Desgning an English oral achievement test for second year students at Bac Ninh physical education an sports university

   DƯƠNG THỊ HÒA “DESIGNING AN ENGLISH ORAL ACHIEVEMENT TEST FOR SECOND YEAR STUDENTS AT BAC NINH PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND SPORTS UNIVERSITY” THIẾT KẾ BÀI THI VẤN ĐÁP TIẾNG ANH CHO S

  

DƯƠNG THỊ HÒA

“DESIGNING AN ENGLISH ORAL ACHIEVEMENT TEST FOR SECOND YEAR STUDENTS AT BAC NINH PHYSICAL

EDUCATION AND SPORTS UNIVERSITY”

(THIẾT KẾ BÀI THI VẤN ĐÁP TIẾNG ANH CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC THỂ DỤC THỂ THAO BẮC NINH)

MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: English Teaching Methodology

CODE: 601410

HÀ NỘI - 2011

  

DƯƠNG THỊ HÒA

“DESIGNING AN ENGLISH ORAL ACHIEVEMENT TEST FOR SECOND YEAR STUDENTS AT BAC NINH PHYSICAL

EDUCATION AND SPORTS UNIVERSITY”

(THIẾT KẾ BÀI THI VẤN ĐÁP TIẾNG ANH CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC THỂ DỤC THỂ THAO BẮC NINH)

MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: English Teaching Methodology

CODE: 601410 SUPERVISOR: Đỗ Bá Quý, MEd

HÀ NỘI - 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP……… I

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES……… iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS……… ……… … v

PART A INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale of the study……… …… 1

2 Aims of the study……… ……… …… 2

3 Research questions……… ……… … 3

4 Scope of the study ……… … 3

5 Methodology……… 3

6 Design of the study……… 3

PART B DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1 Literature review 1.1 Language testing……… … 4

1.2 The role of testing……… … 5

1.2.1 Testing and teaching……… ……… … 5

1.2.2 Purpose of language testing……… .6

1.3 Achievement test……… 7

1.3.1 Definition……… 7

1.3.2 Kinds of achievement tests……… 8

1.4 Criteria of a good test……… 9

1.4.1 Validity……… ……… … 10

1.4.2 Reliability……… … 11

1.4.3 Practicality……… … 12

1.4.4 Discrimination……… .12

1.5 Testing speaking skills……… 12

1.5.1 What is a spoken test ……… 12

1.5.2 What should be tested……… 13

1.5.2.1 Listening comprehension……… … 13

1.5.2.2 Grammatical appropriacy……… …14

1.5.2.3 Ease of speech and fluency……… … … 14

1.5.2.4 Content……… …… 15

1.5.2.5 Conversational skill……….… .15

CHAPTER 2 Methodology

2.1 The current situation of English teaching and learning at BAC NINH UPES …… .16

2.2 Participants……… .16

2.2.1 The teachers……… ……… 16

2.2.2 The students…… ……… 16

2.3.Overview the material used for second year students at BAC NINH UPES 17

2.4 Current testing situation at BAC NINH UPES……… ……… 19

2.5 Results and discussions 2.5.1 The subjects……… 20

2.5.2 Instruments for collecting data………21

2.5.3 Analysis of the collected data……… ……… … … …21

2.5.3.1 Teachers’ survey questionnaire and interview … …… … 21

2.5.3.2 Students’survey questionnaire ……… …… … … … 22

2.5.4 Results……… …… … .23

CHAPTER3 Towards designing an oral achievement test for second year students at BAC NINH UPES 3.1 Suggestions for improvement of the existing English oral achievement test… … 24

3.1.1 Small talk……… … 25

3.1.2 Picture……… 26

3.1.3 Oral interview……… 27

3.2 Proposed construction for an oral test for second year students at BAC NINH UPES 3.2.1 Objectives……… … 28

3.2.2 Table of specifications ……… ……… … 28

3.3.2.1 Test skills……… …… 29

3.3.2.2 Test content……… ……… 29

3.3.2.3 Test format……… ……… … 29

3.3.2.4 Rubrics……… 29

3.3.2.5 Marking……… …… ……… 29

3.3.2.6 Detailed construction for the test……… …… 29

3.3 Test administration and marking scheme……… ……… 29

3.3.1 Test administration……… ……… 30

3.3.2 Marking scheme……… ……… 30

3.3.2.1 Marking……… ……… 30

3.3.2.2 Detailed marking scales……… … 30

3.3.2.3 Testing procedures……… 32

3.3.2.4 The marking training program ……… 33

3.3.3 Conclusion……… 35

PART C CONCLUSION

1 Conclusions……… … …36

2 Limitations and suggestions for further study……… ……… … 37

REFERENCES……… ……… .38 APPENDIX A QUESTIONNAIRES…… … ……… ……….I APPENDIX B THE CURRENT TEST …… ……… ………… IX APPENDIX C THE SAMPLE TEST…… ……… ……… X APPENDIX D THE ANSWER KEY FOR SAMPLE TEST……… ……… XI APPENDIX E THE EXTRA SPEAKING MATERIALS……… ………… XII

