Effect of classroom assessment stakes on English language learners’ oral performance

Abstract

High‐stakes tasks may prevent language learners from performing successfully due to factors of “communicative stress” (Skehan, 1996, p. 52). Little research, however, has directly examined phonological patterns in learners’ performances on low‐stakes, medium‐stakes, and high‐stakes classroom tasks. The current study investigated the oral performance of 37 intensive English program students on a low‐stakes classroom presentation, a medium‐stakes classroom achievement assessment, and a high‐stakes end‐of‐term exit assessment. Suprasegmental measures of rate, fluency, prominence, and pitch were analyzed instrumentally. The researchers conducted mixed factorial analyses of variance and regression analyses to determine the effect of the stakes of the task on speech performance and scores. Findings reveal that students gave prominence to more words, had a decreased mean length of run, and had a narrower pitch range on the high‐stakes exit assessment. Furthermore, frequent phonological features significantly predicted task scores. The researchers discuss implications with regard to how teachers can implement a variety of tasks of different stakes in the classroom to allow opportunities for learners to improve their speech performance inside and outside of the classroom.

Cognitive and Sociopsychological Individual Differences, Experience, and Naturalistic Second Language Speech Learning: A Longitudinal Study

“…Thus, the original two self‐guides have been split into four scales: ideal L2 self/own (corresponding to the original ideal L2 self), ought‐to L2 self/own, and ideal L2 self/other and ought‐to L2 self/other (together corresponding to the original ought‐to L2 self). A recent study used this model to examine the link between motivation and L2 speech proficiency among a small group of English foreign language learners (Kermad, 2018), and the results were consistent with Saito et al.’s (2018) results—ideal L2 self/own scores were positively associated with fluency and segmental accuracy. Although all items used in our study were from the original L2MSS model (we collected the data before Papi et al., 2019, had proposed the revised model), we decided to relabel the scales to make comparisons easier in future studies.…”

“…We expected that the ideal L2 self/own scale would predict comprehensibility gains, replicating findings in classroom settings based on spontaneous speech elicited from learners at similar proficiency level (Kermad, 2018;Saito et al, 2018) and that L2 use would mediate the effect of motivation on L2 gains because (a) learners should have a more vivid image of their desired future selves (i.e., a strong ideal L2 self/own) being surrounded by native speakers during immersion (Q. Li, 2014), (b) a stronger ideal L2 self/own could motivate them to have more L2 interaction, and (c) L2 comprehensibility learning tends to benefit from L2 use especially at the initial stage of immersion (Derwing & Munro, 2013;Saito, 2015).…”

Application of Virtual Scenario Teaching in Spoken English Teaching

“…Now in China, VST has become an important teaching method and has achieved very good results in English teaching [1]. However, due to the influence of many factors, spoken English teaching hasn't been valued by people, and it is always on the fringe of English class [2,3].…”

The Washback Impacts of Task-based Assessment on Iranian EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Learning and Grammatical Ability

“…As Bachman (1995) and Levi and Inbar-Lourie (2020) stated, assessment and testing are important parts of every teaching and learning process. Two fundamental roles of assessment in education are that firstly, it is used for evaluation and proper decisions, and secondly it would help teachers as a teaching device (Kermad & Kang, 2018). The assessment incorporates teacher observation, classroom discussion, and it helps to analyze student's work, including homework and tests.…”