How to Test Speaking Skills in Japan

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

wash? When we compare the cost of the test with the waste of effort and time on the part of teachers and students in activities quite inappropriate to their true learning goals (and in some cir cumstances, with the potential loss to the national economy of not having more people competent in foreign languages), we are likely to decide that we cannot afford NOT to introduce a test with a powerful beneficial backwash effect. In the end, the most sustainable power to effect the greatest institutional change in Japan-based ELT will not come from ad ministrators, politicians, or the business community It will come from those of us on the front lines of the educational experience The more we realize and act upon the power we already have, the better positioned we’ll be to join others of like mind and together contribute to the eventual overhaul of a system that really needs it—not from the top down, but from the bottom up And it starts with us Today Let’s get to work