Part A Introduction

1 Rationale for the study

Language is not only a main medium of education, but also intrinsically involved in every school subject to such a degree that education should be viewed as a “ languaging” process

The twentieth century has seen the rise of English as the most widely used international means of communication with different purposes Anyone no matter where he lives is likely to be aware of the fact that having knowledge of English helps him achieve the latest information on sience and technology and intergrade himself into the outside world In Vietnam, English has received widespread attention

training well qualified and experienced teachers of sports and coaches to satisfy the needs

of the country The communicative approach to Language Teaching with the most effective and modern teaching techniques have been applied to develop students’ linguistic and communicative competence by the teachers from this university The teachers make full use

of time to develop the four language skills during the course in an attemp to help their students communicate effectively have a successful communication in the target language However, teachers should not be confined to imparting teaching and learning with testing

It is of special importance in educational system, which is highly competitive as testing not only acts as an indirect stimulus to learning but plays a crucial role in determining the success or failure of one’s own career In the World Yearbook of education 1969, Lauwerys and Seaton highlights: “Thus, testing is an important tool in educational light both the nature of language proficiency and language learning”

In addition, testing also pushes up teaching and learning activities As Nga (1977) notes: Tests are assumed to be powerful determiners of what happens in classrooms and it is commonly claimed that they affect teaching and learning activities both directly and indirectly

No one can deny the fact that testing is an important part in teaching and learning process, but has it been paid enough attention yet? Having taught English for students at Bac Ninh University of Physical education and sports for nearly 16 years, author of this study has designed tests of all four language skills, especially the speaking skills She has

also administered and marked these tests Her teaching experience shows that there still remain some problems that need to be solved such as the test content, the gap between what

is tested and what is taught, the reuse of tests from years to years, from class to class As a result, tests may lack of validity and realibility

Since 2010 at Bac Ninh UPES students have been required to do an oral achievement test at the end of each semester Having good English result in the first year enables them to have better result in their specialty Knowing the importance of speaking skill for students at UPES, teachers in the English group regard oral achievement test as a means to reinforce students’ knowledge and motivate their learning

On the ground of the problem already mentioned, the author has decided to

choose Designing an English Oral Achievement Test for Second Year students at Bac

Ninh Physical Education and Sports University (Bac Ninh UPES) in an attemp to solve

the testing problems here and share her testing experience with her colleages and those who are concerned with this area

2 Aims of the study

Ninh UPES towards designing an English oral achievement test for second year students

With the above- mentioned rationale, the specific aims of the study are:

+ Evaluating the current situation of English oral test in terms of its content, time allowance and marking scales

+ Investigating teachers’suggestions for improvement of the current testing situation in general and oral test in particular

+ Proposing a sample test as an illustration of a newly designed test based on the

old one

3 Research questions

To gain the above aims of the study, the following questions are addressed:

(1) What is the current English oral testing situation at Bac Ninh UPES?

(2) What are the teachers’suggestions for improving the current English testing

situation for the second year students at Bac Ninh UPES?

(3) What test components and test contents are considered to be appropriate for the intended English oral achievement test?

4 Scope of the study

Because of limitation of the time, the author of the study does not cover testing issues for all the four skills, but only places emphasis on the third semester English oral

achievement test for second year at Bac Ninh UPES

It deals with the general ideas of language testing, of the current test and the design of the

final oral achievement test for the second year students at Bac Ninh UPES

5 Methodology

(1) Gathering reference materials; analyzing and synthetisizing the findings into principles, qualities and formats as the basis to evaluate the current testing situation at Bac Ninh UPES toward designing an English oral achievement test for second year students

(2) Imploying questionnaires, interviews, opinion exchanges and experimental tests to

collect data for the study

6 Design of the study

The study consists of three parts and each one presents a set of related issues:

- The first part provides basic information such as rationale, aims, design, scope and methodology of the study

- The second part, which is the main part, is sub divided into three chapters:

+ The first chapter “ Literature review”, which is the most theoretical one, looks at the background knowledge on language testing

+ The second chapter which discusses on methodology, presents the deep analysis of the setting including the questionnaires, direct interviews, and analysis of students’ needs for a new test It also describes data collection instruments, data collection procedure and data analysis

+ The third chapter is the most important one which touches upon the designing an

English oral achievement test for second year students at Bac Ninh UPES based on the above – mentioned theoretical and practical study

- And the final part, the author shed the mantle of reviewing the study and suggesting further research

