Assessing the 4 Skill of the English Language

Speaking is the second of the four language skills.  Speaking is an act of making vocal sounds. We can say that speaking means to converse, or expressing one's thoughts and feelings in spoken language. Speaking is the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non- verbal symbols, in a variety of context. Speaking is a primary mode of communication.  It is a productive skill. 

Micro- and Macro of Speaking   The micro-skills refer to producing the smaller chunks of language such s phonemes, morphemes, words, collocations, and phrasal units.  The macro-skills imply the speaker’s focus on the larger elements: fluency, discourse, function, style, cohesion, nonverbal communication, and strategic options.

1# Word and sentence repetition tasks (L,S) Test-takers hear: repeat after me:    Beat pause bit pause    Bat pause vat pause    I bought a boat yesterday   The glow of the candle is growing   When did they go on vacation?   Do you like coffee? Test-takers repeat the stimulus. Scoring scale for repetition tasks:     2 acceptable pronunciation     1 comprehensible, partially, correct pronunciation     0 silence, seriously, incorrect pronunciation The longer the stretch of language, the more possibility for error and therefore the more difficult it becomes to assign a point system to the text.

1# Directed Responsive Tasks The administrator elicits a particular grammatical form or a transformation of a sentence, but they do require minimal processing of meaning in order to produce the correct grammatical output. -Test-takers hear (L,S) *Tell me he went home. *Tell me that like rock music. *Tell me that you aren’t interested in tennis.

1# Question & Answer  -Question & answer can consist of one or two questions from an interviewer or they can make up a portion of a whole battery of questions and prompts in an oral interview. -The first question is intensive in its purpose; it is a display question intended to elicit a predetermined correct response.  -Questions at the responsive level tend to be genuine referential questions in which the test-taker is given more opportunity to produce meaningful language in response. Responsive question may take following forms:  Questions eliciting open-ended responses. Test takers hear:  What do you think about the weather today?  Why did you choose your academic major? What kind of strategies have you used to help you learn English?  Test-takers respond with a few sentences at most.

#1 Interview  A test administrator and a test-taker sit down in a direct face-to-face exchange and proceed through a protocol of questions and directives.  Four level stages:   Warm-up , preliminary small talk to make test-taker become comfortable with the situation. No scoring of this phase takes place.  Level check , a series of pre-planned questions.  Probe , probe questions and prompts challenge test-takers to go to the heights of their ability, to extend beyond the limits of the interviewer’s expectation through increasingly difficult questions.  Wind-down , a final phase of interview. No scoring for this part. The success of an oral interview will depend on:  Clearly specifying administrative procedure of the assessment. (practically)  Focusing the questions and probes on the purpose (validity)  Appropriately eliciting an optimal amount and quality of oral production from the test-taker (biased for best performance)  Minimizing the...

1# Oral Presentations  The rules for effective assessment must be involved:  Specify the criterion  Set appropriate tasks  Elicit optimal output  Establish practical, reliable scoring process  For oral presentation, a checklist or grid is a common means of scoring or evaluation. The wash back effect of a such checklist can be enhanced by written comments from the teacher, a conference with the teacher, peer evaluation using the same form, and self- assessment. 2# Picture-Cued Storytelling  It considers a picture or a series of pictures as a stimulus for a longer story or description.  3# Retelling a Story, News Event  -Test-takers hear or read a story or news event that they are asked to retell.  -The objectives in assigning is listening comprehension of the original to production of a number of oral discourse features (sequences and relationship of events, stress and emphasis pattern), fluency, and interaction with the hearer.  -Sc...

IMITIATIVE , performance is the ability to simply parrot back (imitative) a word or phrase or possibility 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.