Development and demonstration of a method for assessing learners' English speaking ability

Abstract

Beyond the four basic language skills – speaking, listening, reading and writing – other communication skills, including body language and eye contact, are important for communication and should be included as rating criteria in the assessment of interaction. Also, using technology in novel ways for purposes such as remote assessment is possible in the 21st century. Professor Natsumi Onaka, Associate Professor Daniel Newbury and Associate Professor Jacob B Petersen are striving to create a cost-effective peer-to-peer interaction English assessment system that supports foreign language education and testing through widely-used technology and an assessment system that places interaction as central to effective communication. In the context of globalisation, Onaka, International Education Center, Iwate University, Japan, believes that the focus of English education should be meaningful interaction rather than rote memorization of grammar and vocabulary for testing purposes. She is heading up this research and is a proponent of 'spontaneous interaction'. She and the team are developing a simple and standardised method for evaluating English-speaking skills by creating tasks and related rubrics focused on interactional situations. Videos of a subject's English speech and communication are recorded and stored in a Learning Management System (LMS) and then evaluated by a third-party, off-site evaluator. The focus is on CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) A2 to B1 level speaking skills. By focusing on novice-level interaction, the researchers are able to observe nascent interactional competence among university-aged students and they are attempting to apply some rating criteria to identify differences in ability. By using video as the text format, non-verbal communication such as gestures can be taken into consideration, along with important traditional factors such as grammatical accuracy.