Part B Development

Chapter 1 Literature review Some literature review about language testing, the role of testing, achievement test and some criteria of a good test are presented in this chapter

1.1 Language testing

It can be said that language tests are valuable tools for providing information concerning language teaching On the one hand, they provide evidence of the results of learning and instructing and the effectiveness of teaching On the other hand, they also provide information for both teachers and students to make decisions Teachers should determine what specific kinds learning materials or activities are suitable for their students basing on their strength and weakness or diagnosis of the amount of knowledge they have learnt and make sure that they are ready to move to another unit

For these reasons, all language teaching should involve testing and it becomes one

of the main aspects of methodology Many researchers have given out definitions of testing with different points of view

Allen(1974: 313) provides the following definition of tests:

with other individuals who belong to the same group

The author emphasizes testing as an instrument to ensure that students have a sense

of competition rather than to know how good their performance is and in which condition a test can take place

According to Carroll (1968: 46), a psychological or educational test can be considered as a procedure designed to elicit behavior from which one can make inference about characteristics of an individual

From this definition, it follows that a test is a measurement designed to elicit a particular behavior of each individual And what a test from other types of measurement, according to Bachman, (1990: 20) is that it is designed to obtain specific sample of behavior

This distinction is believed to be of great importance because it reflects the primary justification replaced for the use of language tests and implicates how we design, develop

and use them to their best use Thus, language tests can provide the means for more focus

on the specific assure of interest

Another interesting definition of testing is provided by Ibe (1981: 1) as follow:

providing a basis for performing judgement

The term a sample of behavior used here is rather broad and it means something

else rather than the traditional types of papers and pencils Read (1983) shares the same

idea with Ibe in the sense that a sample of behaviors suggests language testing ceirtainly

includes listening and speaking skills as well as reading and writing ones

However, Heaton (1988:5) looks at testing in a different way In his opinion, tests are as a means of assessing the students’ performance and to motivate the students He looks at tests with positive eyes as many students are eager to take at the end of the semester to know how much knowledge they have One important thing is that he points out the relationship between testing and teaching

In short, from the above descriptions, testing is an effective means of measuring and assessing students’ language knowledge and skill It is of great use to both language teaching and learning

1.2 The role of testing

Unlike tests of other abilities or areas of knowledge where we frequently use language in the process of measuring something else, in language tests, we use language as

a measurement of language ability in second language acquisition Similarly, language tests can be valuable sources of information about the effectiveness of learning and teaching

A large number of examination and tests in the past tended to separate testing from teaching Heaton (1988: 5 ) emphasizes that teaching and testing in some ways are so interwoven and independent that is very difficult to tease apart.” Both testing and teaching are so closely interrelated that it is virtually impossible to work in either field without being

constantly concerned with the others” However, thanks to the steady change in the

approaches to language teaching with a remarkable shift of emphasis from dicrete - point items to intergrative and communicative tests, testing, teaching and learning become more and more interrelated

Heaton (1988: 5) also notes: “ Tests may be constructed primarily as devices to reinforce learning and motivate the students or as a means of assessing the students’ performance in the language” In the former case, testing is geased to the teaching, whereas

in the latter case, teaching is often geased largely to the testing

bad effect of teaching and learning He also stresses the role of backwask in this process If

the test content does not go with the objectives of the course, then the backwash can be

really harmful It leads to problem of teaching in one way but testing in another way

In summary, from the above analysis, we can see that, testing and teaching - learning activities are interwoven Good tests are useful and desirable “ Without them education would be poorer and much less effective” (Nga, 1997 ) Whether testing is beneficial or harmful to the individual and to society has been a major controversy in education

1.2.2 Purpose of language testing

Testing and teaching - learning process have a very close relationship Tests can be effective for both teaching and learning process

The first and foremost purpose of language tests is to evaluate students’ performance for the purpose of placement and selection in class Most tests start with a few easy items as an encouragement to weaker students The difficulty level increases so that fairly good students will be challenged with the latter items which weakest students may find many somewhat frustrating As a result, teachers can increase their own effectiveness

by making their adjustment in their teaching to enable ceirtain group of students or individuals in the class to benefit more Tests will help teachers locate the precise areas of difficulties encountered by students just as it is necessary for the doctor to diagnose the patient’s illness, so it is equally essential for teachers to deal with students’ difficulty and weakness carefully

Having learned something about the areas of strength and weakness, students have

an opportunity to see how well they are able to perform what they have learned in the test

In Read’s opinion, a test is said to be able to help both students and teachers classify what learners really need to know Furthermore, it also helps students identify precise areas of weakness, which require further study or practice Tests also enable teachers to as certain which parts of the language programs have been found difficulty by the class In this way,

teachers can evaluate the effectiveness of the syllabus as well as the methods and materials they are using

