ASSESSING SPEAKING

Arranged by

Rika Wahyuningtyas 201710560211003

Irhas Siswahyudi 201710560211021

Magister of English Education

University of Muhammadiyah Malang

2017
 A. Definition of Speaking

Tarigan (1990:3-4) defines that speaking is a language skill that is developed in

child life, which is produced by listening skill, and at that period speaking skill is

learned.

Based on Competence Based Curriculum speaking is one of the four basic

competences that the students should gain well. It has an important role in

communication. Speaking can find in spoken cycle especially in Joint Construction of

Text stage (Departmen Pendidikan Nasional, 2004). In carrying out speaking, students

face some difficulties one of them is about language its self. In fact, most of students get

difficulties to speak even though they have a lot of vocabularies and have written them

well. The problems are afraid for students to make mistakes.

Speaking is the productive skill. It could not be separated from listening. When

we speak we produce the text and it should be meaningful. In the nature of

communication, we can find the speaker, the listener, the message and the feedback.

Speaking could not be separated from pronunciation as it encourages learners to learn

the English sounds.

According to Ladouse (1991) speaking is described as the activity as the ability

to express oneself in the situation, or the activity to report acts, or situation in precise

words or the ability to converse or to express a sequence of ideas fluently. It means that

speaking as the way of communication influences our individual life strongly.From the

definition, the writer concludes that speaking is what we say to what we see, feel and

think. When we feel something, we want someone can hear us. So, in this process we

can call it is an interaction between two sides.

 When someone speak to other person, there will be a relationship. The

relationship itself is communication. Furthermore, Wilson (1983:5) defines speaking as

development of the relationship between speaker and listener. In addition speaking

determining which logical linguistic, psychological a physical rules should be applied in

a given communicate situation”. It means that the main objective of speaking is for

communication. In order to express effectively, the speaker should know exactly what

he/she wants to speak or to communicate, he/she has to be able to evaluate the effects of

his/her communication to his/her listener, he/she has to understand any principle that

based his speaking either in general or in individual.

On the other hand, speaking can be called as oral communication and speaking

is one of skills in English learning. This become one important subject that teacher

should given. That is why the teachers have big challenge to enable their students to

master English well, especially speaking English in class or out of the class.

Wallace (1978:98) stated that oral practice (speaking) becomes meaningful to

students when they have to pay attention what they are saying. Thus, the students can

learn better on how to require the ability to converse or to express their ideas fluently

with precise vocabularies and good or acceptable pronunciation.

Speaking ability is the students’ ability in expressing their ideas orally which is

represented by the scores of speaking. Speaking is only an oral trail of abilities that it

got from structure and vocabulary, Freeman (in Risnadedi, 2001: 56-57) stated that

speaking ability more complex and difficult than people assume, and speaking study

like study other cases in study of language, naturalize many case to language teachers.
 B. Assessing Speaking

Assessment is an ongoing process that encompasses a much wider domain.

Whenever a student responds to a question, offers a comment, or tries out a new word

or structure, the teacher subconsciously makes an assessment of students’ performance.

Written work-from a jotted down phrase to a formal essay is performance that

ultimately is assessed by self, teacher and possibly other students (Brown, 2003:4).

Brown (2003:141) states as with all effective tests, designing appropriate

assessment tasks in speaking begins with the specification of objective or criteria. Those

objectives may be classified in term of several types of speaking performance:

1. Imitative

This is a type of basic speaking that this is the ability to simply parrot back a

word or phrase or possibly a sentence. While this is purely phonetic level of

oral production, a number prosodic, lexical, and grammatical properties of

language may be included in the criterion performance. We are interested

only in what is traditionally labeled” pronunciation”; no inferences are made

about the test takers ability to understand or convey meaning or to

participate in an interactive conversation.

2. Intensive

This is a second basic type of speaking. Intensive speaking is the production

of short stretches of oral language designed to demonstrate competency in a

narrow band of grammatical, phrasal, lexical, or phonological relationship.

The speakers must be aware of semantic properties in order to be able to

 respond, but interaction with an interlocutor or test administrator is minimal

at best.

3. Responsive

Responsive assessment tasks include interaction and test comprehension but

at the somewhat limited level of very short conversation, standard greetings

and small talk, simple requests and comments, and the like.

