Macro Skill - Group 6

ASSESSING
SPEAKING
ASSESSING
SPEAKING
Pronunciation, vocabulary, accuracy,
interaction, and fluency are important
components of students overall speaking
competencies. Using different assessment
techniques is the best way for educators to get
a clear picture of each student’s speaking
abilities.
Assessing speaking skills entails
teachers to pay attention to the
following:
1. Fluency
Fluency means speaking easily, reasonably quickly
without having to stop and pause a lot. It refers to
how many languages a student can speak, as
opposed to accuracy which focuses on whether that
language is correct or not. A lot of conversation
classes, especially more informal conversation
classes, focus solely on fluency.
2. Pronunciation
Pronunciation is the act of producing the sound speech,
including articulation, stress, and intonation. Pronunciation is
important in speaking. However, when it comes to speaking
assessments, the utmost consideration is whether the
learners pronunciation communication easy or difficult.
3. Vocabulary
This refers to the body of words used in a particular
language. Vocabulary is usually assessed through
vocabulary tests, using multiple choice or fill-in-the-
blanks. However, in the context of speaking, it is the
consideration of the breadth and depth of the
vocabulary used by the speaker.
4. Accuracy
This refers to the correct use of the language
system. Language teachers expand grammatical
constructs by going beyond the assessment of
grammatical form and meaning to grammatical
use.
5. Interaction
This refers to the ability to interact with others
during communicative tasks.
TYPES OF SPEAKING
ASSESSMENT TASKS
 Brown (2004:142) provides five types of
tasks that teachers can use to assess the
speaking ability of students.
 1. Imitative
 This
involves repeating a small stretch of
language and focusing on pronunciation.
 2. Intensive
 1.1 Reading aloud
 Brown (2004) suggests that reading aloud can be
used as a companion for other more communicative
tasks.
 1.2 DRT
 DRT is beneficial to elicit a specific grammatical form
or a transformation of a sentence which requires
minimal processing like producing English stress
patterns, words in stressed and unstressed positions,
rhythmic structure, and intonational contours; produce
reduced forms of words and phrases and using
adequate number of lexical units (words), grammatical
word classes (nouns, verbs, etc.), systems (e.g., tense,
agreement. Pluralisation), word order, patterns, rules,
forms. (brown, 2004)
3. Responsive
These are speaking tasks that involve responses to
spoken prompts.
4. Interactive
 Thisrefers to interactional and transactional
conversations. Some examples
 5. Extensive (monologue)
 a. Speech (Oral Presentation or oral report)
 Itis commonly practiced to present a report, paper, or
design in a school setting. An oral presentation can be
used to assess the speaking skill holistically or
analytically.
b. Picture-cued Story Telling
The main consideration of using a picture or
series of pictures is to make it into a stimulus
for a longer story or description.
c. Retelling a Story or New Event
 Thefocus is usually on the meaningfulness of
the relationship of events within the story,
fluency, and interaction with the
audience(Brown, 2004).
ASSESSING
SPEAKING USING
RUBRICS
There are two types of rubrics that can be used in
assessing speaking:
1) Holistic rubric leads the rater to evaluate or score the overall

components of communicative competence without separately
considering another component of language production.
2) Analytic rubric requires the rater to evaluate or score the

components of language production separately (Moskal, 2000:
Nitko, 2001).
Step in developing rubrics:
1. Set criteria of task success
2. Set dimensions of language to be
assessed
3. Give appropriate weight to each
dimension
4. Focus on what test taker can do
instead of what they cannot.
Sample
of
Analytic
Rubric
Sample
of
Holistic
Rubric
STRATEGIES FOR
DEVELOPING
SPEAKING SKILLS
Strategies for Developing Speaking Skills
1. Using minimal responses
It is a good strategy that really works when we have learners who
lack confidence in their ability to participate successfully in oral
interaction often listen in silence while others do the talking. One
way to encourage such learners to begin to participate is to help
them build up a stock of minimal responses that they case in
different types of exchanges.
Maximal responses a predictable, often idiomatic phrases that
conversation participants use to indicate understanding,
agreement, doubt, and other responses to what another speaker is
saying. Having a stock of such responses enables a learner focus
on what the other participant is saying. Without having to
simultaneously plan a response.
2. Recognizing scripts
Some communication situations are associated with a
predictable set of spoken exchanges a script. Greetings,
apologies, compliments. Invitations, and other functions that
are influenced by social and cultural norms often follow
patterns or scripts. So do the transactional exchanges
involved in activities such as obtaining information and
making purchase these scripts, the relationship between a
speaker’s turn and the one that follows it can often be
anticipated. You can help students develop the speaking
ability by making them aware of the scripts for different
situations so that they can predict what they will hear and
what they will need to say in response.
3. Using language to talk about language
Language learners are often too embarrassed or
shy so say anything when they do not understand
another speaker or when they realize that a
conversation partner has not understood them. In
this case, you can help students overcome this
reticence by assuring them that misunderstanding
and the need for clarification can occur in any type
of interaction, whatever the participants’ language
skill levels. You can also give students strategies
and phrases to use for clarification and
comprehension check. Before we develop same
activities with your students, year have to make
emphasis on your students that the aim of the
SPEAKING
ACTIVITIE
S
Speaking Activities
a.) Discussion
A discussion is carried out to arrive at a conclusion,
to share ideas about an event, or to find solutions.
The teacher needs to orient the students on the
purpose of the discussion so time will not be wasted
on talking about other things.
b.) Your last word is mine

