Thinking of oral testing in a regular English course

It’s the end of the term in our regular English course. I tested students’ oral production. After doing it, I asked myself:

• What is a good test?
• How does it work?
• How to establish criteria, since it is not clear to teachers and also students? Do you usually let them know how you score their performances?
• How to cool students’ anxiety down during the test?
• How to give proper feedback? One that stimulates and helps them look for improvement in learning English?

By asking these questions, I read some texts related to oral production and testing. Here is the conclusion I’ve reached: A good test covers the content syllabus which students are taught, so that they can do well. The test might even be the opportunity to review what they’ve seen during the course. It might have the following guidelines:

• Ask for students’ permission to record their production (In my opinion, you can have a more precise analysis of their performances, you can focus more on students’ accuracy and fluency aspects)
• Give clear and precise instruction on what to do. What do you expect from students according to their level?
• Give them a few minutes to prepare in written mode: organize ideas, choose proper vocabulary, etc.
• Make them feel comfortable during the test by smiling, nodding, etc.
• Ask questions to check their understanding / listening / promptness;
• Give some feedback as soon as the evaluation finishes, just to cool them down. You can also ask about their expectations, feelings towards the test, etc at the end of the session.

According to Penny Ur in “A Course in Language Teaching – Practice and Theory”, Cambridge UP, 1997, he defines accuracy and fluency as it follows:

(…) language proficiency can be defined in terms of accuracy and fluency; if a learner has mastered a language successfully, that means that he or she can understand and produce it both accurately (correctly) and fluently (receiving and conveying message with ease). When the objective is accuracy, teachers and learners are chiefly concerned with “getting the language right”: forming correct sounds, words, sentences. When it’s fluency, they are concentrating on the “message”: communicating and receiving content (…).

So, when assessing students’ oral production, I take into consideration these two aspects aforementioned: accuracy and fluency. They help me towards my goal – to evaluate what and how I teach classes and how students produce in the target language. I do not simply want to fulfill the school’s expectation or methodology, but to give learners the opportunity to check their progress and usage of English in real life.