Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
University of Tehran
Abstract
The current study attempted qualitatively to explore and compare the qualities that native and Iranian English teachers (with and without related educational backgrounds) attend to while rating their students' oral productions in the classroom context. In doing so, the perceptions of 19 native English teachers (9 graduates in TEFL and 10 graduates in other majors) along with 18 Iranian English teachers (10 graduates in TEFL and 8 graduates in other majors) were sought through semi-structured interviews. The data were collected after the outbreak of Coronavirus (COVID-19) disease in 2020, which gave the researchers no choice but to look for haphazard cases with specific features in social networks. The recorded interviews were analyzed attentively through content analysis. The findings indicated that although all native and non-native respondents focused intensively on the structural features of language in general while rating oral interviews, they had notably different views regarding some sub-features within each category. Further results showed that the native and non-native TEFL-graduate teachers, unlike their peers with unrelated educational backgrounds, also gave credits to several message-based and pragmatic aspects of oral production. The findings have practical implications for researchers, pre-service and in-service teachers, and teacher educators.
Keywords
Agasøster, S. (2015). Assessment of Oral English. A study of Assessment Practice of Oral English at Lower Secondary Schools in Norway. Unpublished Master's thesis, The University of Bergen.
Bachman, L. (1990). Fundamental considerations in language testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bachman, L. F., & Palmer, A. S. (1990). The construct of the FSI Oral Interview. Language Learning, 31(1), 67-86.
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (2004). The formative purpose: Assessment must first promote learning. Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, 103(2), 20-50.
Brown, A. (2004). Interviewer variation and the co-construction of speaking proficiency. Language Testing, 20, 1-25.
Brown, A., Iwashita, N., & McNamara, T. (2005). An examination of rater orientations and test-taker performance on English-for-academic-purposes speaking tasks. ETS Research Report No. RR-05-05. Princeton, New Jersey: Educational Testing Service.
Brown, H. D., & Abeywickrama, P. (2010). Language assessment: Principles and classroom practices (Vol. 10). White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.
Butler, F. A., Eignor, D., Jones, S., McNamara, T., & Suomi, B. K. (2000). TOEFL 2000 speaking framework. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
Caban, H. L. (2003). Rater group bias in the speaking assessment of four L1 Japanese ESL students. University of Hawai'i Second Langauge Studies Paper 21 (2).
Correia, R. C. (2016). Assessing Speaking Proficiency: A Challenge for the Portuguese EFL Teacher. e-TEALS, 7(1), 87-107.
Cumming, A. (2009). Language assessment in education: tests, curricula, and teaching. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 29, 90–100.
Davison, C. and Leung, C. (2009). Current issues in English language teacher-based assessment. TESOL Quarterly 43, 393–415.
Downer, J. T., Booren, L. M., Lima, O. K., Luckner, A. E., & Pianta, R. C. (2010). The Individualized Classroom Assessment Scoring System (inCLASS): Preliminary reliability and validity of a system for observing preschoolers' competence in classroom interactions. Early childhood research quarterly, 25(1), 1-16.
Fan, J. (2018). Oral Interaction: Concept, Competence, and Assessment. In K. Soh (Ed.), Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore (pp. 83-97). Singapore: Springer.
Fulcher, G., & Davidson, F. (2007). Language testing and assessment. London and New York: Routledge.
Fulcher, G., Davidson, F., & Kemp, J. (2011). Effective rating scale development for speaking tests: Performance decision trees. Language Testing, 28(1), 5-29.
Gipps, C. (1994). Quality in teacher assessment. Enhancing quality in assessment, 71-86.
Hughes, A. (2003). Testing for language teachers. Ernst Klett: Sprachen.
Isaacs, T. (2016). Assessing speaking. In D. Tsagari & J. Banerjee (Eds.), Handbook of second language assessment (pp. 131–146). Berlin: DeGruyter Mouton.
