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How to Test Speaking & Listening in Adult ESL Learners

Testing the speaking and listening skills of ESL students involves a number of complicated variables not encountered in a plain vanilla grammar/vocabulary cloze test. Integrating speaking and listening into one test creates an enriched context that offers a more comprehensive test of these two skills. This context could be based on the content of the class the students have been taking or, as in the following example, on a common event that some ESL students have experienced -- the Customs and Immigration interview.

Video recording and playback equipment
List of questions, including follow-up questions
Evaluation criteria
Evaluators
Tester

Instructions

- 1
  
  A rubric is set of scored criteria. Call it a checklist on steroids.
  
  Create a rubric for evaluating speaking and listening. Your rubric consist of columns with criteria for evaluation and rows of scores, from the lowest, 1, to the highest, 5. It should include these elements:
  
  comprehension
  
  clarification
  
  fluency of response
  
  accuracy of response
  
  score
  
  1
  
  2
  
  3
  
  4
  
  5
- 2
  
  Questions and criteria are the critical groundwork for a successful evaluation.
  
  Create a set of 10 questions that a traveler might be asked when entering the country, such as length of stay, purpose of trip, people and places visiting, money and possessions on person and so on. Your questions must require an informative answer. Your 10 original questions should also include a few follow-up questions.
- 3
  
  Practice once or twice on a non-student to get a feel for the test.
  
  Train your evaluators in the use of your scoring rubric. You should fill out the example by providing explanations for each score under each category. For example, a score of 1 under fluency of response might read, "consisted mostly of hesitiations, mis-starts, and blank stares." Before administering your test to students, have the "customs officer" practice her role.
- 4
  Record the test to video for future reference and to aid your evaluators. This could also serve as a great teaching tool for follow-up lessons, as it will build the student's awareness of his speaking and listening.

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