PRODUCTIVE SKILLS

Assessing productive and interactive skills

Multiple Choice

what are the 2 receptive skills?

• reading and listening

• reading and vocabulary

• speaking and writing

• grammar and vocabulary

Multiple Choice

what are the 2 productive skills?

• speaking and listening

• reading and speaking

• speaking and writing

• grammar and vocabulary

Multiple Choice

when we read a book, the letters, words, sentences are considered...

• out put

• in put

• input

• output

Multiple Choice

when we write a letter, the letters, the words, the sentences we write are considered...

• output

• in put

• out put

• input

Assessing speaking

INPUT AND INTERACTION

In assessments of speaking, input is more often presented orally. In the classic oral interview, an examiner poses questions to the assessee either face to face or over the telephone.

Assessing speaking

The examiner fills the role played in most tests by the question paper. However, individual assessees will encounter different examiners with different personalities and questioning styles. The specific questions posed by the examiner and the manner in which they are put can affect the kind of performance that is elicited. It is therefore important to control questioning in a systematic way. Attempts have been made to standardise examiner behaviour through training, by scripting or partially scripting their role, and by specifying other contextual features, such as what the interviewer should wear and where he or she should sit in relation to the assessee.

Assessing speaking

An alternative to the face-to-face interview is to replace the examiner with a recording, but this brings its own problems. Recordings cannot interact realistically with the assessee, so turn taking and conversation management cannot be assessed.

Scoring performance

impression scoring

One apparently straightforward approach to awarding scores to a performance is impression scoring. The rater awards a score out of an arbitrary total to reflect the quality of the performance. Percentages are a popular option, perhaps because they give a reassuring air of statistical precision.

Scoring performance

error counts

Look at these two sentences from student essays:
Eggs are one of the only foods contained natural occurring vitamin D.
Eggs is naturally foods that vitamin D is contain.

Scoring performance

checklists

The key advantage of using checklists to score spoken or written performance is that they direct attention to aspects of performance that are considered by the designers to be important. The simplicity of checklists can also be considered a weakness. Successful communication is not readily reducible to yes/no choices and aggregating the checks to arrive at a score may, like error counting, misrepresent the relative communicative effectiveness of assessees.

Scoring performance

rating scales

The most widely adopted strategy for scoring performance on assessments of writing or speaking is to use rating scales. These are also known by various other names such as scoring rubrics and marking schemes. Rating scales combine the advantage of checklists – defi ning aspects of performance to be attended to – with the advantages of impression scoring – scores that refl ect different degrees of success.

Multiple Choice

The rater awards a score out of an arbitrary total to reflect the quality of the performance.

• checklists

• rubrics

• rating scale

• impression scoring

Multiple Choice

the most widely adopted strategy for scoring performance on assessments of writing or speaking is

• rating scales

• checklists

• impression scoring

• error count

Multiple Choice

What is an alternative for face-to-face interviews?

• podcasts

• letters to a penpal

• replace the examines with a recording

• singing songs