Another purpose of testing is to provide motivation for students and also strengthen their further study Under the pressure of tests, students will pay much attention to the learning materials central to their course objectives, revise the lessons, learn harder and do more exercises Moreover, it is one way to force students to mobilize all their knowledge and skills to do the test Students are then motivated to prove what they have learned

1.3 Achievement tests

Tests in general and language tests in particular are of many types Language tests can be classified as oral and written tests depending on the purpose of the test According to test purposes, tests can be known as placement, diagnotic, aptitude, proficiency and achievement tests According to the way of scoring and marking, they can be grouped into subjective and objective ones The author of this paper attempts to focus on achievement tests only

1.3.1 Definition

Achievement tests are commonly used at school of all levels and of great importance in evaluating language knowledge and skills students have aquired during the English teaching learning process

Different authors have different ideas about achievement tests Acording to Spatt (1985:145) an achievement test is one of the means available to teachers and students alike

of assessing process Here, Spatt places an emphasis on teachers and students’ effort during the course This idea is shared by Heaton (1988:1), who widens the concept of such tests by defining them as the ones based on what the students are assumed to have learned not necessarily on what they have actually learnt He feels that achievement tests are directly related to a particular language course and limited to a particular course book covered in a curriculum with the aim of checking how successfully individual students, groups of students, the courses themselves have achieved course objectives

With regard to this opinion, Finochiaro and Sako (1983:15) stress:

just as they are in most other subjects They are used to measure the amount or degree of control of discrete language and cultural items and of intergrated language skills aquired

by the students within a specific period of instruction in a specific course

In order to make a distintion between achievement tests and tests of other kinds, Harrison (1991) notes:

An achievement test look back over a longer period of learning than a diagnostic

test, for example, a year’s work, or the whole course, or even a variety of different courses

The distintion can be inlustrated with the following diagram:

Harrison points out that achievement tests take into consideration actions those students have already achieved from the past up to the present Such tests are often designed to assess students’ progress during the whole course or even a number of courses Students will do achievement tests to check whether they have learnt well or not Here, he also stress that the aim of achievement tests is to show the standard which students have reached in relation to other students at the same stage However, diagnostic tests look back

on the previous courses to identify students’ strength and weakness and they can also be used to as certain what further teaching is necessary

1.3.2 Kinds of achievement tests

Achievement tests are divided into two basic types according to the time of administration They are namely progress achievement tests and final achievement tests

(1) Progress achievement tests

Progress achievement tests are usually carried out to measure the extent with students have mastered from what has been taught in the classroom In other words, they measure students’ progress These tests are, ofcourse, based on the language program which students have been following and as important an assessment of the teaching effectiveness as that of students’ own learning

Results from achievement tests enable teachers to find out and diagnose areas not properly mastered by students during the course, which need remedial action They, therefore, are familiar with the work of each student Furthermore, these tests provide students with a good chance to stimulate learning and n what they have been taught to perform the target language in a positive and effective manner and gain confidence Good performance is

considered a means of encouragement whereas bad performance means incentive to more work This is also considered a preparative step to make students familiar with the test

(2) Final achievement tests

Final achievement tests are given at the end of the course They, in nature, may also

be similar to progress tests but broader and not specific in scope These tests help teachers measure the result of what has been taught and learnt during the course of study To put it another way, it is a good chance for teachers to judge the degree of success of their teaching and identify students’ weakness

Hughes (1990:10) divided them into two kinds depending on different approaches used

The first approach is known as the syllabus - content one According to him, the content of the final achievement tests should be based directly on a detailed course syllabus

or on books and other materials used Results of an achievement tests can be used as an indication of the course content and testers have to take into consideration what students have learnt during the course to design tests Furthermore, a properly written achievement tests can be a pointer to learners indicating which part needs more attention and which part

is not effective enough However, problems arise when test results fail to meet test validity

in terms of course objectives

The second approach is the syllabus – objective one As its name suggests, this approach orients all tests to test objectives Instead of constructing tests based on the course content, testers have to concentrate on course objectives and they desire to know far their students have achieved their objectives However, these kinds of tests, on the one hand, are good to measure students’ ability to meet course objectives, but on the other hand are bad

as they work against the teaching because this approach copes with testing problems rather than what students have achieved

1.4 Criteria of a good test

Before making a test, test designers often asks themselves many questions such as:

How do we design a test that is a true indicator of students’ communicative ability? Who is

it for? What is it meant to test? How do we know that it is a good one?

