Everybody’s Talkin’ Part 1

Speaking Test Round Up Monday 24^th to Friday 28^th October

Over the next two weeks I will give every single student in my school a speaking test. I have been through the speaking test cycle twice before now and it is my least favourite part of the school term. Giving 200 or so 1 or 2 minute speaking tests in a row is a really unpleasant way to spend a couple of hours. After a little while I normally want to run screaming from the room. It can be a truly draining experience. Part of the difficulty however is not letting the students see my frustration. Obviously I want to provide the best environment for them as possible. I don’t want to convey my irritation with the process during their tests. Remaining visibly upbeat as my co-teachers rush one student in after another can be difficult.

At the beginning of our TESOL course I wrote in an early blog post about my dissatisfaction with the compromised nature of the speaking tests. I don’t think it is really possible for me to accurately gauge a student’s ability using the current format the school has for speaking tests. The first problem is the length of time given for each test; the grade 3 students get 90 seconds, the grade 2 students get 1 minute and the grade 1 students get 2 minutes. Within the 1 or 2 minutes I have meant to give each student a score out of 10 in 4 categories – vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and understanding. It is remarkably difficult to ascertain a student’s true ability in any of these areas in the time given. To complicate matters all the students are given the test paper, the list of questions I will ask them, at least a week in advance of the test. This means they can just prepare a stock answer, a set answer, to the questions. Another issue is the fact that, although ostensibly marked out of 10, I have been told not to mark students below 5. The reason being that we don’t want to damage the students self esteem or confidence. This means that if a student literally sits there and answers nothing, not a single question, they will still get 5 out of 10 in each category.

I hate it when the students just sit there and don’t answer. I do everything I can, within the time limit, to prompt and elicit answers from the students. I’m practically feeding the answers to them sometimes.

I can understand why the speaking tests are arranged this way. Primarily time constraints are to blame. They can only take a certain amount of time away from regular classes for the speaking tests. Each class actually loses two classes – 1 is spent preparing for the test and another spent actually giving them. The students are given the questions in advance so that they all have a good chance. However, even though they all see the paper beforehand and I devote an entire lesson to practicing the questions some students still turn up for their test completely unprepared. This frustrates me, especially when students who are perfectly capable just haven’t practiced. All they would have to do is spend 30 minutes revising and they would get a good mark.

I find myself cheating the system sometimes. Maybe I will give a better mark to a student whose proficiency is low but who is clearly trying. Sometimes I will give a student a high mark because I know how good their English is from speaking to them in and out of class.

Sometimes I am incredibly disappointed and genuinely upset by the speaking tests. I have mentioned in earlier blog posts that my grade 3 classes are mixed level. I have talked about how in these classes there are some students whose proficiency is so low they are simply not being catered to by my lessons. The fact that these 1 or 2 or 3 students in each class are being left behind is understood and seemingly accepted by my co-teachers. I feel so bad when I’m giving my lessons and see one of these kids just staring blankly into space and knowing that I am not going to do anything about it. So when one of these students comes to do their speaking test and just sits there and can’t answer anything I feel awful.

So far I have given all of the grade 3 tests. I did them all over Thursday and Friday – all 250 of them. I was exhausted afterwards. However, I am glad to have them out of the way. I still have most of the grade 1 and grade 2 students to do.

In my next blog post I will write about how I design the test and how I deliver the revision lessons where I practice the questions with the students. There is definitely room for improvement in both areas.

If anyone has any suggestions that might help improve the way my school conducts its speaking tests please let me know.