Testing Oral Skills

Many learners of English are now required to take an end-of-course speaking test, which teachers have to design, administer and assess. In this presentation, we’ll examine characteristics of practice tests which provide useful pointers for in-house test design. We’ll also take a look at what can be derived from CEFR-related descriptions of spoken interaction and production at levels A2, B1 and B2, and investigate how these can help us assess our learner’s ability.

I have also given variations of this talk at the following event:  EOI Valencia Annual Conference, September, 2010

Further examples of speaking tests devised to be used with each of the units of English Result can be found at www.oup.com/elt/teacher/result