessment tasks for reading. According to Brown 2004: 190-215, the tasks can be in the form of perceptive reading reading aloud, written response, multiple-choice, or picture-cued items, selective reading multiple-choice for form-focused criteria, matching tasks, editing tasks, picture-cued tasks, or gap-filling tasks, interactive reading cloze tasks, impromptu reading plus comprehension questions, short-answer tasks, ordering tasks, etc., or extensive reading skimming tasks, summarising and responding, or note-taking and outlining. The scoring method for assessing reading is similar with the scoring method for assessing listening. The teacher decides the score of each item in a task and then summed up.

c. Assessing Speaking

In designing tasks for assessing speaking, teachers can use imitative speaking simple repetition tasks, intensive speaking directed response tasks, read-aloud tasks, sentence dialogue completion tasks and oral questionnaires, etc., responsive speaking question and answer, giving instructions and directions, or paraphrasing, interactive speaking interview, role-play, discussions and conversations, or games, or extensive speaking oral presentations or picture-cued story telling. For the scoring method, the scoring rubric can be used to define the speaking score. The table below is the example of the speaking’s scoring rubric adapted from the oral proficiency scoring categories proposed by Brown 2001, in Brown, 2004: 172-173. Table 2.4: Scoring Rubric of Speaking. Aspect Description Score Grammar Errors in grammar are quite rare. Able to use the language accurately. 25 Control of grammar is good. Able to speak the language with sufficient structural accuracy. 20 Does not have confident control of the grammar. Able to handle elementary constructions quite accurately. 15 Errors in grammar are frequent but still can be understood by the other speakers. 10 Vocabulary Can understand and participate in any conversation with a high degree of precision of vocabulary. 25 Able to speak the language within sufficient vocabulary to participate in the conversation. Vocabulary is broad enough. 20 Has speaking vocabulary sufficient to express himself simply with some circumlocution. 15 Speaking vocabulary inadequate to express anything but the most elementary needs. 10 Fluency Able to use the language fluently. Can participate in any conversation with the high degree of fluency. 25 Can participate in any conversation with minimum hesitation. Rarely to grope for words. 20 Can handle with confidence but not with facility most social situation. Sometimes, 15 continued speak with hesitation. Speak with hesitation. Not confidence in any conversation. Usually grope for words. 10 Pronunciation Errors in pronunciation are quite rare. 25 Errors never interfere with understanding. 20 Errors in pronunciation sometimes occur. 15 Errors in pronunciation are frequent. 10

d. Assessing Writing

The tasks that can be used by the teachers to assess writing are varied. Those include imitative writing tasks in hand writing letters, words, and punctuation, spelling tasks, etc., intensive controlled writing dictation and dicto-comp, grammatical transformation tasks, picture-cued tasks, vocabulary assessment tasks, ordering tasks, short-answer and sentence completion tasks, responsive and extensive writing paraphrasing, guided question and answer, paragraph construction tasks, etc.. The scoring rubric can be used in defining the score for assessing writing. The example of scoring rubric for writing adapted from Brown and Bailey 1984, in Brown, 2004: 244-245 is presented in a table below. Table 2.5: Scoring Rubric for Writing. Aspects Description Score Content Can follow the assigned topic. The ideas developed thoroughly. 25 Can follow the assigned topic but some points are missed. Ideas could be more fully developed. 20 The development of the ideas is incomplete. Sometimes off the topic. 15 The ideas incomplete. Cannot consider the topic carefully. 10 Grammar Advance proficiency in English grammar. Some grammar problems don’t influence communication. 25 continued continued