Is testing is a master of concern to all teachers whether they are in the classroom or engaged in syllabus, administration or research It is obvious that good tests can help improve teaching and stimulate students’ learning Often classroom tests are written in a

hurry because teachers could not find time to think carefully and plan the test In order to

construct a good test, teachers have to consider the purpose of the test, the course content

and above all students’ background To see this role better, tests must possess some

characteristics namely validity, reliability, practicality and discrimination All these

characteristics play a very important role in constructing a good test

1.4.1 Validity

When testers construct a test, they must pay special attention to its validity

According to Carmen (1995), a test is valid if it measures what you want to measure In

Aik’s opinion (1983:72), a test is said to be valid it is relevant to the aims and purposes of

the areas of learning on which it is set In this sense, validity of the test and purposes of the

course syllabus are closely related

It is not to measure or quantity validity Several types of validity exists but the most

discussed ones are construct, content and face validity

A test has construct validity if it refers to the concomitance between the test and the

underlying teaching principles Hence, tests should reflect course objectives and underline

its teaching principles With regard to communicative testing, it is essential that tests be as

direct and authentic as possible and they should take into consideration real life and real

communicative tasks

Content validity refers to the measurement of the syllabus content and skills

specified in the course book It follows from this that tests should reflect learners’ needs

and their particular domain of use to ensure content validity It is very easy to achieve this

purpose because the course book designer is the person to decide on the course content

What test designers to teachers do is to sample this domain, measure it, score it, set up pass/

fail cutoffs, and give grades

Face validity is supported by the judgement that a test is appealing to laymen– students, administrations, ect Hughes (1990) in “testing for Language Teachers

states: “ a test is said to have face validity if it looks as if it supposed to measure” In other

words, tests should be based on the course content and methodological teaching

approaches

In short, validity is the “ must’ for testers to take into consideration when they

construct a language test

1.4.2 Reliability

Besides validity, reliability is also considered a very important characteristic of a good test A test is reliable if its result is consident, i.e if administered to the same students

on another occasion, they would obtain the same results Moore (1992: 110 ) gives a definition of reliability as follows: “Reliability refers to the consistency with which a measurement device measure some target behavior or trait” To put it another way, it means the dependability or trustworthiness of the measurement device For instance, a multiple-choice test would probably yield different scores from one administration to another, and would thus be extremely unreliable

There are two main souses of realibility: the consistency of performance from candidates and scoring The former is affected by several factors such as the number of questions, test administration and test instructions

A test is neither too short because it is very difficult to as certain whether a student has acquired the knowledge and had a correct answer nor too long since its reliability may

be high but its validity may be low Furthermore, administration, that is the circumstance under which a test can be taken, affects test results a lot It involves in such problems as timing, testing conditions, observation or control of testees doing the test, scoring, ect Henning (1987: 88) states: “Inconsistencies in the administrative process may introduce measurement error and thus reduce test reliability” Also test instructions contribute to the consistency of test results They must be clear as possible, neither confusing nor complex

In short it should be noted that a test could be reliable without possessing validity However, reliability is clearly inadequate by itself if a test does not sussecced in measuring what it is supposed to measure

constrains, ease of administration, scoring and interpretation A test is impractical in case it

is prohibitively expensive and it takes much time to construct

Another factor affecting practicality of a test is what Oller (1979: 52) calls

instructional value He suggests “ It ought to be possible to use the test to enhance the

delivery of instruction in student population” Therefore, teachers are able to understand their students better

In conclusion, a test has practicality if it does not involve much time or money in constructing, implementing, and scoring it

1.4.4 Discrimination

It ought to incomplete without considering discrimination of a test According to Heatont (1988:165), all tests have this feature to reflect differences in the performance of each individual in the group It is true for both teacher- made tests and standardized tests In

order to have this feature, a test must have a scale ranging from extremely easy items to

extremely difficult items However, the extent of discrimination need varies according to test

objectives The more efficiently a test discriminates among students, the easier it is to divide them into suitable groups and the more clearly it shows the level of each individual

in the group

1.5 Testing speaking skills

1.5.1 What is a spoken test?

the problem of students who may be structurally competent but cannot communicate appropriately As Newmark (1966) expresses, students may know structures that linguists teach yet cannot know the way to ask about the time is to walk up to a person and some of the following utterances:

What time is it by your watch?

