DEVELOPING QUALITY ASSESSMENTS OF ORAL SPEECH IN ENGLISH

Background: Oral speech in a foreign language is an issue the theoreticians and practitioners has been discussing for decades and which has gained particular importance in today’s globalized world. Teaching and assessing English language oral skills is now being implemented in compliance with the Common European Framework of Reference. However, assess­ing oral speech has been so far in the focus of studies almost exclusively outsideUkraine which makes these issues crucial in the national context. The complexity of developing oral tests has impeded the introduction of oral part in the Independent school-leaving exam; university teachers have to themselves develop tests for summative assessment without being trained in test designing; PhD students make claims about effectiveness of their research based on the oral tests of disputable quality.Purpose: The current paper aims to initiate a discussion on ensuring quality assessment of oral skills in the institutions of higher education in the country. The author examines the construct of oral skills based on the definitions provided in the works of leading experts in applied linguistics and in Common European Framework of Reference. She further proposes a profile of B2 level oral skills based on the Syllabus for teaching English as a second foreign language to students majoring in Oriental languages in theInstitute of Philology in Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.Results: The author provides a profound analysis of the Syllabus and the course book it is based on, and specifies their strengths and weaknesses thereby outlining the issues of major concern for practitioners. One of them is rooted in the absence in the Teacher’s resource pack of ready-made oral tests for summative assessment which entails versatile approaches to mea­suring students’ achievements by different teachers and therefore not reliable outcomes of testing. As a result of the scrutiny of the sources (CEFR, specifications of internationally acclaimed examinations and the Syllabus), the author comes up with the characteristics of oral production and oral interaction relevant for the learning context.Discussion: The B2 profile of oral skills defined by the author allowed her to develop analytical rating scales for assess­ing oral monologue. These scales benchmark the oral production against the four criteria (Efficiency of speech, Fluency and phonological control; Control of vocabulary and register; Grammatical control). To become a reliable tool for assessing oral production, these scales should be piloted in the classroom, discussed by the teachers/examiners and modified if necessary. The further perspective of the study relates to developing rating scales to assess oral interaction and eventual introduction of these scales in the instruction.