4. Interactive

The differences between responsive and interactive speaking is in the length

and complexity of the interaction, which sometimes includes multiple

exchanges and/ or multiple participants. Interaction can take the two forms

of transactional language, which has the purpose of exchanging specific

information, or interpersonal exchanges, which have the purpose of

maintaining social relationships. In interpersonal exchanges, oral production

can become pragmatically complex with the need to speak in a casual

register and use colloquial language, ellipsis, slang, humor, and other

sociolinguistic conventions.

5. Extensive

Extensive oral production tasks include speeches, oral presentations, and

story-telling, during which the opportunity for oral interaction from listeners

is either highly limited or ruled out altogether.

C. Micro and Macro Skill of Speaking

The micro skill refer to producing the smaller chunks of language such as

phonemes, morphemes, words, collocations, and phrasal units. The macro skill
imply the speakers focus on the larger elements: fluency, discourse, function,

style, cohesion, nonverbal communication, and strategic options. According to

Brown (2004), the micro and macro skill total roughly some different objectives

to assess in speaking.

- Micro skill

1. Produce differences among English phonemes and allophonic variants

2. Produce chunks of language of different lengths

3. Produce English stress patterns, words in stressed and unstressed

positions, rhythmic structure, and intonation contours

4. Produce reduced forms of words and phrases

5. Use an adequate number of lexical units to accomplish pragmatic

purposes.

6. Produce fluent speech at different rates of delivery

7. Monitors one’s own oral production and use various strategic devices

pauses, fillers, self-corrections, backtracking, to enhance the clarity of

the message.

8. Use grammatical word classes(nouns, verbs, ect), systems (e.g., tenses,

agreement, pluralization), word order, patterns, rules, and elliptical

forms.

9. Produce speech in natural constituents: in appropriate phrases, pause

groups, breath groups, and sentence constituents.

10. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms

11. Use cohesive devices in spoken discourse.

 - Macro skill

1. Appropriately accomplish communicative functions according to

situations, participants, and goals

2. Use appropriate style, registers, implicature, redundancies, pragmatics

conventions, conversation rules, floor keeping and yielding, interrupting,

and other sociolinguistic features in face to face conversations.

3. Convey link and connections between events and communicate such

relations as focal and peripheral ideas, events and feelings, new

information and given information, generalization and exemplification.

4. Convey facial features, kinesics, body language, and other nonverbal

cues along with verbal language.

5. Develop and use a battery of speaking strategies, such as emphasizing

key words, rephrasing, providing a context for interpreting the meaning

of words, appealing for help, and accurately assessing how well your

interlocutor is understanding you.

D. Designing Assessments Task

1. Imitative

At one end of a continuum of types of speaking performance is the

ability to simply parrot back (imitate) a word or phrase or possibly a sentence.

While this is purely phonetic level of oral production, a number of prosodic,

lexical and grammatical properties of language may be conclude in the criterion

performance. For example Phonepass Test.

2. Intensive

A second type of speaking frequently employed in assessment contexts is

the production of short stretches of oral language designed to demonstrate

competence in a narrow band of grammatical, phrasal, lexical of phonological

relationship (such as prosodic element-intonation, stress, rhythm, juncture).

Examples of extensive assessment tasks include directed response tasks, reading

aloud, sentence and dialogue completion limited picture-cued task including

simple sequences and relationship up to the simple sentence level.

- Directed Response Task

- Read Aloud Tasks

- Sentence/Dialogue Completion Task and Oral Questionnaires

- Picture-Cued Tasks

- Translation

3. Responsive

Responsive assessment tasks included interaction and test comprehension

but at the somewhat limited level of very short conversations, standard greetings

and a small talk, simple request and comments and the like.

- Question and Answer

- Giving Instruction and Directions

- Paraphrasing

- Test of Spoken English (TSE)

 4. Interactive

The final two categories of oral production assessement is interactive and

extensive speaking. But here the writer will discuss interactive,. In the

interactive speaking there are some types of that.

- Interview

- Role play

- Discussions and Conversation

- Games

- Oral Proficiency Interview

5. Extensive

- Oral Presentation

- Picture-Cued story- Telling

- Retelling a story, new event

- Translation

E. Example of Assessing Speaking

A. IMITATIVE
PHONEPASS TEST
It elicits computer-assisted oral production over a telephone. Test-takers
read aloud, repeat sentences, say words, and answer questions.
Example:
Read aloud selected sentences
1. Traffic is a huge problem in Indonesia
2. Study Foreign Language is very important for young learners
3. Playing online games have negative impact for students attitude
B. INTENSIVE
- Directed Response Task
• Directed response
• Tell me he went home.
• Tell me that you like rock music.
• Tell me that you aren’t interested in tennis.
• Tell him to come to my office at noon.
• Remind him what time it is.
- Read Aloud Task
Variations:
Reading a scripted dialogue.
• Reading sentences containing minimal pairs.
Examples: Try not to heat/ hit the pan too much.
• Reading information from a table or chart.

