Introduction: At the College of Languages and Translation (COLT), the students take four speaking courses in the first four semesters of college. In each course, they take two interim tests and a final exam. Aims: The study aims to find out which speaking assessment method EFL students and instructors at COLT prefer: Face to face, or lab testing,…

The debate over the extensive use of paired and group oral assessments has yielded an enriched body of theoretical inquiries and empirical investigations, marking a shift from viewing second language (L2) speaking ability as residing in the individual to emphasizing joint construction distributed among interlocutors within local contexts. This…

In this revised edition in the popular New Ways Series, teachers have once again been given an opportunity to show how they do assessment in their classrooms on an everyday basis. Often feeling helpless when confronted with large-scale standardized testing practices, teachers here offer classroom testing created with the direct aim of helping…

This study investigated parents' perceptions of their family's functioning and the level of early intervention support they received as they reflected on their involvement at an oral early intervention centre for children with hearing loss. Overall, parents reported high levels of family functioning and satisfaction with the services they had…

Issues surrounding the testing and evaluation of speaking in Singapore secondary schools are examined, including the questions of what skills and knowledge a speech evaluator should possess and what model of spoken knowledge--Received Pronunciation (RP) or Singapore English--should be provided. Oral tests, developed for the English language…

The increasing availability and performance of computer-based testing has prompted more research on the automatic assessment of language and speaking proficiency. In this investigation, we evaluated the feasibility of using an off-the-shelf speech-recognition system for scoring speaking prompts from the LanguEdge field test of 2002. We first…

Oral paraphrase is presented as an informal and versatile strategy for assessing and enhancing listening comprehension in mainstreamed students with language/learning disabilities. Approaches to assessing the listening comprehension demands of individual classrooms and using various dimensions of paraphrasing to enhance language comprehension and…

This document is an outline of a conference presentation on developing and implementing authentic oral assessment instruments. Among the topics covered are the following: alternative, authentic, direct, descriptive, portfolio, and performance assessments. A detailed comparison and contrasting is undertaken of alternative and performance…

A feasibility study has been conducted in Australia to investigate school and teacher objectives and practices in the development of oracy, to determine oracy skills agreed to be important, and to assess the feasibility and desirability of testing competence in oracy. The need for oracy assessment arises from a need for schools to account for…

The focus of second language education is communication, and oral language is central to the teaching of foreign language at all levels. Oral language in the foreign language classroom is the most problematic of all skills to assess. Teachers' concerns can be divided in the following areas: (1) What to assess: form or content; (2) How to assess:…

Uses oral-language skills assessment to illustrate sound classroom assessment practices, stressing interrelationships among teaching, learning, and assessment and viewing assessment as a continual, ongoing reference in a dynamic process, not an end in itself. Describes supportive classroom environments, explains oral language profiles, and…

Cognitive, behavior, achievement, and English/French speaking skills were correlated with ratings of oral French ability for third-grade francophone and anglophone immersion students. Teacher ratings correlated with achievement and cooperativeness, but independent ratings didn't. Objective evaluation procedures should be developed to minimize the…

The development of the Stanford Foreign Language Oral Skills Evaluation Matrix (FLOSEM), a rating scale for assessing communicative proficiency in foreign languages, is described. Information on the utility of the FLOSEM is presented based on the results of three studies. Oral proficiency measures were obtained by means of the FLOSEM from 573 high…

The purposes and methods of testing in bilingual and English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) education are discussed. Different instruments, including specific published tests, are listed and described briefly. They include language proficiency assessments, achievement tests, and assessments in special education. Introductory sections address topics…