Handout 1. How to test/assess speaking Speaking is often one of the areas of learning English that is not usually assessed. However, speaking is an important skill for students to develop, and it is important to include activities in the English classroom that provide opportunities for students to speak in English. These could be telling a story, a role play, an interview or a discussion. Assessing speaking activities can tell the teacher about his/her students’ progress in English, what they have learned, how confidently they can speak in English, or whether they are having problems speaking English.
The teacher can use any speaking activities to assess speaking skills, especially activities where students talk about themselves or an interesting topic. Activities such as reading a text aloud are not very useful for assessing speaking skills, as the only aspect of speaking that these activities assess is pronunciation. They don’t take other aspects of speaking into account such as speaking confidently and fluently, taking part in activities, using vocabulary and grammar accurately and so on.
Often in speaking activities students are demonstrating what they have understood from a reading or listening activity. So the teacher keeps in mind that when he is assessing speaking, the teacher is often assessing other skills at the same time.
What to assess? Vocabulary, accuracy, communication, interaction and fluency are all markers of a student’s overall speaking abilities.
Pronunciation is a basic quality of language learning. When evaluating the pronunciation of the students, the teacher listens for clearly articulated words, appropriate pronunciations of unusual spellings, and assimilation and contractions in suitable places. Also listens for intonation. Are students using the correct inflection for the types of sentences they are saying? Do they know that the inflection of a question is different from that of a statement? He listens for these pronunciation skills and determine into which level the student falls.
