Testing Speaking Skills

 

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Methods of testing oral proficiency: 
The assessment of performance-based tests of oral proficiency on the basis of 
ACTFL levels : 
In (Kenyon, 1998) the author claims that performance tasks are the foundation of 
any performance-based assessment. The task he describes refers to the open-ended 
stimulus serving to elicit the examinee’s performance to be evaluated. An example of that 
is an oral response to an interviewer’s questions or instructions to a role-play, or to the 
physical response to instructions given to the examinee in the target language. His study 
was based on the Speaking Proficiency Guidelines of the American Council on the 
Teaching of a Foreign Language. The framework of that study is that the determining 
source of the examinees’ proficiency level lies in his/her ability to accomplish speaking 
tasks that are associated with different levels of proficiency that are defined by the 
Guidelines. There are four levels of proficiency in the Guidelines. They are: Novice level 
which is characterized by the ability to communicate minimally in highly predictive 
situations with previously learned words. Intermediate which is related to the ability to 
initiate, sustain and close basic communication tasks. Advanced that is characterized by 
the ability to converse fluently in participatory fashion. Superior that is related to the 
ability to participate effectively in most formal and informal conversations on practical, 
social, professional, and abstract topics. Between these four main levels, there are 
sublevels as well.
In conducting that study, a number of students were tested by asking them to 
perform some tasks that were designed in accordance with the ACTFLGuidelines. The 

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examinees were allowed to demonstrate the characteristics of speech at the main levels 
from intermediate to superior. After analyzing the results, the author extracts the finding 
that it is important to clearly construct unambiguous tasks on performance-based 
assessments so that all salient features of the task are clear to the examinee.
Kenyon states that “When students are asked to give a linguistic performance in 
response to a task in a testing situation, it is paramount that the directions to the 
performance-based task be absolutely clear.”