The first student starts telling a story; another
continues using last word uttered by the first
student, then another student continues until the
c.) Short speeches
Given a time frame, students are given a topic
and deliver a speech before the class.
d.) Guess the picture

One student has the picture and the partner
needs to guess what’s in the picture by asking
probing questions and clarifications.
e.) Role play

In role play, students pretend they are in
various social contexts and have a variety of
social roles.
g.) What a life
 It is an activity that is developed in groups.
First, you have to ask your students to write in
some small cards some events or things that
have happened to them in the past. Then each
of them is going to have a turn to pick up a
card and read it out to the rest of the group.
After this, they have. To make a different
question to the reader of the card.
h.) Taboo
It is a speaking game where students have to
provide some words besides the ones that you
have provided them in se slices of paper. What
you have to do is to give student some words
written in a sheet of paper. Then, you have to
explain them that they have written some others
related with the ones that you have given them.
The point is per each word they have to write a
certain number of words or adjectives that have
relation with the provided.
I.) Consequence role play
Here students have to take the role of another person.
Procedure:
Give each student a piece of paper. On this they must first write:
1. The state of their favourite movie star-male or female but of the opposite gender to
themselves
2. Student s favorite fruit.
3. A number between 19
4. The names of vegetables the same number of vegetables as the number given above
5. A job they don’t like
6. Their favourite job they would like to do
7. A description of their dream house: e.g. by the sea, in the mountains using adjectives to
describe this place
8. Finally, they describe what country they would really like to live in.
Now they are required to change character to the
person they have described on the piece of paper.
Here are what the points above mean:
1. This is their husband’s or wife’s first name.
2. This is their family name.
3. This indicates the number of children they have
4. This indicates the children’s names.
5. This is their job
6. This is the husband’s or wife’s job
7. This describes the family house and tells the
listener where it is located
8. This last point tells us what country they come
j.) Fashion statements
This is an activity were students have the opportunity to give their personal opinions of
style and fashion.
Procedure:
Before doing this activity, give your students a statement on the board and ask them if
they agree or disagree.
Here some example statements you can use
a. What you wear says a lot about your personality.
b. I love buying new clothes.
c. I really do not care about what I wear.
d. Second hand clothes can be cool.
e. Then make pairs and ask them to discuss how much they agree or disagree with it.
k.) Picture Dictation
This activity requires a low preparation and works
well with large classes, especially with young
learners and teens. All your students need is a
blank piece of paper and all the teacher needs is a
little bit of imaginations.
l.) Brain Storming

On a gives topic, students can produce ideas in a
limited time. Depending on the context, either
individual or group brainstorming is effective and
learners ideas quickly and freely. The good
characteristic of brainstorming is that the students
are not criticized for their ideas so students will be
m.) Reporting
Before coming to class, students are asked to read a newspaper or magazine and, in class, they report to their friends what they find as the most
interesting news. Students can also talk about whether they have experienced anything worth telling their friends in their daily lives before class.
n.) Narrating or telling a friend about an amusing weekend experience
o.) Playing games that engage students in conversation
p.) Conducting class debates

Suggestions for Teachers When Teaching Speaking
Provide maximum opportunity to students to speak
the target language by providing a rich environment
that contains collaborative work, authentic
materials and tasks, and shared knowledge.
Try to involve each student in every speaking
activity.
Reduce teacher speaking time in class. Step back
and observe students. Indicate positive signs when
commenting on a student’s response.
 Asking
questions such as “What do you mean?
How did you much that conclusion?” in order to
prompt students to speak more.
Provide written back like “Your presentation was really
great. It was a good job. I really appreciated your efforts
in preparing the materials and efficient use of your
voice…
Do not correct students pronunciation mistakes very
often while they are speaking. Correction should not
distract student from his or her speech.
 Involve speaking activities not only in class but also out
of class; contact parents and other people who can
help. Circulate around classroom to ensure that
students are on the right track and see whether they
need your help while they work in groups or pair.
 Provide the vocabulary beforehand that
students need in speaking activities.
Diagnose problems faced by students who
love difficulty in expressing themselves in
the target language and provide more
opportunities so practice the spoken
language.
ACTIVIT
Y HEADS UP!
Direction: Give the synonyms of the following words without
searching in the internet and dictionaries.
1. Antithesis
Meaning - love is the antithesis of selfishness.
2. Synthesis
Meaning - The pioneer of quantum theory died
without synthesizing his work therefore, his clever
wife do it.
3. Apprehension
Meaning - He worries that something might happen
4. Ingenious
Meaning - He was ingenious enough to overcome the
limited budget.
5. Prominent
Meaning - He possess a trait that made him
prominent; in his work he is incredible.
6. Queue
Meaning - follow the queue.
7. Sluggish
Meaning - something moving like a turtle.
8. Timid
Meaning – a trait of some individuals; easily
frightened.
9. Astounding
Meaning - surprisingly impressive or notable.
10. Decipher
Meaning - convert a text written in code into a
normal language.

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ASSESSING

1) Holistic rubric leads the rater to evaluate or score the overall

2) Analytic rubric requires the rater to evaluate or score the

b.) Your last word is mine

d.) Guess the picture

e.) Role play

l.) Brain Storming

n.) Narrating or telling a friend about an amusing weekend experience

o.) Playing games that engage students in conversation

p.) Conducting class debates

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