Test of spoken English scoring scale:

-Pronunciation:
• Points:
• 0.0 - 0.4 frequent errors and unintelligible.
• 0.5 - 1.4 occasionally unintelligible.
• 1.5 - 2.4 some errors but intelligible.
• 2.5 - 3.0 occasional errors but always intelligible.

-Fluency:
• Points:
• 0.0 - 0.4 slow, hesitant, and unintelligible.
• 0.5 - 1.4 non-native pauses and flow that interferes with intelligibility.
• 1.5 - 2.4 non-native pauses but the flow is intelligible.
• 2.5 - 3.0 smooth and effortless.
 - Sentences/Dialogue Completion Task and Oral Questionnaires
First, test-takers are given time to read through the dialogue to get its gist, then
the tape/teacher produces one part orally and the test-taker responds.
Example:
Dialogue Completion Task
 Test takers read(and then hear):
In a school

Situation: Two friends meet and talk about their studies.

Sasi: Hello Rahim. Good morning.

Rahim: ………………………..

Sasi: I’m alright, thanks. And you?

Rahim: ……………………….

Sasi: I just took my exams. I’m waiting for the results.

Rahim: ………………….. OK. I think that’s my bus. …………………….

Sasi: OK. Bye. Take care.

Suggested solution

Sasi: Hello Rahim. Good morning.

Rahim: Good morning Sasi. How’re you?

Sasi: I’m alright, thanks. And you?

Rahim: I’m good. What about your studies?

Sasi: I just took my exams. I’m waiting for the results.

Rahim: Oh. I see. OK. I think that’s my bus. See you later.

Sasi: OK. Bye. Take care.

 - Picture-Cued Tasks
A picture-cued stimulus requires a description from the test-taker. It may elicit
a word, a phrase, a story, or incident.

Describe picture below with present tense.

Scoring scale for intensive tasks:

• 2 comprehensible; acceptable target form
• 1 comprehensible; partially correct
• 0 silence; or seriously incorrect

C. RESPONSIVE SPEAKING
a. Question and Answer
1. What do you think about the weather today?
2. Why did you choose your academic major?
3. Have you ever been to the U. S. before?
4. What other countries have you visited?
5. Why did you go there? What did you like best about it?
 b. Giving Instruction and Direction
1. The task should require the test-taker to produce at least 5 or 6 sentences.
2. Use familiar topics and test linguistic competence.
Example:

c. Paraphrasing
For example paraphrasing a phone message
Test taker hear:
Please tell Doni that I’m tied up in traffic so I’m going to be about a half hour
late for the nine o’clock meeting. And ask him to bring up our question about
the employee benefits plan. If he wants to check in with me on cell phone, have
him call 085679218907. Thanks
Please make a respond with two or three sentences
d. Test of Spoken English (TSE)
b. TSE is a 20-minute audiotaped test of oral language ability within an
academic or professional environment.
c. TSE scores are used by many North American institutions of higher
education.
d. The tasks are designed to elicit oral production in various discourse
categories.
e. Example: sample items in TOEFL
f. Scoring: a holistic score ranging from 20 to 60 (performance, function,
appropriateness, and coherence)
D. INTERACTIVE SPEAKING
a. Interview
In the interview there are four kinds of stages that test taker will perform

according to Michael Canale (1984).

a. Warm-up, it is small talk, the interviewer directs mutual introduction,

helps the test taker feel comfortable with situation, and it no scoring in this

stage.

Example: How are you? What’s your name? What country are you from?

b. Level Check

This is a series of pre-planned question, the interviewer stimulates the test

taker to respond using expected or predicted forms and functions.

Example

- What is your academic?

- How long have you been working at your job?

- What will you be doing ten years from now?

c. Probe

Probe question and prompt challenge test taker to go to the height of their

ability, to extend beyond the limits of the interviewer expectation through

increasingly difficult question

Example

- What is your opinion of a recent headline news event?

