TẬP HUẤN ĐM 02

HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER TRAINING WORKSHOP
Vinh Phuc, August 2014

Assessing SPEAKING skills
What do you often do to make your students speak English in class?
How often do you test them on speaking skill?
How do you test their speaking skill?
Work in group
Activity 1
Group Work
Choose speaking tasks that have a positive effect on teaching / learning
Avoid lengthy directions (written or spoken)
Include a warm-up
Provide a variety of tasks for accurate assessment
Create an appropriate scoring rubric
3

Assess the Speaking Test for strengths and weaknesses
Specifying appropriate tasks
Content
Operations: expressing, narrating, eliciting, etc.
Types of text: dialogue, multi-participant
Interactions: face-to-face, telephone
Format
Interview
Interaction with peers
Response to tape-recordings
Testing speaking
Elicitation techniques:
Questions and requests for information
Pictures (for eliciting description)
Role play
Interpreting
Discussion
Tape-recorded stimuli
Imitation
Testing speaking
Obtaining valid and reliable scoring
Appropriate descriptions of criteria levels are written out and scorer are trained to use them
Irrelevant features of performance are ignored
There is more than one scorer for each performance
Testing speaking
Making a rubric

What is a rubric?

"a scoring tool that lists the criteria for a piece of work or `what counts.` "
-- Heidi Goodrich
2-3
Activity 2
Group Work




Fill in the rubric with descriptors:
limited, poor, fair, some, adequate, sound, unclear, parts clear, mostly clear, very clear, well developed, extensive, excellent




Fluency
Pronunciation
Effort
Vocabulary
Fill in the rubric with descriptors
Fluency
Pronunciation
Effort
Vocabulary
Limited
Parts clear
Mostly clear
Very clear
unclear
some
good
Well
Developed
limited
adequate
sound
extensive
poor
fair
Good
excellent
What are the assessment criteria?
What does each criterion really mean?
IELTS SPEAKING
Understanding assessment criteria
Activity 3
Group Work
Fluency and coherence
Lexical resource
Grammatical range & accuracy
Pronunciation
ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
Fluency:
Amount of hesitation/ self-correction / repetition (How many times)
Ability to speak at length (How long)
Coherence:
Ability to organize ideas logically
Use of discourse markers & linking phrases
1. FLUENCY & COHERENCE
Expand + Build
Simon’s advice:
Idea: answer the question directly.
Explain: give a reason or explain your answer in more detail.
Alternative: explain an alternative (e.g. the opposite) to your answer.
Example: give an example to support your answer.
Another idea: Just add it on the end of your answer.
SPEAK AT LENGTH?
Discourse markers
Respond to a point
Yes, I agree because / I’m not sure I agree with that you see …
Speculating on the future
I think we’ll probably see a lot of …/ Maybe there’ll be more …
Compare/contrast
In my view, there are two main differences
Linking words:
not only that, whereas, provided that, as a result, this is due to, etc.
COHERENCE
Ability to convey precise meaning
Use of:
Collocations
Less common vocabulary
Idiomatic expressions
Vocabulary resource:
Topic specific vocabulary
Paraphrasing:
Able to explain/describe smt when you are not sure/ can not remember the exact word to use
2. LEXICAL RESOURCE
Range of structures (use of clauses, complex structures)
Range of tense use
Error density
The level of errors (errors in basic or complex structures)
3. GRAMMATICAL ACCURACY & RANGE
Focus on the accuracy & variety of pronunciation features
Pronounce the words & sounds of English correctly
Use correct stress in words & sentences
Use correct intonation
Link words together correctly when speaking: “pausing & chunking”
4. PRONUNCIATION
Discuss with the person sitting next to you:
Differences across levels
Focus on level 5 & 6
IELTS SPEAKING: BAND DESCRIPTOR

Activity 4
Pair work
Be Careful!
Assure all students understand the criteria of assessment (the rubric)
Did you teach enough, the required content?
Check for “Silent Period”
Provide a proper environment / warm up.
Test what you taught!
Give students specific feedback
allow for a retake. Praise!
Flood & Lapp, 1992
Pre Test
During Testing
After Testing