Designing Assessment Tasks: Extensive Speaking

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. 

-Scoring should meet the intended criteria.

4# Translation (of Extended Prose) 

-The longer texts are presented for the test-taker to read in the native language and then translate into English. Those texts could come in many forms: dialogue, directions for assembly product, a synopsis of a story, etc. 

-The advantage: control the content, vocabulary, and the grammatical and discourse features. 

-Disadvantage: the translation of longer texts is highly specialized skill for which some individuals obtain post-baccalaureate degrees!

-Criteria of scoring should take into account not only the purpose of stimulating a translation but the possibility of errors that are unrelated to oral production ability.