 - If you are president of your country, what would you like to change

about your country?

- Imagine you are writing an article on a topic you don’t know very much

about. Ask me some question about that topic.

d. Wind-window

The interviewer encourages the test taker to relax with some easy question,

sets the test taker mind at ease, and provides information about when and

where to obtain the results of the interview.

Example

- Did you feel okay about this interview?

- Do you have any questions you want to ask me?

- It was interesting to talk with you. Best wishes.

b. Role Play

As an assessment device, role play open some windows of opportunity for test

takers to use discourse that might otherwise be difficult to elicit.

Example: the teacher give prompt to the students such as bargaining in the

traditional market, asking direction, etc.

c. Discussions and Conversation

Discussions may be especially appropriate tasks through which to elicit and

observe such abilities as

 Topic nomination, maintenance, and termination

 Attention getting, interrupting, floor holding, control

 Clarifying, questioning, paraphrasing

 Comprehension signals

 Negotiation meaning

 Intonation patterns for pragmatic effect

 Kinesics, eye contact, proxemics, body language

 Politeness, formality, and other sociolinguistic factors.

The example of discussion and conversation, we can take when we are in the

classroom and teacher gives the students some topic. The students must

discuss with their friends about the topic.

d. Games

Among informal assessment devices are variety of games that directly involve

language production. There are some examples in assess using game.

For Example:
e. Oral Proficiency Interview

Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) is one of the best known oral interview formats.

OPI is the result of a historical progression of revisions under the auspices of

several agencies, including the educational testing service and the American

council on teaching foreign language (ACTFL). It designed to elicit

pronunciation, fluency and integrative ability, sociolinguistic and cultural

knowledge, grammar, and vocabulary. Performance is judged by the examiner to

be at one of ten possible levels on the ACTFL designed proficiency guidelines for

speaking.
E. EXTENSIVE SPEAKING
a. Oral Presentation
In the academic and professional arenas, it would not be uncommon to be called on
to present a report, a paper, a marketing plan, a sales idea, a design of a new
product, or a method. A summary of oral assessment techniques would therefore
be incomplete without some consideration of extensive speaking tasks. The rule of
the effectiveness assessment must be involve: specify criterion, set appropriate
tasks, elicit optimal output, establish practical. Then for assessing oral
presentation, we need to make oral presentation checklist.
 b. Picture Cued Story Telling
One of the most common technique for eliciting oral production is through
visual pictures, photographs, diagrams, and chart. There are examples picture
cued story
 Describe this picture with present tense
 Test-taker hear or read: tell the story that these pictures describes

c. Retelling story, news event

In this type of task, test taker hear or read a story or news event that they are
asked to retell. For example, there is a news event below.
Please retell this news by your own language.
 d. Translation
Translation of words, phrase, or short sentences was mentioned under the category
of intensive speaking. Here, longer texts are presented for the test taker to read in
the native language and then translate to English.
For example:
Translate the procedure text below in to English.

“Cara Memasak Pancake"

BAHAN :

 3 – 4 sendok tepung
 2 telur
 1 ½ (250 ml) susu
 1 tongkat mentega
PROSEDUR:

1. Masukkan tepung dalam mangkuk.

2. Masukkan susu ke dalam cangkir.
3. Pastikan itu 250 ml susu.
4. Masukkan susu ke dalam mangkuk.
5. Pecahkan 2 butir telur ke dalam mangkuk.
6. Campur dengan sendok.
7. Panaskan wajan dan masukkan mentega,
8. Letakkan campuran di panci.
9. Biarkan pancake mix memasak sekitar 5 menit
10. Panaskan pancake saat bagian atas berwarna coklat.
11. Pancake Anda siap untuk disajikan
REFERENCES
Brown, H. Douglas. 2001. Language Assessment Principle and Classroom Practice.
New York: Longman.
Departemen Pendidikan Nasional. 2006. Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (KTSP).
Jakarta: Departemen Pendidikan Nasional.
Risnadedi, (2001), “Developing Students` Speaking Ability”. Journal of SMP Negeri 17
Pekan Baru. (7). 56-58.
Tarigan, H. Guntur. 2008. Berbicara: Sebagai Suatu Keterampilan Berbahasa.
Bandung: Angkasa.
Wallace, D’Arcy-Adrian. 1978. Junior Comprehension 1. England: Longman.
Wilson, S. 1983. Living English Structure. London: Longman.
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