How to Test Speaking Skills in Japan

70 Part 2: How can we mark & administer speaking tests? on your device for a while, but eventually you’ll want to move them to a computer, either on your local machine or on a cloud-storage service such as Google Drive or Dropbox If you haven’t tried these services yet, I recommend looking into them They are fairly ubiq uitous now, and the value they provide is immense Managing shyness Hagley (2010) points out an important issue that may come up when recording your students—how nervous and self-conscious it may make them feel 1 This could have an adverse effect on how well they perform on speaking tests However, they should get used to recording if you do it consistently throughout your course Make recording a part of your workflow, and the students will adjust ac cordingly Another idea is to have your students make regular recordings, say for homework assignments If they use their own phones to re cord conversations regularly, they will likely feel more relaxed when test time comes In the end, you will find that student and teach er-made recordings can become powerful learning aids in and of themselves It is worth spending a bit of time to figure out how to incorporate audio and/or video in your assessment practice Make time for more extensive individual feedback The marking/feedback sheet will cover these two tasks at a basic level, but to really boost the positive washback, try to make some time to meet with your students to talk over their test performances The sheet will guide your conversation and make it easier to come up with specific things to say If your class is not too big and you are not pressed for time on test day, you may want to just have a quick 1 This feeling may be exacerbated if you video your speaking tests. If you use video, which as a lot of benefits, you’ll need to make extra effort to help students feel at ease when talking in front of a camera.