Everybody’s Talkin’ Part 2

Designing Speaking Tests

When I was first asked to do the speaking tests last year I really wasn’t sure exactly what to do. My co-teachers told me the basic guidelines regarding time limit and criteria but apart from that I was left to design them myself. I was surprised by how little input and guidance I received from my co-teachers, especially the first time. I tried asking them for advice but they were remarkably unforthcoming. At the time I thought this behavior was very strange but have since learned this ‘passive resistance’ is quite common in Korea. Luckily the previous NET had left some files behind that included the speaking tests he had given during his time at the school. Having nothing else to go on I used those as a basis for designing my own. I did briefly consider focusing the tests on a specific interaction like ordering food in a restaurant or booking a flight somewhere. But instead of this I opted for a relatively unrelated series of questions like the previous teacher had done.

I decided to take all the questions from the chapters in the textbooks that the students had recently studied. It seemed only fair to use questions they had already encountered and theoretically already studied although this turned out to not necessarily be true. One of the problems I have is that I can’t make leveled speaking tests – the students, regardless of level and proficiency, have all meant to receive the same test. Therefore the questions I choose from the textbook have to cater to all levels of proficiency. This does not seem practical to me but I suspect there must be some official reason of which I am unaware. In practice though I have to remove some of the questions for the low level students.

As I said I use the recently studied textbook chapters as the source for questions. For example in this year’s grade 3 test I took two questions from a ‘listen and speak’ exercise in the textbook. I didn’t teach this exercise in my classes as it was covered by my co-teachers in their own classes so I don’t know if the students had any specific problems with it. I don’t know exactly how the teachers deliver it either. Basically though the students listen to the following dialogue:

Girl: What do you like to do?

Boy: I enjoy camping.

Girl: Do you enjoy fishing, too?

Boy: Yes, I do.

And then they listen to this dialogue:

Girl: What do you like to do?

Boy: I enjoy hiking.

Girl: Do you enjoy traveling, too?

Boy: Not really.

So you can see the basic structure it is trying to teach. Once they have listened to the dialogue they are to practice with a partner. Again I don’t know exactly how the teacher arranges this in the classes. There is vocabulary to go with the exercise in the textbook too: Camp, hike, fish, travel, cook, take pictures, swim, ski, and shop.

From this exercise I made two questions for the speaking test. So my question 6 is:

6. What do you like to do? (Page 111)
• Why do you like doing it?

The first part, ‘What do you like to do?’ comes directly from the textbook and the second has been added by me. For my question 7 I ask 1 or 2 of the following:

7. Do you enjoy cooking? (Page 111)
• Do you enjoy taking pictures?
• Do you enjoy hiking?
• Do you enjoy shopping?
• Why / why not?

I feel that this is relatively fair. The first part of the question is quite straightforward and has been covered in class. The second part gives the students room to say what they want. It is here they can impress me and really display their ability, or not as the case may be. Some students shine in these sections – They often come up with interesting, idiosyncratic answers. I love it when the students reveal their individuality. Even though they are stressed by the experience many inject humor into their answers. Of course some students are less successful. Whilst the first part has been covered in regular class I do give examples and practice reasons they can give for the second part in the revision class that precedes the tests. However, when a student comes out and is stumped I always try and prompt them for answers. In fact I am sure if my co-teachers could hear me they would say I help them too much. For example, if a student has said ‘yes, I enjoy cooking’ but freezes when I ask ‘why?’, I will, after giving them some time, say something like – ‘because of delicious food? Do you like eating delicious food?’ This is along the lines of what we practiced. If they the say ‘yes’ I say ‘so, ‘I enjoy cooking because I…like…eating…delicious…food.’’ But hopefully they follow the prompt and take over the sentence before I finish it. They won’t get a top mark for this but I can still give them a mark.

The textbook exercise I took these questions from also tries to focus the students’ attention on an aspect of pronunciation regarding stressed and unstressed vowel sounds. For example:

Focus on Sounds Listen and Practic

_________o__0______O__________o_O
A: Do you enjoy surfing the internet? ↑ B: Not really. ↓

Here the unstressed ‘o’ and ‘u’ from ‘enjoy’ and ‘surfing’ are contrasted with the stressed ‘i’ in ‘internet’. I should really be listening out for this in the tests but have to admit I didn’t notice it once. It is as if my ears are simply not trained to pick up on this kind of thing. I will have to train them!

I also try and include a visual element in the test paper as well. So for example the grade 1 test paper includes the following questions:

8. Do you know this symbol? What does it mean? (Page 92)

[Photograph of the recycling symbol]

9. How does he go to school? (Page 91)

[Photograph of a boy on a bike going to school]

10. What are the girls doing? (Page 90)

[Photograph of two girls playing table tennis]

I hope the visual element provides a kind of stimulus for the students. It breaks up the test and means they are not just listening to me. They have an image to go with the questions.

In conclusion I have to say I am not satisfied with the way I put the tests together. I don’t think there is necessarily anything wrong with the questions. But I think I could be designing it better and choosing questions that would better help me gauge proficiency in grammar, understanding, vocabulary and pronunciation. The ‘testing’ aspect is challenging. Obviously I know when a student’s pronunciation is off or their grammar is not right but sometimes I think I’m not that attuned to identifying these things. I constantly worry that I’m not giving students appropriate marks. I wish I had even a minute to process and think about each test once I have given it. Instead what happens is as soon as one student stands up another one sits down. This means I’m making my grading decisions very quickly without any real reflection. However if I had 1 minute in-between students the whole process would take twice as long. My co-teachers are not going to agree to that.

I didn’t think I had that much to write about concerning the speaking tests but it turns out I have more to say than I thought. In tomorrow’s blog post I will talk about ‘question types’ and the revision classes. I would really love to hear some comments and suggestions about designing the tests. I wanted to attend some lectures at the KOTESOL conference about designing tests but they were on at the same time as other lectures I wanted to attend more. Maybe next year I can attend some.