• Design classroom activities that involve guidance and practice in both transactional and interactional speaking. In addition, Harmer (2006), states that children and adults acquire language because of having language exposure, motivation to learn language, and opportunities to learn language. Then he continues that “ESA (Engage, Study, and Activate) are the basic building blocks for successful language teaching and learning suits in CLT.” (Harmer, 2007, p.32). 2.3.4. Basic Types of Speaking In order to assess speaking we should be familiar with different types of speaking. Brown (2010), describes five basic types of speaking:
• Imitative: This category includes the ability to practice an intonation and focusing on some…show more content… Students usually do the task in pairs (group work), for example, reading aloud.
• Responsive: Responsive performance includes interaction and test comprehension. These activities are practiced at limited level of very short conversation, standard greeting and small talk, simple request and comments.
• Interactive: It is only different from responsive type in case of the length and complexity of the interaction which can be broken into (a) transactional language which has the purpose of exchanging specific information and (b)interpersonal exchanges, which have the purpose of maintaining social relationships.
• Extensive: Extensive oral production tasks include speeches, oral presentations, and storytelling. Language style is frequently more deliberative and planned. 2.3.5. Speaking Assessment Testing speaking is one of most important aspects of language assessment. Speaking can be either tested directly or indirectly. In direct assessment, through using some elicitation techniques such as asking examinees to describe a picture, retell a story, emplaning object and so forth examiners try to evaluate examinees ability (Farhady, Jafarpour, & Birjandi, 1994). The most basic type of indirect testing is the type that includes reading aloud based on this exercise students are given a short period of time to look at the text and then are asked to read it…show more content… The use of these semi-realistic activities is only appropriate when subjects have limited proficiency (Farhady et al, 1994). In direct testing real-life situations are stimulated. The best example of direct testing is an interview in which at least two interviewers and one interviewee are involved. Interviews usually start with simple questions and continue with more difficult ones. The evaluation may be done holistically or discretely based upon predetermined evaluation criteria and considering the purpose of the interview. Holistic evaluation focuses on interviewees’ overall impression and discrete evaluation relates to interviewees’ performance on scales that indicates their accent, structure, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. These separate ratings are eventually added up to form a final score (Farhady et al, 1994). As Heaton (1988), stated, a comprehensive examination of oral production includes an oral interview, a short problem solving activity, and a group discussion activity or role-play. 2.3.6. Assessing Young Learners’