How to Test Speaking Skills in Japan

80 Part 2: How can we mark & administer speaking tests? One big advantage of progress sheets is that they exemplify a point-based grading system that is completely transparent to the students and easy to calculate for you Students can always see where they are at any given point in the course The goal is to accumu late as many points as possible; the more points students receive, the higher their grade Students can get points for coming to class on time, doing well on the various assessment activities (including speaking tests), and completing self-study tasks outside of class (such as reading a graded reader and working on vocabulary via Quizlet 2 , the free online flash-card service) In my class, each student’s grade was based on the sum total of points accumulated from boxes A-F, which I easily calculated at the end of the course To encourage more outside class study, I instituted a bonus point system which worked really well with some students For attendance, I gave two points for coming to class on time, one point for being late, and zero points for being absent This sheet can be customized to your needs, and you can play around with different sorts of ways to collect points to incentivize learning If you are keen on fostering personal responsibility for class per formance, simply require each student to keep their progress sheet and bring it to class Make a rule that if they lose it, they will lose all of their accumulated marks If this is too much, keep hold of the sheets yourself and pass them out at the start of every class Either way, they can be randomly placed on desks at the start of a class to mix up the seating and check attendance instantly No matter how you go about it, consider using progress sheets for the benefits they bring to your conversation classes Involving your students in the record-keeping process will lighten your workload a bit and provide an overall boost to positive washback

2 If you haven’t heard of Quizlet , check it out at quizlet.com . It’s a great way for students to practice vocabulary on their smartphones.