How to Test Speaking Skills in Japan

28 Part 1: Why should we bother with speaking tests?

In other words, what gets tested gets done (Breaux, 2016). While communicative goals are admirable, students and teachers only have so much time and energy to strive for them. It would be ideal if we could teach communicative English all the time and help our students learn for the sheer intrinsic joy of human interaction, but the reality of the current system forces many of us to toe the line in order to protect student access to higher educational and employment opportunities (and our own jobs as well). What are we to do? Flip the script Ironically, the road to transforming this mess runs right through it Washback, the effect that testing has on learning and teaching, cuts both ways As a result, it is imperative to make any and all efforts to promote positive washback in our own classrooms if we truly want to help turn things around Yes, we do often have strict limits imposed upon us, but fortunately there is usually at least a bit of room to change and grow within them In other words, there is always something we can do better If we’re honest with ourselves, we know the choice to do so is there every day Simply by putting a bit more effort into doing our basic duties more effectively (such as oral testing), we put ourselves on a sustainable path that will not only lessen the sting of the current situation, but actually help us thrive within it One viable way forward is to accept reality and use the system’s energy against itself In other words, if our students will only put out significant effort to study what’s on a test, then let’s make use of that situation With a few simple adjustments, we can reorient this energy in a much more productive direction Gates (1995: 106) expresses this idea via a metaphor quite appropriate for our Japanese context: