New and not so new methods for assessing oral communication
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The Department of English seeks to provide all university students with the skills of effective communication and critical thinking, as well as imparting knowledge of literature, creative writing, linguistics, speech and technical communication to students within and outside of the department.
History
The Department of English and Speech was formed in 1939 from the merger of the Department of English and the Department of Public Speaking. In 1971 its name changed to the Department of English.
Dates of Existence
1939-present
Historical Names
- Department of English and Speech (1939-1971)
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- College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (parent college)
- Department of English (predecessor, 1898-1939)
- Department of Public Speaking (predecessor, 1898-1939)
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Abstract
The assessment of oral communication has continued to evolve over the past few decades. The construct being assessed has broadened to include interactional competence, and technology has played a role in the types of tasks that are currently popular. In this paper, we discuss the factors that affect the process of oral communication assessment, current conceptualizations of the construct to be assessed, and five tasks that are used to assess this construct. These tasks include oral proficiency interviews, paired/group oral discussion tasks, simulated tasks, integrated oral communication tasks, and elicited imitation tasks. We evaluate these tasks based on current conceptualizations of the construct of oral communication, and conclude that they do not assess a broad construct of oral communication equally. Based on our evaluation, we advise test developers to consider the aspects of oral communication that they aim to include or exclude in their assessment when they select one of these task types.
Comments
This is an article from Language Value 7 (2015): 1, doi:10.6035/LanguageV.2015.7.2. Posted with permission.