Oral language testing at tay nguyen university  (Page 43/53)

MARKING SCALES – TASK 2 (5 marks out of 10)

Table 5.4: The Marking Scales for Task 2 of Sample Term 2 Achievement Speaking Test

5.2 conclusion

Current oral language testing practices at TNU have been claimed to be very problematic, so this study is intentionally carried out to investigate the present practices. In reality, oral testing at this institution is far from being consistent with the theory in language testing. This finding is based on the result of the study which is aimed at evaluating the practices and the staff’s perceptions of oral testing.

The detailed review of the existing practices provides the basis for the analytical evaluation in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses. Also, a questionnaire survey helps to elicit the staff’s understanding of oral testing – the cause of the current practices.

The analysis of the study results shows that the present problem stems from the staff’s insufficient knowledge of oral testing. All the tests of speaking ability were inappropriately constructed and inadequately administered.

As a result, the findings of the study help to justify the claim and several practical recommendations are proposed in terms of the procedures and activities involved in oral test development.

Obviously, the study as a whole can be considered significant as it provides two main practical contributions towards TNU context of language testing as follows.

Firstly, the study has applied the theory of language testing, a science, to TNU language teaching with the purpose of ensuring and increasing the training effectiveness, namely evaluating and promoting professionalism in language training at TNU. In particular, the theory reviewed in the study surely provides a reasonable foundation on which TNU staff’s testing of oral proficiency can be based; thus, it is hoped that the review will assist the staff in better understanding the testing field.

Secondly, the study has made seven practical recommendations for TNU staff’s development process of speaking tests. Five of the recommendations are concerned with relevant applications in relation to the theoretical considerations in test development process as a whole, which is aimed at providing the concerned staff the guidelines for developing oral tests. The other two recommendations as a case study are related to the operationalization of a particular speaking test.