Abstract
Preparing language teachers for the realities of the classroom and supporting them in their ongoing professional development are both a challenge and a responsibility. In today’s testing-centered culture, it is crucial for teachers to be prepared for the current realities of language assessment as well as to continually refresh their knowledge and skills in a changing landscape.
This chapter explores the avenues through which language instructors develop and exhibit consistent skills in language assessment, specifically in assessing oral skills. Language proficiency is the extent to which an individual can communicate in a variety of situations, from routine to unexpected and formal to informal situations, and it is considered independent of any specific course of study or textbook. Any examination of an instructor’s skills and knowledge in developing, selecting, and using language assessment, then, must look beyond an instructor’s ability to administer and score standardized or centrally developed tests and must also explore an instructor’s ability to first determine what needs to be tested and then to develop or select, administer, score, and report the results of a test and subsequently use the results to improve classroom learning.
To investigate the current state of language instructor skill and ability in conducting assessments, specifically oral assessments, I begin by examining some early developments in oral proficiency assessment and how its principles and practices have been disseminated to language instructors. Next, I identify the major contributions to the development of instructor knowledge, skill, and ability in oral language assessment. Then, I discuss problems and difficulties inherent in not only developing instructor ability in assessment but also in maintaining it. Finally, I look at future directions and recommend improvements.
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Malone, M.E. (2017). Developing Instructor Proficiency in Oral Language Assessment. In: Van Deusen-Scholl, N., May, S. (eds) Second and Foreign Language Education. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02246-8_35
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