Have you got the time?

recognizes the necessity for teaching, considering presumed communicative needs In recent years, in parallel with communicative language teaching, communicative language testing has been the focus of a great number of researches on language testing

All discussions are about desirability of measuring the ability to take part in acts of communication In sum, it is assumed that the function of language is to enable people to communicate with each other in the society As a result, testing language ability is testing communicative or ability to speak

1.5.2 What should be tested?

The question of what to test in an oral test is always a matter of concern for all testers Underhill (1987:96) bases on the types of performance criteria for assessment focused on communicational effectiveness They are namely size (length of utterances), speed, flexibility, accuracy, independence, repetition and hesitation North (1990:96) simplifies these into range, accuracy, delivery and interaction while Lee (1991:280), for an analysis of some published rating scales for oral testing, employs the categories of listening comprehension, grammatical appropriacy, ease of speech and fluency, content and conversational skills

1.5.2.1 Listening comprehension

Of the various factors that need to be taken into account is listening comprehension This phrase of evaluation is initially tested during the prepared conversation section of the exam In some cases, students will remain silent and wait for the partner to repeat their statement, and this should reflect in a lower rating At other times a student may ask for clarification, or ask their partner to repeat what they have said, and this should reflect in a higher rating Listening comprehension is the best way to check whether students understand what their partners are saying

Closely, testees’vocabulary comprehension is related to their success in listening comprehension During a fixed period of time, they have to use all of their listening skill to complete all the test items successfully However, comprehension vocabulary is inadequate

to understand anything but the most elementary needs Testees do not need to understand the meaning of the individual word Their listening comprehension can only be achieved when they have effective skills to understand, exploit, interpret, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the test With the skills of understanding lexical and grammatical items, testees can find it easier to deduct the meaning of unfamiliar lexical items and understand all the structural devices such as coherent structures, cohesive features and types of speech that help them to follow essensial points of discussion speech Moreover, testees must be able to

comprehend the organization of the test and work out the factual content so as to evaluate

1.5.2.3 Ease of speech and fluency

Besides accuracy, fluency is an essential criterion to be tested in an oral test Many language learners regard speaking ability as a measure of knowing a language These people define fluency as the ability to converse with others much more than the ability to read, write or comprehend oral language In order to decide the level of fluency, five factors are analyzed follows:

( a) The total number of words spoken in a fixed time

( b) The number of silent pauses or eases of speaking for thinking

( c) The number of repetition of words

( d) The number of repair or reformulation for connection

( e) Mean length of utterances

Students who enter the class with good English on fluency may score high even though they did not apply themselves to the lessons Students with relatively less ability but who made great effort and progress may still have a lower competence than students who had greater ability from the beginning Here, rate of speech contributes a lot to the success

of interactive communication, maximizing listeners’ comprehension and involvement

1.5.2.4 Content

An oral test can be successful without testing testees’ speaking content Through speaking, testers can check testees’ performance and how much required information was effectively communicated There is more to the business of communicating than the ability

to produce grammatically correct utterance Imagine that you could build a computer,

which has perfect mastery of English grammar, phonology and lexis As much as possible, the content should be practical and usable in real- life situations

1.5.2.5 Conversational skills

Last but not least, what a spoken test tends to test is conversational skills Testees must show their skill through conversations with testers Here conversations have all the elements of asking questions, listening, thinking and speaking A good communicator is listening and thinking actively so that when he/ she speaks it becomes feedback and contributes to the understanding in a two- way conversation This total activity is called effective interactive communication According to Larry, creating an understanding between people includes all the forms associated with verbal responses which may be non- verbal (body language), extra verbal (the emphasis on certain words and sounds) and (actual words)

the behavior they display It often communicates how they really feel It, more than attitudes, tells their past and present reaction to situations It also indicates how they will react during similar situations in the future

In the nutshell, testers should take all of the above skills into account when designing an oral test and testees should acquire them so that they can get the best result for the test

Summary: This chapter has reviewed theories related to the language testing and the

roles it plays in the process of English language teaching and learning as well as important issues of testing that need to be considered when conducting the research The highlighted aspects are language testing, the role of testing, achievement tests, some criteria of a good test, and testing speaking skills All of these serve as a basic for carrying out an designing

an English oral achievement test for second year students at Bac Ninh UPES The next chapter presents a methodology for the research.

Chapter 2 Methodology

This chapter will present some problems about English teaching and learning at Bac Ninh UPES, participants, the material and current testing situation used for second year students at Bac Ninh UPES and some data collection instruments

2.1 Setting: English teaching and learning at Bac Ninh UPES

Recently English teaching and learning at BN UPES has undergone significant changes In the past, the grammar translation method was used in which students had to learn by heart and imitate all the structures without understanding their meaning and use Now this has changed, the communicative Approach to Language Teaching, whose goal is

to develop students’ communicative competence, involves students to use the target language appropriately and effectively Moreover, the current learner- centered approach motivates students to practice and use their English exchange their ideas Teachers now act

as facilitators of classroom activities However, there remain such activities as reading aloud, translation, questioning and answering because teachers are deeply influenced by the traditional approach

2.2 Participants

2.2.1 The teachers

The English teachers at Bac Ninh UPES consists of 10 All of them are female, from 30 to 50 years old All of them had formal training in English language teaching on different educational institutions in Vietnam Most of them has done the post graduate degrees All of them are very enthusiastic and helpful to teach each other and exchange to teach English

