How to Test Speaking Skills in Japan

10 Part 1: Why should we bother with speaking tests? glish, you would think that most Japanese citizens could speak the language quite well, right? Well, as you may know from personal experience, this is not the case While many proficient speakers do exist, the majority of Japanese citizens really struggle with the lan guage Historically, Japanese have performed quite poorly on En glish standardized tests For example, Japan ranked at the very bot tom of rankings for TOEFL listening scores in 2006 and last overall in Asia (Hagerman, 2009) More recently, a Japan Times editorial entitled Disappointing levels of English (2015, March 28) noted that a majority of 3 rd year high school students were not able to meet the government target of at least Pre-Grade 2 on the Eiken test: Students’ English proficiency was especially low on the more ac tive, productive skills of speaking and writing. On the exam, 29.2 percent of students scored zero on the writing section and 13.3 percent also scored zero on the speaking portion . That is even more disappointing considering that only 20 percent of students even took the speaking portion at all. It is doubtful that the other 80 percent of students would have performed any better. What’s to blame for such poor English skills? Cultural and psychological factors that result in passive learning at titudes and silent classrooms notwithstanding (Harumi, 2011), the combination of traditional teaching approaches and the high-pres sure entrance exam system has received the lion’s share of the blame for the low overall level of English ability in this country For de cades, students have learned the language primarily via the Gram mar-Translation Method , which Larsen-Freeman (1986: 4) notes was designed to enable students to read literature in the target language and was never intended to foster communication skills:

The Grammar-Translation Method is not new. It has had many different names, but it has been used by language teachers