1. Introduction

From both my learning and teaching experience, the assessment of the spoken language has been ignored by most high school English teachers in Taiwan. The main reason may be that speaking has not been tested in the joint college entrance examination. It seems that its backwash effect has considerably directed both teaching and learning in most classrooms since the examination was introduced. Fortunately, the story is changing now because a multiple testing system has been gradually introduced, and thus colleges are now allowed to set up part of their admission requirements. Due to the recognition of the importance of the spoken language, speaking is being tested by more and more colleges in their entrance examinations. Teaching tourism students in a vocational school, I can especially feel the effect of this trend. In response to it, the ways of assessment in my teaching context needs to be changed, that is, testing speaking needs to be taken into consideration.

In this assignment, I will design a speaking test for use in a Food and Beverage Management class in my school. First, I will provide a list of test specifications and then demonstrate the test. After that, I will talk about my teaching context and discuss the rationale and feasibility of the test. Finally, some potential problems will be addressed.

2. Test Specifications

2.1 Test Purpose

The test I have designed is an achievement test. It is designed to assess the students’ understanding of the given material during the semester. The test is a speaking test aiming at the students’ practical language skills which they will need in their near future.

2.2 The Candidates

The candidates are the year-3 students in the Department of Food and Beverage Management in a vocational senior high school in Taiwan. Compared with senior high school, vocational high school emphasizes students’ professional areas. Therefore, practical knowledge and skills are the main focus of their learning. Generally speaking, in such a class, most students will choose to go to college if they can. For these students, speaking is tested in the entrance exams to most hospitality colleges. For those who do not have the chance to enter college, they usually can get a job in a high-class restaurant where they may need to use English. Obviously, speaking is an important skill for them.

2.3 Measurement

Since this is an achievement test, criterion-referenced measurement will be used. There will be a detailed key, making scoring as objective as possible. Students will be informed of the scoring criteria beforehand. Also, two teachers are needed in this test so that one can be the interlocutor (as well as an examiner) while the other is the main examiner. Any student completing the course of the semester successfully should be able to perform correctly in the test. According to the academic rules in Taiwan, a criterial level of 60 percent is set.

2.4 Rubrics

Although speaking is regarded as an important skill, testing speaking is not common in my teaching context. Therefore, the rubrics or instructions should be made as clear as possible. L1 will be used to achieve this. In the test, the words in green color means they are in L1. Furthermore, clear instructions are given in L1 to the whole class before the test begins in order to save test time.

2.5 Tested Language Skills

Candidates will have to demonstrate the following language skills:

l          General English

Answering general personal and social questions

l          Restaurant English

Greeting and receiving customers

Taking orders

        Explaining menus

        Recommending dishes

        Dealing with complaints

        Apologizing

2.6 Test Types

The Candidates will be assessed in pairs. Controlled interview (teacher to student) and role-play (student to student) will be used.

2.7 Time: 8 minutes for every pair of candidates.

3. The Speaking Test

The following is the test I have designed, which contains two sections.

Section I  Controlled Interview (4 minutes)

This section is to test the students’ general English. A wide range of questions are prepared based on what the students have learned so far. The interview starts with a short greeting, and after that the assessed part begins.

First, the interlocutor selects two or three questions from the following list and asks candidates in turn. The questions for Candidate B should be different from those for Candidate A so that the test could be kept fairer.

The candidates are encouraged to speak more, and this can be achieved by asking them follow-up questions using why, how, where, when, etc.

After the above questions, the interlocutor asks each candidate one of the following questions in turn. Each candidate has approximately one minute for answering the question.

Since the questions here are more demanding, similar questions have been practiced beforehand in class.

Section II  Simulation Role-play

In this part, the two candidates will be asked to role-play the interactions between waiter and customer. As mentioned in the test specifications, six ESP (English For Specific Purpose) skills are tested. There are five sets of role-play cards with prompts on them, each set focusing on one or two tested skills. Here, I am going to use one example to demonstrate how the simulation role-play is processed.

First, the candidates are asked to draw a number from a box, which corresponds to a certain set of role-play cards. Then they have one minute to prepare; however, they are not allowed to take any notes or discuss with each other. After role-playing the first situation, the candidates are then asked to draw another set of cards, and this time they have to exchange their roles so that both have the chance to be the waiter. The test goes as follows:

The following is a sample of the role-play cards:

As for the assessment criteria, I adopt both the analytical and global achievement scales from the FCE Speaking Test (See Appendix III). However, as can be seen in the Appendix IV, I have made some change to suit my teaching context. The reasons of the change will be discussed in the next section.

4. How Does the Test Fit into My Context?

In this section, I will discuss the rationale of the test and also consider my teaching context to see how it fits into my class.

