Authentic Assessment Awareness for Assessing Students’ Speaking Ability in a Suburban Indonesian EFL Classroom

Abstract

The postponed implementation of 2013 curriculum in several regions in Indonesia has made some schools have implemented authentic assessment while other schools have not. This study aimed to investigate English classroom speaking assessment along with the teacher's perceptions of the authentic assessment and to observe the feasibility of fostering authentic assessment to assess students' speaking ability. The qualitative method has been used in this study. Field note classroom observation, document observation, and semi-structural interview with the teacher was used to obtain the data. The findings show that even though the classroom has not implemented authentic assessment to assess student speaking ability, the classroom has used authentic material in some topics of learning. Moreover, issues such as time constraint and classroom time management, students learning motivation, teacher teaching practice and the demand of current curriculum become some challenges as well as opportunities need to be contemplated and reflected to implement authentic speaking assessment effectively.