© 1992 by Oxford University Press
Articles |
Assessing speaking skills: a workshop for teacher development
Ben Knight teaches EFL and linguistics at Shinshu University, Japan. He obtained an MSc in Applied Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh in 1987, and has taught EFL/ESL in Britain, Kenya, Italy, India, and Sri Lanka. His current interests include the testing of spoken English, teacher development, and language learning beyond the classroom
Speaking skills are often considered the most important part of an EFL course, and yet the difficulties in testing oral skills frequently lead teachers into using inadequate oral tests or even not testing speaking skills at all. This article describes a workshop used in teacher development programmes to help teachers with one aspect of the problem of oral testing: what should we look for when we assess a student's ability to speak English? The workshop looks first at the range of criteria that teachers might use in such assessment. Then it examines how the selection and weighting of those criteria should depend on the circumstances in which the test takes place. The article also discusses issues raised by the workshop, and considers its applicability to people working in different circumstances.