BENEMERITA UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA DE PUEBLA

FACULTY OF LANGUAGES
MASTER IN ENGLISH TEACHING
JACOB MALDONADO MORALES

Testing Speaking and Listening

Teaching a foreign language require learners to recognize the existence of four main
language skills, to say: reading, writing, speaking and listening. It is believed that academic
literacy skills (reading and writing) are of major importance in higher education contexts in general
(Ferris and Tagg, 1996). However, not only do speaking and listening play an important role in
academic contexts, but also in daily life. In fact, studies have pointed out that the student’s rate of
use of speaking and listening is from 45% to 70% in a normal school day, and that people spend
30% to 65% of their time in communication encounters involving speaking and listening (Arter,
2011). This important fact must oblige teachers to pay more attention to work these skills into the
language classroom. More important, it is the fact related to testing them in order to aid learners
to communicate effectively when using a foreign language. Therefore, this paper is aimed at
presenting a general overview and personal reactions on testing speaking and listening. First, a
brief discussion about what makes testing speaking and listening difficult will be presented.
Second, the institutional restrictions of what needs to be tested in regards to these skills will be
analyzed in context. Finally, I will talk about the reasons of why I consider testing speaking and
listening important.

Recently, foreign language classrooms are adopting the tendency to develop competencies
in students. In particular, the communicative competence is what teachers are intended to
developed in language learners. Brown (2002) signs that due to this, speaking and listening cannot
always be isolated one from the other. What makes them close in teaching is that listening is
frequently seen as an implied component of speaking. But, there are different issues which drive
the process of testing them to a series of questions for both test administers and takers. Two main
inquiries are presented here. On the one hand, the language learner’s level is a determining factor
to select the type of test. Language learners at beginner’s level only recognize and imitate language
(Murphy 1991; Brown, 200; Richards, ) which would make the test-taker use a test where probably
the test-taker will have to recognize a word or a phrase and the reproduce that. Taking into
consideration this situation should question test-administers if that is part of the communicative
approach.

On the other hand, the second inquiry is related to the type of outcome expected in testing
both skills in advanced levels. This is given the premise that high level learners are provided more
controlled tests to have more reliable and valid results when there is a necessity to test them in a
more real-like manner (Murphy, 1991). Brown (2002) and Luoma (2009) suggest that testing
speaking must necessarily integrate other skills in order to have more accurate responses and that
elicitation prompts must define clearly what the aims are. But all these only restricts the learner to
express naturally. If a person is asked a question in a real conversation, he is free to choose between
a thousand of possible answers, and a leaner should have that possibility too. Even though, the
aims of the test are clear, the learner’s comprehension and responses would be artificial and
temporary, whereas the objective of the communicative approach is to create enable students to
interact in real contexts.

Speaking and listening are quite similar in the sense of what is tested in writing and reading.
That is, what is tested in speaking tests is the learner’s performance and what is tested in listening
tests is the inferences or reactions to a stimulus. Nonetheless, as mentioned above, the objectives
of what is going to be tested need to be in accordance to the learner’s level. Brown (2002) proposes
a set of different micro and macro skills that a learner must achieved in order to be considered
competent in the corresponding skill. The institution where I currently work has a syllabus where
macro-skills are taken into consideration in a summative evaluation, and where a discrete-point-
testing approach takes place. This, off the record, is leading to a decontextualization of the testing
proved by misunderstandings on tests objectives by students, and dissatisfaction with the results
by the teachers. These situations only emphasize the demanding necessity to evaluate these skills
considering the students’ needs and reasons to learn the language.
 Finally, I want to express my reasons of why I consider testing speaking and listening
challenging in the language classroom. From a pragmatic point of view, speaking and listening are
the two most used skills in real communicative encounters, and so they require language learners
to have knowledge not only on linguistic components but also on the functions, social norms and
conventions that govern the language. Thus, we may say that testing speaking and listening inside
the classroom separates the elements mentioned above, and the test’ results might be superficial.
This in the sense that, the test is controlling the learner’s performance and/or inference prohibiting
him to express a complete outcome. A complete outcome could include different literary devices
like sarcasm, or feelings like humor. Hence, it is essential that three subjects take part in the design
of speaking and listening tests, for the case: test-administers, test-takers and institutional
authorities.

References

Arter, J. A. (2011). Assessing communication competence in speaking and listening: a

consumer’s guide in Educational Research and Improvement. Washingtong, DC.

Brown, H. D. (2002). Language assessment. Principles and classroom practices. New Jersey:
Pearson ESL. Pp.182-250

Ferrys, D & Tagg, T. (1996). Academic listening/speaking tasks for ESL students: problems,
suggestions, and implications in TESOL Quarterly. 30(2). Pp. 297-320.

Luoma, S. (2009). Assessing speaking. Cambridge: Cambridge. University Press.