HOW TO TEST ORAL PRODUCTION

Any language evaluations should give students opportunities to

demonstrate what they know and can do with language, and should be seen

as invitations to show what students have learned in a context that has

significance to them. These evaluations should be culturally sensitive, be

appropriate to the task at hand, and require students to perform, create, or

produce something.

Evaluation should become the tool for planning and teaching. Students

should be asked to evaluate their own learning and to set goals for future

learning.

When students use language in meaningful situations to accomplish specific

goals, consideration should be given to the content and the process that the

students use to accomplish the final product. Teachers should consider each

aspect when they are evaluating students' work to arrive at a judgment

(e.g., student needs scaffolding support for comprehending main ideas) or

to determine a percentage.

The oral production consists of questions that we can ask to evaluate our

students’ speaking ability. The motivation through oral production must be

an easily implemented style of communicative testing, designed to create

positive wash back, both in learner motivation and habits.

The oral production is a revamping of the traditional practice of calling on

students to give short responses to factual questions. In this testing style,

students answer in real-time. This type of testing forces students to listen

carefully and to respond quickly as they must do in authentic conversations.

If the class objective goal is to improve students’ conversational ability, it

makes sense to test them in ways which require conversational skills such

as listening, clarification, and quick thinking.

The oral production is also a way to quickly gauge student progress – or lack

of - and it gives both teacher and student some very necessary instant

feedback. The teacher can take notes during in-class pair work review time

and the actual oral production can provide a warning for any problematic

areas. At this point, some of these trouble spots can be recycled into future

lessons or as an oral production by itself.

For teachers as for professional language testers, the process of designing

effective assessment procedures should begin with careful consideration of

what we want to know about students’ abilities and what use they will make

of that information.

In relation to the Methodology that emphasizes the oral language probably

is not used in the majority of classrooms in our schools, nowadays, and

there is growing dissatisfaction with what is being accomplished due to bad

results obtained when the students apply for superior studies inside and

outside of our country.

Substantial evidence exits that secondary schools students are not still

leaning to speak a second language. It is reasonable to expect that this

costly activity in training teachers in audio lingual methodology would by

this time have produced gratifying results. But the government budget

assigned each year to the Education Ministry is limited.

The efforts that our colleagues always do when they train by themselves are

invaluable, although we are conscious that all what we will do on account

and risk is our improvement.

The oral production is difficult with large classes, but it seems best to test

speaking by means of asking students to speak. Many rubrics can be used

to get students to produce language for testing, such as making impromptu

speeches, interviews, role play, discussion, and picture elicitation. Students

can either be graded while they speak or tape recorded for later evaluation.

Through my experience in teaching, I could say that many teachers are

accustomed to the routine and feel comfortable setting pencil-and-paper

tests, since years of experience doing the same as marking written work,

besides the use of the same questions, kept from others years. It has made

them familiar with the level of written competence pupils need in order to

succeed in this area.

Many teachers often feel much less secure when dealing with tests which

measure speaking and listening even though these skills are regarded as

essential components of a diagnostic test which measures overall linguistic

proficiency.

Although the foreign language English pupils often come from an oral rather

than a written culture, and so are likely to be more proficient in this mode of

communication, at least in their own language, speaking in English may be

a different matter.

The oral production is rarely used by our teachers in our educational

system, because they are considered as time-consuming, provoking too

anxiety in students, and difficult to score; however they will be reference for

feedback in problematic points of pronunciation or grammar mistakes

continuously employed by the student throughout the duration of the oral

production.

The aspects that we can consider when applying an effective evaluation

should:

reflect the learning objectives

focus on what students have learned and can do

be congruent with instruction and be based on meaningful tasks

be based on appropriate criteria that students know and understand

reflect a range of tools and methods of assessment and evaluation

provide multiple opportunities and ways for students to demonstrate

their learning

be ongoing and continuous

inform practice and instructional decisions and

inform others (e.g., students and parents) in a clear, accurate, and

practical way.

The oral production can evaluate:

Content Evaluation: Evaluates the knowledge of students

Process Evaluation: Evaluates the actions, behaviors, skills, or strategies of

students

Product Evaluation: Evaluates primarily the artifacts that students create to

demonstrate their understanding of language content and processes

During the evaluation we may focus on:

Fluency of Speech

Grammar Use

Listening Comprehension

Pronunciation

Vocabulary Appropriateness and Complexity

As an assessment measurement, the oral production often serves to raise

student interest in a weak point and has the empowerment factor to let

students work on their speaking skills as the study continues.

It is a task that involves teachers, parents, school, and system

administrators. In addition, teachers grow professionally when they reflect

on their own teaching and when they keep informed of current instructional

strategies and evaluation methods they may use in their programs.

References:

http://telfchina.org

http://iteslj.org/t/

johncraigcolbert@aol.com