Summative assessment:

• administered at the end of courses.
• its objective is to see if students have attained the outcomes set out in the syllabus.
• can be used effectively as a way of deciding whether students move on to a higher level.
• a lot of information gained from a summative test is often wasted because it does not feed back into the learning process.

Common arguments against summative assessment:

• I know how my students are doing anyway. Why do they need to sit for an exam as well?

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When students are working together in the classroom situation, individual weaknesses can be obscured. Tests therefore enable us to measure progress in a more individualised way.

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• Some of the students in my class, who have worked hard all year, fail exams. Others who have done less work pass them.

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Exams are only part of the assessment process and should be seen as a complement to informal assessment.

• Tests do not motivate my students at all. The good ones feel complacent and the bad ones just give up.

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If test results are seen as opportunities for students to find out how they are progressing, tests can motivate students to think about their problems and do something about them.

What is a ‘good’ and what is a ‘bad’ test?

• A test can have a positive influence if it contains authentic, real-life examples of the type of tasks which your learners will need to perform in the future.

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• Causes a positive washback effect on learning. If exams test speaking ability, our students will be encouraged to interact orally in the classroom.

How is the Speaking component of our annual exams in Year 7 designed?

Format of exam paper

In Year 7, the oral exam is divided as follows:

There are two sets of different papers for Tasks 1 and 2. Each task is used with half the students.

The Warmer is not assessed. The purpose of the Warmer is to put the students at ease and gain more confidence in speaking so that they perform at their best.

The teacher has a list of questions about a particular topic. Choosing a combination of at least 3 questions, the teacher must engage the learner in conversation for approximately 3 minutes.

WARMER

TASK 1

INTERVIEW

• Single picture task.
• Thematic picture task.
• Inverted interview (Question formation)
• Comparing and contrasting different pictures.

Types of activities for Task 2

Use high quality pictures.

First things first…

Before preparing the exam paper, we need to consider the principle of VALIDITY, whereby the task is designed to test what it is meant to test. To do this we need to:

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• know the syllabus well

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• check that the level of difficulty of questions is appropriate.

• be familiar with the assessment criteria

• The descriptors for each criteria will provide a degree of reliability. The criteria places a student on a scale according to his/her performance at any one given moment in time.

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• The person who is to make the judgement is expected to be qualified, e.g. teachers of English can make judgements about oral performances of students in an English speaking test.

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• Inter-rater reliability- to ensure that all raters agree on interpretation and meaning of the descriptions of the rating scales.

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• Ensure that the same rater will apply the scales in the same way on different days or at different times of the day.

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What are we testing?

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• use a range of vocabulary
• form sentences accurately
• use a variety of grammatical structures
• ask questions correctly
• interact in a contextually meaningful and appropriate way
• use clear pronunciation
• expand on input, speaking naturally and at length.

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The learner’s ability to:

The Criteria for Assessment describe the criteria against which students’ oral performance will be assessed.

What kind of material should we present?

Friends, helping at home, the future, hobbies, animals, the environment, the weather, jobs, shopping, home town, school life.

What type of questions should be avoided?

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Questions related to GRAMMAR.

Questions that show BIAS.

(gender, racial, religious, socio-economic ...)

Questions that make assumptions about life situations or general knowledge.

Some examples of bias are:

Depicting members of one group in a more prestigious role or one group dominates all pictures.

How many people are there in your family?

Think about the person in your family you are closest to. Describe his/her character and why you like his/her company.

How do you usually spend time with your family?

“It runs in the family” is a common idiom in English which means that there is a common characteristic that is shared by many members of the family. Do you think that family members have similar abilities and characters?

Do you feel that family is more important than friends? Why/why not?

Some students may not live with their family!

TASK 1: Work in small groups to form questions for the pictures you have been given.

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Marking Schemes

In our Speaking exams we use a Holistic Rating: a rubric that requires the teacher to score the overall process as a whole, without giving a mark to the component parts separately.

• The disadvantage is that student performances can often cut across the descriptions, e.g. a student’s performance in pronunciation may reflect a ‘weak’ level, while his/her fluency may reflect the ‘good’ level. In such a case professionally qualified raters choose the closest description of the performance.

• The advantage of holistic rating for testing is that raters can internalise the descriptions in a relatively short period of time, eg after practice with a few sample performances. This system is therefore practical and quick to administer.

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Student A

• Made very few grammatical mistakes, but spoke very slowly. Sometimes s/he couldn’t think of the word and had to stop completely. Pronunciation was not too bad, but the examiner did not understand one or two words and the student was asked to repeat them. The student only answered three questions of the six given.

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Student B

• Made a lot of grammatical mistakes, but the examiner was able to understand him/her. Pronunciation was not very good and some words were used incorrectly. S/he spoke at normal speed and when s/he couldn’t think of a word in English, s/he described what it was. The student answered all the questions.

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Who got the higher mark?

Using the marking scheme you have been given, together with a copy of the exam paper, listen to the recording and give a mark to the student.

Student 1.