<< Chapter < Page
  Collection     Page 18 / 53
Chapter >> Page >

Additionally, oral test tasks ‘differ with regard to whether they call for the use of static relationships, dynamic relationships, or abstract relationships’ (O’Malley&Pierce, 1996, p. 76). These relationships are mentioned in Section 2.1. The selection of oral test types for test tasks is therefore necessarily related to the difficulty degree corresponding to these relationships. Consequently, O’Malley&Pierce (1996, p. 69) propose that the test tasks selected and designed can challenge the language proficiency level(s) of test takers without frustrating them.

2.4.3 marking key

During the operationalization process of oral tests, the classification of test takers’ level of language proficiency is to be carefully considered with the purpose of choosing adequate test types and elicitation techniques in which the test takers’ language performance can be best shown. While designing particular test task(s), test writers or teachers should consider and decide how to mark each test task, and therefore build up a guideline helping the assessors to mark each task. This guidline is called a marking key or marking protocol by Underhill (1987).

A marking key is a set of procedures specified in advance that tells assessors what they are supposed to do step by step in the process of marking each test task/question. Test writers can make the marking quicker and more reliable by drawing up a detailed marking guide that tells the marker how to mark each question.

Underhill (1987, p. 95) identifies the aims of a marking key as follows:

- To anticipate problems that the marker is likely to face, and to suggest how to cope with them.

- To maintain the aims of the test by directing the marker’s attention to the language areas that are most important, and by giving general guidelines for dealing with unusual responses.

- To describe the purpose of each question/task.

A marking key revealing such aims thus surely helps to increase the consistency of measurement, that is reliability (See 2.5.2). In fact, oral tests are a kind calling for subjective judgement on the part of assessors, and thus do not have as a high degree of reliability as those that require objective judgement such as multiple-choice or cloze tests with either completely right or completely wrong answers. In order to help assessors achieve the highest possible degree of reliability, it is essential to provide them with a comprehensible marking key conveying the three aims identified by Underhill.

The most important factor concerned in a marking key is the distribution of marks to specific speaking sub-skills that are intended to be measured. These speaking sub-skills are named mark categories by Underhill (1987). The kind of categories defined in a test should be based on the teaching program and be cited by the way in which the teaching syllabus expresses the aims of the program (Underhill, 1987). There are two models that mark categories base on: the traditional model of language components and the more recent model of performance criteria. The former refers to the components of language proficiency (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and intonation, style and fluency, content, etc.) while the latter mentions the components of language performance or performance criteria (flexibility, accuracy, appropriacy, independence, hesitation, etc.).

Get Jobilize Job Search Mobile App in your pocket Now!

Get it on Google Play Download on the App Store Now




Source:  OpenStax, Collection. OpenStax CNX. Dec 22, 2010 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11259/1.7
Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google Inc.

Notification Switch

Would you like to follow the 'Collection' conversation and receive update notifications?

Ask