Assessment tools for learner’s oral presentations



The Icebreaker speech is an ideal first start to the art of oral presentations. It is designed to get students talking about a familiar topic; themselves. It is a 4 to 6 minute speech where the student introduces himself or herself to the rest of the class. The advantage of this speech as a first effort is that it serves as a warm-up and gets the student in front of an audience.

Giving oral presentations is a real-life skill for students in academic and business programs, so presentations are often used for classroom speaking assessment. Oral presentations are not just concerned with language accuracy and fluency. They also include aspects of delivery such as body language, facial expression, eye contact, and gestures. The visual aids and handouts that the student creates and uses are integral parts of the presentation. Power Point or other presentation software is often used to highlight the spoken delivery. [8.p122]

Oral presentations help students to learn to organize an argument using supporting evidence, select relevant material, engage critically with ideas and enhance personal mastery of course learning. Oral presentations promote the development of communication, facilitation and persuasion skills. Oral presentations can be difficult for students.Who do not have English as a first language. If presentations are poor, the rest of the class loses interest in the lesson.

In oral production (speaking) activities the language user produces an oral text which is received by an audience of one or more listeners. Examples of speaking activities include:

‒ public address (information, instructions, etc.)

‒ addressing audiences (speeches at public meetings, university lectures, sermons, entertainment, sports commentaries, sales presentations, etc.).

They may involve, for example:

‒ reading a written text aloud;

‒ speaking from notes, or from a written text or visual aids (diagrams, pictures, charts, etc.);

‒ acting out a rehearsed role;

‒ speaking spontaneously;

‒ singing.

Illustrative scales are provided for:

‒ Overall spoken production;

‒ Sustained monologue: describing experience;

‒ Sustained monologue: putting a case (e.g. in debate);

	OVERALL ORAL PRODUCTION
C2	Can produce clear, smoothly flowing well-structured speech with an effective logical structure which helps the recipient to notice and remember significant points.
C1	Can give clear, detailed descriptions and presentations on complex subjects, integrating sub-themes, developing particular points and rounding off with an appropriate conclusion.
B2	Can give clear, systematically developed descriptions and presentations, with appropriate highlighting of significant points, and relevant supporting detail.
	Can give clear, detailed descriptions and presentations on a wide range of subjects related to his/her field of interest, expanding and supporting ideas with subsidiary points and relevant examples?
B1	Can reasonably fluently sustain a straightforward description of one of a variety of subjects within his/her field of interest, presenting it as a linear sequence of points.
A2	Can give a simple description or presentation of people, living or working conditions, daily routines, likes/dislikes, etc. as a short series of simple phrases and sentences linked into a list
A1	Can produce simple mainly isolated phrases about people and places.

Picture Cue: Visual can be very useful in assessing speaking skills. They are especially good for descriptions. In this technique, students are given a picture or photo and must describe what they see. Pictures can be as simple or as elaborate as you want or can illustrate a story. Make sure you give students enough time to look at the picture before you require them to start speaking. Good sources for visuals are newspaper and magazine photographs or advertisements, printed digital photographs, or pictures downloaded from the Internet. [2.p 119]

Prepared Monologue: The teacher provides students with a written topic card. Students have one minute to make notes and then present their remarks on the topic. Possible topics include agreement or disagreement with a controversial statement, extemporaneous topics, or explaining proverbs or idioms.

Role-play: Student are given cue cards with information about their “character” and the setting. If there is only one student, the interlocutor role-plays with him or her. If there are two or more students, be certain that the roles they are asked to play are familiar to all and would elicit comparable amounts of speech. [2. p121]

Sample Activity.

You buy something from the store and when you get home, you discover it is broken. You take it back to the store and talk with the manager.

Role- playing is a popular pedagogical activity in communicative language teaching classes. Within constraints set forth by the guidelines, it frees students to be somewhat creative in their linguistic output. In some versions, role play allow some rehearsal time so that students can map out what they are going to say.It also has the effect of lowering anxieties as students can, even for a few moments, take on the persona of someone other than themselves. As a assessment device, role play opens some windows of opportunity for test takers to use discourse that might otherwise be difficult to elicit. With prompts such as “Pretend that you are a tourists asking me for directions” or “ You are buying a necklace from me in a flea market, and you want to get a lower price,” certain personal strategic, and linguistic factors come into the foreground of the test taker’s oral abilities.

We may choose to assess formally (through tests and examinations) or informally. We can carry out informal assessment during a lesson by monitoring (i.e. listening carefully) and observing learners while they are doing ordinary classroom activities. To get other information about the progress of individual learners, we can carry out formal assessment (e.g. a class test). When planning assessment, we need to think first about our reasons for assessing learners. Then we can decide when and how often to assess them, and choose what methods of assessment we are going to use. In this research work is given some information which the teachers use speaking assessments during their lessons. And also rubrics are useful to assessing the students’ knowledge of foreign language. Most of our assessment focuses on content mastery. Techniques we are all familiar with include the evaluation of the final product and having student’s complete quizzes or tests.

References:

1. Christine Coombe. Assessing English Language Learners.University of Michigan.USA.2007. p13
2. Folse K. Pedagogical grammar courses in Florida. 2006. p12
3. Harris D. Testing English as a second language. New York.1977 p88
4. Swain, M. The output hypothesis: Just speaking and writing are not enough. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 1993, p 158
5. Weir, Cyril. Understanding and developing language tests. U.K 1993
6. Douglas Brown. Language Assessment.USA.2010 p.126
7. Keith Folse. Assessing English Language Learners.University of Michigan.USA. 2007. p122
8. Harris M. Assessment. Oxford. 1994. p123
9. Douglas Brown. Language Assessment.USA.2010 p.128