How to Test Speaking Skills in Japan

63 Chapter 5: Identify & define your evaluation criteria

complex and hard to pin down, such Independence or Style Marks can also be give more or less weight to highlight their relative overall importance For example, here is an analytic grading scheme that reflects the teacher’s sense of priorities: Out of 10 points Fluency : x 4 Pronunciation : x 1 Content : x 2 Grammar Accuracy : x 1 Interactional Strategies: x 2 If you go about weighting like this, it would be mentally easier for you to give everyone a base score out of 10 and then multiply up the marks to get the final percentages So, in this example, you can see how Fluency would make up 40% of the total, with Pronunciation and Interactional Strategies coming in at 20% each Pronunciation and Grammar Accuracy are kind of afterthoughts at 10%, but per haps you still want to include them so that students remain attentive of these important areas Certain marking categories also lend themselves to additive or subtractive marking strategies For example, for Grammar Accuracy you could take a subtractive ap proach and knock off a point for each major mistake, or you could take a more positive, open-ended additive view by giving points for each correctly delivered sentence Any marking category that makes it possible to prepare a list of features to listen for is a good candidate for these approaches