چکیده:
Speaking assessment is still construed as a complicated, under-researched process from the vantage point of tasks and rater characteristics. The present study aimed at investigating if and how English Major and none English Major teachers differ in their perception of the construct of oral proficiency while assessing learners’ L2 oral proficiency. To this end, 38 male and female non-native EFL teachers were asked to rate 10 monologs on a 4-point rating scale and provide concurrent verbal reports. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient shows that the inter-rater reliability is relatively high, however; EM teaches are on the whole more reliable while doing the assessment task. On the other hand MANOVA reveals no significant difference in the teachers’ holistic rating of the speech samples (F=1.44, ρ≥0.05), and the adopted approach while doing the assessment task in EM versus NEM teachers’ modes of assessment.
خلاصه ماشینی:
English and Non English major Teachers’ Assessment of Oral Proficiency: a case of Iranian Maritime English Learners 1 Hooshang Khoshsima ID: 1040 Associate Professor of TEFL 2 Ali Asghar Roostami Abusaeidi Professor of English Literature Received: 12 May 2014 Accepted: 11 November 2014 Available online: January 2015 Abstract Speaking assessment is still construed as a complicated, under-researched process from the vantage point of tasks and rater characteristics.
Research on the effect of rater experience on ESL assessment shows that experienced and novice raters approach the rating task differently (Barkaoui, 2010; Cumming, 1990; Schoonen, Verger & Eiting, 1997; Weigle, 1998).
2. 2 Rater Training From research on rater facet in L2 performance-based assessment, it can be understood that there is the possibility of a substantial degree of rater variability in assessing L2 writing and speaking, that raters, consciously and unconsciously, may assess students L2 abilities with bias, and that raters interpret rating scales differently and draw on a range of non-criterion factors which they suppose to be important in assessing oral or written performance( Brown, 2000; Douglas, 1994; May, 2006; Orr, 2002; Wiggleworth, 1993).
This study examined teacher variability through both qualitative and quantitative approaches, focusing on inter-rater reliability indices by EM and NEM teachers, the differences between the scores assigned to 10 speaking tasks by them, their perception of oral proficiency construct, and approaches used by them while assessing L2 oral proficiency.
The second research issues under-question in this study was whether EM and NEM teachers differed in their holistic rating while doing the assessment task.