S. Batdulam is a teacher at Dornod Institute. She graduated from EXCEL in 2004.
As you know the goal of language learning is communication. We need English to communicate. This is why skills are important. Skills are learned by doing. Unfortunately, in our situation students usually have poor speaking and listening skills. They are better at writing and reading.
There is a Chinese proverb that says:
I listen and forget
I see and remember
I do and understand
If we let our students practice their English, they will learn more while they are speaking to each other. They will make mistakes, but without making mistakes no one can learn.
In our ESL classrooms we often don’t give enough time for communication (production), the part of the lesson when students have a chance to use the language in real-life situations. ESL classrooms are almost the only place where students can practice their English by using it and speaking. We cannot develop speaking skills unless we also develop listening skills; to have a successful conversation, students must understand what is said to them. However, in this article I will talk more about speaking skills. To help the students to use English for their communication outside of class we – teachers – need to always try to do activities which focus on developing speaking skills, and then we need to evaluate the students’ speaking abilities to see if they are progressing.
My survey, which was conducted in Choibalsan city among 40 secondary-school students and 21 teachers, showed that the teachers rarely test and evaluate their students’ speaking skills. Usually the teachers prefer paper and pencil tests to evaluate students’ language skills, which are not appropriate for testing speaking ability. Teachers do this because of their incomplete knowledge about concrete testing criteria and which language components should be tested. Besides this, most of the teachers who participated in the survey said they do not use the national foreign language standards to evaluate the students’ speaking skills. So then, here is a big question, “What resource materials do teachers use to evaluate students’ speaking skills?”
Before evaluating the students’ speaking skills, it is very important to develop them. We teachers must always remember that language is for communication and should always give the students opportunities to use their knowledge to communicate in the language.
According to the outcome of my survey I can say that Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), which is learner-centered and emphasizes communication and real-life situations, has not been used
in many English classes in Mongolia, even though it was introduced to Mongolia several years ago and its use has been encouraged since then.
I teach at Dornod Institute, and what I have observed during my students’ practice teaching is that many classes are more traditional than communicative. The student-teachers try to have communicative classes, but children are not very familiar with them.
In my survey, a high percentage of people said it is a good idea to have an oral component in the English final exam. We can learn from some other countries’ experiences where they are succeeding in oral testing.
Penny Ur (1996) mentioned, “I think that oral testing is worth the investment. An example: some years ago an oral component was introduced into the Israeli school-leaving exam, with a 20% weighting in the final grade; the immediate effect was a very noticeable rise in the emphasis on oral work in school classrooms and a corresponding improvement in learners’ speaking skills. In principle, a language test should include all aspects of language skills - including speaking. Speaking is not just ‘any skill’ – it is arguably the most important, and therefore should take priority in any language test.”
Most of the speaking activities used in English classrooms in Mongolia are limited to asking and answering questions about a text, choral reading, and memorizing and reciting of dialogues and texts by heart. None of these activities really require students to communicate their own ideas orally. Therefore, the students will be unprepared for oral testing or for communicating with others in that language. Among the teachers I surveyed, the average number of years of teaching experience was 4.4 years, and 43% of them had only taught between one and three years. The teachers gave different reasons for not always using speaking activities in class, and for feeling unable to develop and test their students’ speaking skills. The teachers struggle with a lack of knowledge about oral testing, lack of time to test individual students, and most importantly, a lack of confidence in their own speaking ability.
Since teachers do not know much about specific criteria for speaking skills, English teachers’ groups at secondary schools should discuss them and decide on particular ones. To do this they should have some knowledge and experience about evaluating speaking skills. What I have concluded is that the teachers need systematic professional development courses and seminars, particularly in the area of developing speaking skills and oral testing. It is also the teacher’s responsibility to improve his knowledge and skills regularly. Additionally, it would be a good idea to teach a course about teaching, testing, and evaluating spoken language to those undergraduate students who are being trained to be English teachers. It is very important to educate them about appropriate criteria for evaluating students’ speaking skills.
Here are some methods of testing which you can use to evaluate your students’ speaking skills:
- Discussion based on a book
- Discussion based on realia
- Role play
- Telephone conversation
- Presentation: lecture
- Presentation: prepared topic
- Presentation: given topic
- Interview: given topic
- Interview: attitudes/opinions
- Interview: talking about self
- Interview: picture stimulus
- Open interview/free discussion
- Summarizing a conversation
- Commenting on a written text
- Reading aloud
- Response to grammatical cues
- Response to functional cues
- Filling blanks in dialogues
- Simultaneous translation
- Guided conversation/ dialogue flowchart
- Guided instructions (info gap)
- Taking and relaying a message
- Group work: jigsaw listening
- Pair work: problem-solving
- Responding to situations
Which of these methods have you used to evaluate your students’ speaking skills? Do you think you can use the rest in your classroom?
The following are the components of spoken language that a test-taker needs to perform in order to be a clear communicator (Compendium. A handbook for ELT teachers).
- To produce recognizable sounds and stress and intonation patterns of the language.
- To produce the appropriate grammatical structures to give the intended meaning.
- To produce the necessary vocabulary.
- To produce spoken language fluently i.e. quickly and effectively with the minimum of hesitations.
- To be able to understand the other speakers in a conversation.
- To be able to produce appropriate spoken language as necessary.
Conducting dialogues
Dialogues should be half-completed; i.e. one speaker’s language should be left blank. A test-taker completes the blank lines.
You are at the counter of a movie theatre. You want to buy tickets.
Worker: Good afternoon. Can I help you?
(You want to know if they are selling “HOME ALONE - 4” tickets.)
You: ……………………………………………………………………………..
Worker: Well, we’ve sold all the tickets. But we have tickets for two other movies.
(Ask what movies they are.)
You: ……………………………………………………………………………..
Worker: They are “Harry Potter - 3” and “The lion, the wardrobe and the witch”.
(You want to know what kind movie “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” is.)
You: ……………………………………………………………………………..
Worker: It is based on a fairy tale. It is very popular in the US and the European countries.
(Say, you prefer that one and ask for the price.)
You: ……………………………………………………………………………
Worker: It is 1500 Tugriks.
(Say you want to buy 2 tickets for today.)
You: ……………………………………………………………………………
Worker: Sorry, we’re sold out. We have tickets for tomorrow.
(Say you don’t have time tomorrow and ask for Saturday tickets.)
You: ……………………………………………………………………………..
Worker: Ok, for which showing would you like tickets? For 2:45 or 4:15?
(Tell her for which showing you want your tickets.)
You: ……………………………………………………………………………..
Worker: Here you are. Your two tickets.
(Thank the lady.)
You: ………………………………………………………………………………
During the test, test-takers should be allowed sufficient opportunity to speak. The examiner can ask test-takers to repeat their responses if they are not clear. Marks can be deducted for such repetitions.
I adapted a simple grading scale to make it more clear for teachers who have less experience with speaking tests. Like me, you can adapt it too, and use and test it in your teaching. Try to use different kinds of methods and appropriate criteria to evaluate your students’ speaking skills. Accurately seeing how your students are performing helps you find better ways to develop their language proficiency.
Please see Batdulam’s adapted grading chart below.