2.2.2 The students

“ I can understand my teacher’s English, but when I speak to real people I can’t understand them” This is a comment I am sure that many teachers of English have ever heard However, this is a bit of exaggeration Students often feel that classroom- speaking practice does not prepare them for the real world Why do students highlight speaking skill the greatest problem?

in general They are young and enthusiastic and eager to learn English so understanding

spoken and written English is not so challenging for them To use Brown’s words (1994), they have superior cognitive abilities that can rider them a bit more successful in certain classroom endeavors

undeveloped practical skills, and contrastingly well developed confidence barriers and anxieties about speaking English.Therefore, it makes teaching and learning English inconveniently carried out

Another fact is that students prefer written work, which has to be done with dictionary, repetition taking notes and vocabulary notebook Their attention paid to learning structures and rules mostly hinders their development of communicative ability in the target language

contemporary communicative language teaching methodology, they have also to ensure that their students acquire necessary linguistic facts to be able to answer grammatical based multiple choice examinations which are universally described, but which tend to be unrelated to the development of spoken English abilities The result is that some graduate students arrive at their new place of work with undeveloped oral skill and with deliberating awareness of this fact, which impedes motivation and further improvement

2.3 Overview the material used for second year students at Bac Ninh UPES

According to the curriculum designed by the Ministry of Education and training, English is a compulsory subject at all universities and colleges To meet students’ needs of English for future work and provide them with adequate knowledge of English used in daily life, General English is taught in the first two semesters with the integration of the four skills

This study was carried out at Bac Ninh UPES English is one of the compulsory subjects in the curriculum for students at Bac Ninh UPES Of all those 40 subjects, English

is one of the compulsory subject in the curriculum for students at Bac Ninh UPES.The English course consists of 3 semesters It is divided into two stages The first stage is spent for General English (120 hours), the other stage is for English for Specific Purpose (60 hours)

At UPES, the course book "New Headway Elementary" is chosen to teach for the

first year students at UPES According to the authors (Soars and Soars, 1998), New

Headway is meant for use by adult and young adult learners and provides 120 hours of language learning The authors claim that the course combines the best traditional methods with more recent approaches to help students use English accurately and fluently These traditional approaches "emphasize a clear focus on grammar with in-depth analysis and explanation, through practice activities, and exploitation of texts for comprehension and

stylistic appreciation." Priority is given to English for sport students This book is to

provide a stepping stone to enable a student to cross from the knowledge of General English to a position where he can handle the sort of textbook and instructions he will meet

at college and in their future career

Hence the key points of 6 units for third semester are described as below:

Unit Aims and objectives

Grammar: The past tense and time expressions in the past Writing: Knowledge about Olympic games

Speaking and listening: Olympic events

2 Track and field

athletics

Reading comprehension: Track and field athletics Grammar: The past and present perfect tenses Writing: Describing about Track and field athletics events Speaking and listening: How to practice athletics usefully

Grammar: Prepositions of place and relative clause

Writing: A football match

Speaking and listening: Football fans

Grammar: Prepositions of place and relative clause

Writing: History of Bac Ninh UPES

Speaking and listening: the history of Bac Ninh UPES

Grammar: Prepositions of place and relative clause

Writing: How to talk about a game

Speaking and listening: Olympic 2008 in Beijing

6 THE 22nd Sea games Reading comprehension: THE 22nd Sea games

Grammar: Prepositions of place and relative clause

Writing: How to prepare the seagames

Speaking and listening: The song “ For the World Tomorrow”

2.4 Current testing situation at UPES

English has now become one of the main compulsory subject and it covers about

180 periods in the whole educational program, hence, test activities are given much attention Since 2010 at Bac Ninh UPES students are required to do an oral achievement test at the end of each semester Having good English result in the first year enables them to have better result in their specialty Knowing the importance of speaking skill for students

at UPES, teachers in the English group regard oral achievement test as a means to reinforce students’ knowledge and motivate their learning At the examinations, students are given a test paper consisting of three parts: Read the following passage and answer questions, translation, making sentences Students are marked according to correct answer they have and the maximum mark is ten

I Read the following passage and answer questions ( 4 points)

II Translation (4 points)

III Making sentences (2 points)

At the first glance, this test looks good and reasonable for students Besides, it is very easy for teachers to mark examination papers and students may know their mark easily

However, several shortcoming should be mentioned here First, the test content is likely to fail to measure knowledge taught during the course A test is not only a way of measuring students’ knowledge, but also a kind of motivation or stimulus learners in their learning Brown (1994 a: 390) notes: “tests can aid learning” Since oral skill is a significant component of the syllabus, it must be assessed in someway with more difficult requirements Therefore, one negative impact of those tests is that teachers are likely to give students simple questions to make it easy for them to pass exams but not take full advantage of the requirements in the course Furthermore, the current test does not meet the demand of communicative abilities despite of the introduction of recent advanced language teaching methodology Students are used to learning something by heart because they are to

prepare the texts at home, consequently, two-way communication has not yet created In order to break this self-confirming circle, to motivate students to develop their oral skill, the situation needs to be addressed in its entirety Teachers should find more and more interesting method of teaching the spoken language, making the learning environment as conductive to expression and language acquisition as possible