Isaacs, T., & Trofimovich, P. (2012). Deconstructing comprehensibility: Identifying the linguistic influences on listeners' L2 comprehensibility ratings. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 34(3), 475-505.
Khoshsima, H., & Afiati, L. (2015). English and Non-English major Teachers' Assessment of Oral Proficiency: a case of Iranian Maritime English Learners. Iranian Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 4(1), 33-45.
Kuiken, F., & Vedder, I. (2014). Raters' decisions, rating procedures, and rating scales. Language Testing, 31(3), 40-61.
Kuschmann, A., & Lowit, A. (2015). The role of speaking styles in assessing intonation in foreign accent syndrome. International journal of speech-language pathology, 17(5), 489-499.
Lado, R. (1961). Language Testing: The Construction and Use of Foreign Language Tests. A Teacher's Book.
Larson, J. W., & Hendricks, H. H. (2009). A context-based online diagnostic test of Spanish. Calico Journal, 26(2), 309-323.
Lee, S. (2010). Current practice of classroom speaking assessment in secondary schools in South Korea. Unpublished MA thesis. The University of Queensland, Australia.
Luoma, S. (2004). Assessing speaking (Cambridge language assessment). nature, 1, 2.
Lumley, T., & McNamara, T. F., (1995). Rater characteristics and rater bias: implications
for training. Language Testing, 12, 4-71.
McNamara, T.F. (1996). Measuring second language performance. London and New York: Addison Wesley Longman.
Mertler, C. A. (2016). Classroom assessment: A practical guide for educators. Routledge.
Phung, d. (2018). Variability in teacher oral English assessment decision-making [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of New South Wales, Sydney.
Plough, I. C., Briggs, S. L., & Van Bonn, S. (2010). A multi-method analysis of evaluation criteria used to assess the speaking proficiency of graduate student instructors. Language Testing, 27(2), 235-260.
Qashoa, S. H. (2012). Effects of teacher question types and syntactic structures on EFL classroom interaction. The International Journal of Social Sciences, 7(1), 52-62.
Rezvani, R., & Sayyadi, A. (2015). Instructors' and learners' questioning: A case of EFL classroom discourse. Journal of Teaching Language Skills, 34(3), 141-164.
Salaberry, R. (2000). Revising the revised format of the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview. Language Testing, 17(3), 289-310.
Staples, S., Laflair, G. T., & Egbert, J. (2017). Comparing language use in oral proficiency interviews to target domains: Conversational, academic, and professional discourse. The Modern Language Journal, 101(1), 194-213.
Tajeddin, Z., Alemi, M., & Pashmforoosh, R. (2011). Non-native teachers' rating criteria for L2 speaking: Does a rater training program make a difference? Teaching English Language, 5(1), 125-153.
Taylor, L. (2006). The changing landscape of English: Implications for language assessment. ELT Journal, 60(1), 51-60.
Thuy, N. H. H., & Nga, T. T. T. (2018). An investigation into EFL teachers' perceptions of in-class English speaking assessment. VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, 34(2).
Wang, Y., & Yu, C. (2017). Social interaction-based consumer decision-making model in social commerce: The role of word of mouth and observational learning. International Journal of Information Management, 37(3), 179-189.
Weir, C. J. (1990). Communicative language testing. New York: Prentice-Hall.
Winke, P., Gass, S., & Myford, C. (2013). Raters' L2 background as a potential source of bias in rating oral performance. Language Testing, 30(2), 231-252.
Willis, D., & Willis, J. (2007). Doing task-based teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zahedi, K., & Shamsaee, S. (2012). Viability of construct validity of the speaking modules of international language examinations (IELTS vs. TOEFL iBT): evidence from Iranian test-takers. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 24(3), 263-277.
Zhang, Y., & Elder, C. (2011). Judgments of oral proficiency by non-native and native English speaking teacher raters: Competing or complementary constructs? Language Testing, 28(1), 31-50.
', './data/jtls/coversheet/cover_en.jpg'))