A Study of Oral Production Tests.docVIP

A Study of Oral Production Tests 　　【Abstract】 Testing the ability to speak is a most important aspect of language testing. Testing of students’ spoken English can bring in a positive washback for English teaching. However， it’s extremely difficult to test. This paper conducts a general analysis of oral production tests from overview， types and items of oral tests and scoring methods， which’s supposed to serve as an introduction to the issue under discussion. 　　【Key Words】 Spoken English ability； Oral production tests； Scoring methods 　　【中图分类号】G642.05 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】2095-3089（2013）33-0-02 　　1. Overview of oral production tests 　　Oral production testing can examine and evaluate students’ competence of using oral English with high validity. But the assessments for students’ spoken English are mainly from scorers’ subjective judgment， which makes it with low reliability. Before we study deeper into oral production tests， we should have a thorough understanding. 　　1.1 Nature of the spoken language 　　According to Tepper （1978）， oral communication activity can be defined as “an activity between two or more people within which people communicate and accept ideas， feelings and attitude through verbal and nonverbal methods”. Therefore the oral communication activity has following features： interactiveness， spontaneity， purposefulness， para-linguistic features， non-linguistic features， inseparability of listening from speaking. 　　Which specific aspects can reflect a person’s oral proficiency？ Weir Bygate （1992） pointed that oral proficiency was formed by three parts： routine skills （information/interaction routines）， improvisation skills （ability to tactically resolve problems encountered in the process of communication） and micro-linguistic skills （knowledge of phonology， grammar， and vocabulary）.These three skills represent three levels of oral proficiency， working together to make the communication successfully. 　　1.2 Bachman’s model of oral test performance 　　Ba