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Assessing students English presentation skills using a textbook-based task and rubric at a Japanese senior high school

Article appearing in Shiken 23.1 (June 2019) pp. 1-33.

Rie Koizumi1 and Ken Yano2
1. Juntendo University, Chiba
2. Taga Senior High School, Ibaraki

Abstract
Assessing as well as teaching speaking English as a second language (L2) is encouraged in the classroom because there are potential opportunities outside the classroom for native and nonnative speakers of English to interact in English. However, speaking assessment is not conducted regularly in Japanese senior high schools (SHSs). One measure to promote speaking assessment is to introduce an instance of speaking assessment in the classroom to show detailed procedures and outcomes based on the analysis of the test data. This study reports on such an attempt to conduct speaking assessment of oral presentations based on a textbook task and a rubric at an SHS. Presentations of 64 students were evaluated by two raters using two rating criteria. Analysis of scores using many-facet Rasch measurement showed that the test functioned well in general, and the results of a posttest questionnaire suggested that students generally perceived the test positively.

Keywords: speaking assessment, analytic rubrics, raters, many-facet Rasch measurement, students' perceptions

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