Above all, having identified tests as the driving force behind learning in universities The author of this study find the necessity for adjusting those tests to be more communicative by designing a new proposed test based on the theoretical need of testing

and evaluation

2.5 Data collections instruments

In examining the actual English testing situation at Bac Ninh UPES, two sets of

survey questionnaires are conducted with the assistance of 10 teachers of the English group and 100 students of physical education department at Bac Ninh UPES Each questionnaire consists of 10 questions, which tend to find out how Bac Ninh UPES teachers of English evaluate the present test in terms of its content, time allowance and making scale Another purpose is to find out students’ problems in doing the tests In every question, informants are asked to tick an appropriate answer among the ready-made choices Besides, interviews and discussions with teachers and students of physical education department at Bac Ninh UPES have been carried out for the truth of information The failure or success of language testing in general and of the currently used English oral achievement test is given as the topic for discussion

Summary: Firstly, this chapter describes the context in which the study takes place The setting of Bac Ninh UPES with its aims and objectives and the participants with their goals, expectations and their English proficiency have been clarified Secondly, it deals with the methodology to conduct the research The data collection, namely, the questionnaire and interview The next chapter presents the most significant part; that is towards designing an English oral achievement test for second year students at Bac Ninh UPES

Chapter 3 Towards designing an oral achievement test for

second year students at Bac Ninh UPES

This part of the study presents the data of the study, their analysis and discussion to provide ground for drawing conclusions with reference to the research questions

3.1 Analysis of the collected data

Table 3.1 Teachers’ opinions about the existing test

Teachers’marking scale is another matter of concern 4 out of 10 teachers accounting for 40 % thought marking scale is not very reasonable and 30 % note that marking scale is unreasonable as some teachers often base on the level of test difficulty to build the marking scale This highlights the fact that the test content and the marking scale should be reexamined thoroughly When asked about how to time the test, 3 out of 10 teachers (30%) thought there’s enough time for students to complete their tests, 20% thought too much

When being asked about the necessity to change the current test items for its content and format only 6 out of 10 respondents ( 60 %) agreed whereas the rest ( 40%) disagreed with this change

Table 3.2 Language skills and elements to be measured:

Making up sentences

The data in Table 2.2 indicated that Bac Ninh UPES gave a high priority to oral interview (30 %), picture description and small talk (20%) respectively The low priority is given to making up sentences (10%) and translation E-V and V-E (10 %) respectively The data also suggested that teachers expected the test to measure students’ achievement of the language elements and skills

3.1.2 Students’ survey questionnaire

Table 3.3 Students’ opinion about the test

As can be seen of responses from the table, when being asked about the importance

of English to their future career, 91 students thought that it is very important as they have to use English very often meanwhile 1 thought it is not very important Answering question 3,

3 students said that their test result often range from 0% -20% of the test However 77% of the students could finish 50% - 80 % of the test

In terms of test difficulties, 46 students thought that the greatest problem is pronunciation Besides, 14 of them said that the requirement is difficult to understand New words and structures disturb 9 students and only few of them 4% have difficulty in the requirement validity

To the questions whether students are interested in the current test, 75% answer

“ yes” as for them it is one way of consolidating their grammar, especially making sentences helps create their creativity According to the statistic data, 91% of the interviewed students are interested in picture as it increases their creativity and helps them

to produce logical judgements in compliance with the fact

In the opinion of 67 students, time and score distribution for different parts should

be included in the test They explained that it was really helpful for them to know appropriate time and score distribution for each item so as to focus more time and effort on difficult requirement However, 33% informants disagreed with this because they thought that they were forced by all means to complete all the test items in a fixed amount of time and it sometimes frightens them if they meet some difficult test items When asked about the test format, 9% thought that they wanted to do tests of the same requirement as they do not have to prepare much and they do not know what they will do whereas 91% thought it was better for them to get used to other kinds of requirement and it was really a good chance to test their English speaking skill

3.1.3 Results

The data from the survey questionnaires, direct interviews and observation carried out with the teachers and students show that there were some problems in the oral achievement test for second year students at Bac Ninh UPES They mainly focused on the teachers’ trend in selecting test items and test techniques

The first and foremost problem is teachers’ trend in selecting test items They should use texts with the same topics but provide new information so as to develop students’ ability of creativity The second problem deducted from the data is teachers’ test