Assessing Speaking

Basic Types of Speaking (1) Imitative Focus on pronunciation Not concerned about comprehension or expression of meaning Intensive (limited, mechanical, or controlled) Semantic, syntactical, phonological aspects Minimal interaction Responsive Interaction and test comprehension Limited level of very short conversations Yun-Pi Yuan 2

Basic Types of Speaking (2) Interactive Longer and more complex Specific and interpersonal exchanges Extensive (monologue) Language style deliberative (i.e., planned) Formal Examples Speeches Presentations Story-telling (Brown 141-142) Yun-Pi Yuan 3

Micro- & Macro-skills of Speaking Microskills Phonemes and allophones Stress patterns, rhythmic structure, intonation Lexical units Reduced forms Rates of delivery Chunks of language of different lengths Strategic devices: pauses, fillers, backtracking Grammatical word classes, systems, word order, patterns, rules, elliptical forms Speech in natural constituents Cohesive devices Yun-Pi Yuan 4

Macro-skills Accomplish communicative functions according to situations, participants, goals Styles, registers, pragmatic conventions, conversation rules, interrupting, etc. Making connections between new/given info., generalization/exemplification, etc. Nonverbal cues: facial features, body language, etc. Speaking strategies: Key word emphasis Rephrase . . . . and more Yun-Pi Yuan 5

Interview 4 stages: Warm-up: small talk Level check Probe Wind-down Not scored Level check Probe Wind-down (Brown 168-170) Yun-Pi Yuan 6

Two-on-One Interview Advantages Disadvantages Practicality (two at a time) Student-student interaction (maximize the output of test takers) Increase in authenticity Disadvantages Equalizing the output between the two testees discerning the interaction effect of unequal comprehension/production abilities Scoring two people at the same time Yun-Pi Yuan 7