How to Test Speaking Skills in Japan

Chapter 6 Decide the details ahead of time

T his brings us to the final step of constructing your marking scheme—figuring out the details of how you’ll actually admin ister it There are a number of issues to attend to at this point, and you’ll more likely to meet success if you take care of them ahead of time I’ll go through a non-exhaustive list of some key points in a general manner, then revisit many of them with more specificity when we cover the testing activities in Part 3 Create a marking/feedback sheet Two practical issues you’ll encounter with speaking tests are how to record marks and give feedback One way to make these tasks easier is to combine them into one step by creating a special marking/ feedback sheet you can use in class during your tests If designed well, you’ll be able to easily score each construct and provide mean ingful feedback at the same time Your students will then be able to interpret their scores more easily To give you an example, here is a sample sheet that has worked well for me:

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