Teacher Discussion Forums

A free oral assessing test is available on my website to determine conversation skills of the student.
www.geocities.com/don_labonte2001
Thanks
Don

Hello!

I do not wish to sound arrogant.
I looked at your site and found quite a few mistakes.

If you wish I would point tham out via PM

If not I am sorry in case I insulted you ( unintentionally)

Best wishes

Siân

Hi, I took a look at the conversation test. I still don't understand why you consider answering a question with a short answer (Is it worth seeing? Yes it is) to be the sign of weakness. I have worked very hard to get my students to do just that! If you answer with a complete sentence, you do not sound very "conversational." (Do you want to go to the store? Yes, I want to go to the store.) Native speakers don't use complete sentences because it is a waste of time. Non-native speakers, in my opinion, should be taught to speak the way the native speakers do. Students still have difficulty (Do you want to go now? Yes, I am) and I think just checking for the correct form on the test without the complete sentence would be helpful. Now, if you are giving an oral grammar test instead of a conversation test, then I could understand it better.

In the second part, if you are testing conversation, maybe instead of making a question from a sentence, the student could make a question for what happens next. (Ex: I went to the store yesterday [ask a question] What store did you go to? What did you buy? Who did you go with? etc. [conversational American English here])

I liked the third part better

I also looked at the point Lorikeet mentioned.
To be honest I just looked at the numerous errors describing your book the first time I was on your site.

I am a Native speaker:

Are you tired? Yes, I am!

The short answers are absolutely correct and it is impolite in English just to answer with a curt yes or no.

Do you understand? - Yes, I do!

Are you a perfectionist? - Yes, I am!

Would you consider revising your site? - Yes, I would! ( I hope )

Best wishes
Siân

I think you should have linked directly to the assessment tool. Sending us to a page dominated by commercial stuff (those two books) and making us scroll past the ads to get to the link to where we thought we were going in the first place seems like bad netiquette to me. You might also consider getting rid of the pop under ads.

Also, I don't understand why you don't want short answers.

The reason for giving an oral assessment test is to see if the student can identify and reply correctly to a wide variety of commonly used conversation patterns.
Granted native speakers might reply with short answers, but the test is directed to students learning conversation skills, not native speakers. Are these students capable of identifying and replying with the same pattern using the same tense?
My experience is that most students beginning to learn conversation skills will reply to questions with short answers out of a weakness rather than a strength. Conversation skills can be reinforced much better by having the students reply with full sentences.
The purpose of the test is to help the teacher identify weaknesses that the student might have so that the teacher can help to correct them.

Hi Don!

Sorry but your page is full of errors.


Siân

Sorry Don, but I don't think your test is much use for assessing oral English.

To assess students' oral skills (with the exclusion of very, very low level beginners) you need to have open ended questions which allow the students creative use of the language, and for higher level students stretch them grammatically, allow them to use skills such as circumlocution (or paraphrasing), and possibly test their ability to control the conversation (eg. requests for focused repetition, or confirmation)

Questions which can be answered simply with a YES/NO need to be avoided, unless followed up by a question such as why? or when?

For elementary/pre-intermediate students practice material for tests such as KET or PET offer a much better model for testing oral skills.

Regards
Stephen