4.1 Test types

According to Alderson, Clapham and Wall (1995: 45), the best advice than can be made to test writers is: “ensure that you use more than one test method for testing any ability.” Since every test method may have certain drawbacks, more different methods employed can generally lead to a more satisfactory test. The speaking test I have designed consists of two different test types—controlled interview and simulation role-play. In fact, I really intend to fit more different types into the test; however, time limit really has to be taken into consideration. Generally speaking, there are approximately 30 students in a class in my school, and students have only two hours for English class each week. Considering the limited time and class size, two tasks in 8 minutes for each pair of students is the balance that I can achieve.

As for the reasons I choose these two methods, I will discuss them respectively.

4.1.1 Controlled interview

As mentioned in the Introduction and the test specifications, the students need to enhance their speaking ability either for the speaking test in college entrance examinations or for their future career. Based on my understanding, most tourism and hospitality colleges adopt interview in their speaking tests, in which students are often asked questions which relate to themselves. It would be more convincing if the in-house test can be a practice of what they will face in the entrance examinations. As for those who are not interested in further education, interview for them is also acceptable as they may well face the situation in the future (Weir 1993: 60) Although, as Hughes (1989: 104) points out, interview has a potentially serious drawback about the relationship between the tester as a superior and the candidate as a passive respondent, experiencing the situation earlier may help them get used to it and overcome the fear.

Despite the drawback, such controlled interview as in my sample test is “easy to set up and administer and has high face validity and potential scoring reliability” (Weir 1993: 61). For me, who usually have to write at least five different tests for each mid-term or final examination, this type of test is more feasible.

4.1.2 Role–play

Role-play can create situations where the candidate is expected to play a role in an interaction which might happen in his or her real world (Weir 1993: 62). As Weir (1993: 31) argues, “the more we can incorporate contextual and interactional features of real-life activity into our tests, the more confidently we can extrapolate and make statements about what candidates should be able to do in that real-life context”. For vocational school students, this point is especially significant as they need more practical components throughout their learning.

The interaction in role-play can be student with examiner or between two students (Weir 1993: 62; Hughes 1989: 107), and there are three reasons I use “student with student” role-play. First, as Weir (1993: 63) states, interacting with a teacher is often more daunting for the candidate than interacting with his or her peers. The candidate may feel more comfortable to role-play with a peer instead of the examiner. Although, as mentioned above, the students need to get accustomed to this kind of daunting task, a balanced atmosphere is anyway needed to be reached in such an in-house test. Second, and more practically, considering the class size, the teacher would be exhausted if he has to role-play for 30 times throughout the test. Testing two candidates at one time is more economical and efficient. In such a task, both candidates have the chance to role-play two different roles; therefore, compared with the “examiner with student” pattern, more language can be elicited from the candidates using the same amount of time. Finally, evidence shows that the examiner, as a participant in the interaction, may sometimes inadvertently assess personal performance in addition to that of the candidate (ibid). Standing back as an observer may make the scoring more reliable.

4.2 Scoring

In this speaking test, there are two scorers in charge in different aspects, and they are using different types of scoring scales. According to Hughes (1989: 110), having more than one scorer for each performance can lead to higher reliability. In addition, with one teacher as an observer, the other teacher is able to concentrate more on processing the test as it is extremely difficult for one who must examine as well as elicit (Alderson, Clapham and Wall 1995: 115). As for the scoring scales, since the observer is freed to assess, he or she can produce a more detailed mark using the analytical scales, whilst the interlocutor simply gives a global mark.

I adapt the FCE speaking assessment scales in two ways. First, I have replaced the category “Interactive Communication” with “Fluency”. Since the interaction in my test is very controlled and structured, interactional skills are not a focus. Instead, the candidates’ fluency of language is what I intend to promote. Second, to suit my context, I have changed the band numbers into percentage ones and an average score of the four categories is calculated later after the test. A candidate’s final score is then the average of the two percentage scores from the two testers.

5. Potential Problems

There may be some potential problems which I need to consider. First, as Hughes (1989: 105) points out, in such a “student with student” interaction, the performance of one candidate can be affected by that of the other. In the Role-play section, it is very likely that the interaction stops because of one candidate’s long pause or hesitation. To solve this problem, the interlocutor’s role is very important. Slight and proper intervention should be allowed to keep the interaction going.

The second problem may be the classroom order during the whole test. Since the speaking test is carried out away from the class, a third teacher seems needed to maintain the classroom order. However, searching for other teachers’ help is generally not a simple task. Perhaps, alternatively, a reliable class leader (each class has a student leader in Taiwan) can be appointed this role.

Finally, as I just said, asking for another teacher’s assistance may take lots of efforts. Patient negotiation is probably what I have to learn and apply.

6. Conclusion

In this assignment, I have considered the possible methods of testing speaking in my teaching context and discussed their feasibility. Though it cannot be ensured that the speaking test will function well with my students, its backwash effect should be beneficial to them. If the students can be motivated to speak more, this can only have a positive effect on their language learning.