Teaching English Toolbox - OPEN ACCESS SANDBOX

Assessing and Testing Speaking

DallE: cute cat speaking to a mouse in a school classroom full of children surreal

Of course you know that assessment is ongoing which is why it is useful to take notes on your learners! In terms of speaking, even the simplest rituals (greeting them at the door and asking them how they are doing in English) give you an idea of what they can and cannot say in English!

Here are a few tips to help you assess learner speaking in an ongoing way:

  • Provide tongue twisters, role plays, poems, etc... that are simple and can be memorized for homework. Start each lesson by having a few learners "perform";
  • Keep a list of names handy where you can simply take notes, especially of simple chit-chat situations in English (e.g. when you ask "how was your lunch" and the learner says "it was great!!", this is an important communicative setting that can well be assessed)!
  • Let the learners record themselves (Padlet? Flip? One Note?). They can be given a simple prompt (e.g. "What did you do yesterday?") or perform something memorized (e.g. a poem) or read a text aloud (be careful of this, though, because it's a questionable means of measuring communicative speaking).  

Using Rubrics

Rubrics can be useful even as early as the first year of English. Even first year learners can say short sentences fluently and intelligibly (I like ice cream and pizza!).

Be careful of putting "pronunciation" on your rubric, though! It is hard to say in English what is "right" and what is "wrong" and too often we find ourselves in subjective situations of "that's how I would say it" (for instance, the writer of this text says "/krik/" for the word "creek") and she's a native speaker). There are so many different ENGLISHes and there are more NON-NATIVE speakers than native speakers so it's unfair to over-focus on pronunciation.  INTELLIGIBILITY is much more important!!!

A simple Googleimage search of speaking rubric EFL will lead you to loads of models that you can use for informal measures (taking notes) and formal measures (when learners know they are supposed to perform using those criteria.

Example 1

Look at the table below and ask yourself:

  • If you were to make a holistic rubric, what would that look like? How would that differ from an analytic one?
  • What else might you have under "language production" or "pronunciation"?
  • Some points on a rubric such as eye-contact during a presentation, are not really English language skills and should thus not be used as part of a grade. How do you separate out such things? Should you? What other categories might be part of speaking but should perhaps not be assessed through scoring?
Outeiral, C. (2014). [iln dfile="4285382"]Assessment of young language learners: Using rubrics to bridge the gap between praxis and curriculum[/iln]. Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature. 7(1), p. 72

Example 2

From Cambridge - here keep in mind that there is pronunciation, but it is NOT American or Australian and of you look deeper into their criteria, you can download the entire document here), then you will see that the focus is on intelligibility.

Look at this rubric and ask yourself the following questions:

  • What does "a good degree of control" mean?
  • What are everyday situations in the life of a 10 year-old?
  • What does "some control of phonological features" mean?
  • How do you teach learners to "maintain simple exchanges"? How does this flow into "dynamic assessment"?
  • Where is fluency in this rubric?
Cambridge UCLES (2019). Assessing Speaking Performance – Level A2. p. 2.

Example 3

Now look at Cambridge's B1 speaking rubric (from UCLES 2019) and:

  • Compare the A2 to the B1. What is the same? What is different?
  • Should we actually be using the B1 rubrics from Cambridge or other "official" sources in our local primary classrooms and the C1s in local secondary classrooms? Or rather, should we stick to the local curriculum?  What might be the advantages/disadvantages / considerations?
Cambridge UCLES (2019). Assessing Speaking Performance - Level B1. p. 2
  • What are the subskills / constructs of speaking that you should assess? How do you make these clear to yourself and to your learners?
  • If you were to analyze a speaking test from a coursebook, would you be able to justify what is being tested and why? Give an example.
  • What are some common item types for assessing speaking skills? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
  • Can you describe some different criteria on or forms of rubrics you might use for assessing speaking skills?
  • What might you observe in a learner's speaking from general classroom activities that you can use for report card grades and how can you systematically take note of this in a standards-based way?
  • How can you assess individual learner speaking when you have a class of 25 learners?