ESL students’ oral performance in English language school-based assessment: results of an empirical study

Abstract

Background: The English language school-based assessment (SBA) component of the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) Examination is innovative in that the assessment tasks involve assessing English oral language skills in a highstakes context but they are designed and implemented in the ESL classroom by school teachers in light of a regular reading and viewing program or the elective modules integrated into the school curriculum. While this certainly is a positive move towards better congruence between the teaching, learning, and assessment activities, there has been concern whether the teachers are capable of applying the assessment criteria and standards consistently in spite of going through a variety of standardization meetings and sharing discussions initiated and mandated by the Hong Kong Examination and Assessment Authority (HKEAA). In other words, there has been concern about the extent to which results provided from teachers in different schools are comparable. Also, how may task difficulty be reflected in students' assessment results across the two SBA task types? It was to provide some research evidence on matters relating to these issues associated with teacher assessment results that the study described here was carried out.

A Systematic Overview of Issues for Developing EFL Learners’ Oral English Communication Skills

“…At the same time, it also revealed that oral features, e.g., length of turns, choice of words, hesitation markers, and topic coherence, had the potential to affect the scores of the candidate (Liu & Jia, 2017). Moreover, Gan, Oon, and Davison (2017) reported that instituition-based assessment made a significant change in developing learners' oral skills since learners were familiar with it.…”

Classroom Assessment Practices of EFL Lecturers with Current Curriculum Implementation: Where Policy Meets Practice

“…Based on the assessment of the knowledge domain, this study showed that the test (written and oral tests) was commonly employed by EFL lecturers. According to previous studies, teachers commonly used testing techniques in assessing the knowledge domain (Alfiriani, 2016;Ermawati & Hidayat, 2017;Gan & Davison, 2017;Kurniati & Khaliq, 2019). For example, Alfiriani (2016) found that teachers generally choose written tests to assess students' knowledge.…”

School-based Assessment and Assessment for Learning : An Exploratory Study of Hong Kong English Teachers’ Practices

“…Up until now, research on the area of English SBA in Hong Kong is still minimal. Earlier studies mainly focused on the SBA implemented in the Hong Kong Certificate Examination (HKCEE) under the old education system (e.g., Cheng, Andrews, & Yu, 2011;Davison, 2007;Qian, 2014); while studies related to the latest examination system mainly focused on students' perceptions and performance (e.g., Gan, Oon, & Davison, 2017;Tong & Adamson, 2015). In light of this gap, this exploratory study investigated the relationship between SBA in the English language and AfL practices based on the experience of teachers.…”