With the advent of the communicative approach, the role of speaking ability has become more central in language teaching. Consequently, performance testing, especially testing speaking ability, has become one of the most important issues in language testing. There are many limitations in this area because of the nature of speaking ability and the difficulty and complexity of measuring spoken utterances. The purpose of this research is to examine the following: (1) whether the proposed nine traits (pronunciation, grammar, discourse, fluency, content, vocabulary, comprehensibility, interactional competence, and sociolinguistic competence) are relevant and separable parts of speaking ability; (2) whether there is a relationship between methods and language ability; (3) whether the traits are fundamental elements of ability; and (4) how the traits are related. This research also attempts to discover the extent to which speaking ability is reflected in other standardized tests, such as the Test of Spoken English (TSE) or the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Oral Proficiency Interview (ACTFL OPI). An appendix with several sample test questions is included. (Contains 14 references.) (KFT)