Oral language testing at tay nguyen university  (Page 23/53)

The questionnaire consists of 10 questions, 8 of which are used to elicit the teaching staff’s perceptions of oral testing. These 8 questions are developed based on the theory in oral language testing reviewed in Chapter 2. The other two concern the staff’s working experience, and their qualifications in language testing. The questions are as follows:

Questions 1 and 2 relate to the functions of spoken language and the communicative approach to measuring speaking skill.

Questions 3 and 4 relate to oral test types and elicitation techniques used in a test of speaking ability.

Question 5 relates to grading test tasks and validity.

Question 6 relates to the design and operationalization process of oral tests, and reliability.

Questions 7 and 8 relate to reliability of a test.

In general, questions 1 to 8 are close questions, and questions 9&10 are open-ended.

For questions 1 and 2, the respondents are required to arrange the options according to their level of priority. Question 3 requires 1 out of 4 options. Questions 4 and 5 require the respondents to tick the level(s) of language proficiency that the elicitation techniques and particular questions fit. Question 6 and question 8 allow more than one choice. For question 7, the respondents are required to choose 1 out of 3 options.

Questions 9 and 10 are meant to investigate possible sources of the differences in the subjects’ perceptions of oral language testing.

3.3 procedures

The study meant to investigate TNU current oral language testing practices involves two steps. Firstly, the reseacher analysed the development process of speaking tests at this institution from School Year 1998-1999 (,when the researcher started working at this institution,) up to now. The current practices are evaluated in order to point out the strengths and weaknesses based on Bachman and Palmer’s theoretical framework for test development reviewed in 2.3 (Chapter 2).

To ensure the reliability of the information from the analysis, one end-of-term speaking test was observed and tape-recorded. The information from this observation is particularly meant to confirm the evaluation of the test operationalization and administration stages. The test under observation was used for the second-year students at the end of Term 2 - School Year 2002-2003 (See Appendix 2). This test was administered in the morning on June 25th, 2003 at TNU. 10 students were chosen at random to be audio-recorded. Their performance was recorded in a tape and then transcribed (See the tapescript in Appendix 3).

There were 60 test takers altogether, and they were divided into 3 groups of 20 in 3 separate rooms. However, because of the time limitation and the simultaneity of the 3 groups, only 10 of them were chosen at random for recording. Each group was conducted by 2 assessors. The students drew lots for the test task or topic to prepare for 5 to 10 minutes before performing it. The test consisted of 8 topics altogether (See Appendix 2). Both the assessors and the students were unaware of being recorded.