How to Test Speaking Skills in Japan

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Part 3: Three speaking test ideas

hard to choose The good news is that once you get some experience and positive results under your belt, you’ll soon feel like you know what you’re doing After that, the sky’s the limit for your teaching practice Helping you reach this basic level of confidence is what the chapters in Part 3 are all about In the spirit of less is more , let’s begin with just three assessment activities, each one targeted towards its optimal use case in large, midsize, or small classes In Chapter 7 we’ll see how it’s possible to efficiently assess large groups of lower-level students Chapter 8 focuses on average-sized classes of around 10 to 25 lower-intermediate and above learners Finally, the assessment activity in Chapter 9 is designed to help high-level students in small classes take their English to the next level All of the activities presented here are viable language practice tasks in their own right; in other words, if you took away the feed back loop, they would still be worth doing Please note that I’m simply using class size as a handy organizing tool; with a bit of adjustment, it is totally possible to use these assessment activities in other contexts Each chapter will provide step-by-step procedures for prepar ing and conducting successful tests, tips for marking and admin istration, and ideas on how to adjust difficulty levels for different teaching situations To enhance the positive washback of these tests, expansion activities will also be provided For your convenience, I have also included all of the test handouts and marking/feedback sheets you’ll need in the Appendices You can also download docx versions from the publisher’s website (wwwenalmalangcom) and edit them as you like