Testing Speaking Skills

Monologue, Dialogue, and Multilogue speaking tests: 
In their report Nakamura & Valens (2001) conducted a study on Japanese 
graduate students at Keio University. They used three different types of speaking tests: 
Monologue Speaking Test which is also called the presentation. In this type, students 
were asked to perform some tasks such as; show and tell where they talk about anything 
they choose. This is considered a chance to give students an opportunity to make a small 
presentation. The second type is Dialogue Speaking Test which is also known as the 
interview. It is an open-ended test where the students lead a discussion with the teacher, 
and students in that kind of test are required to use conversation skills that they have 
learned throughout the course. The third type is Multilogue Speaking Test that is also 
called the discussion and dabating. Here, the discussions are student-generated, and 
students are put into groups where as a group, they decide on a topic they feel would be 
of interest for the rest of the classroom. 
The evaluation criteria that was used in that study was as follows:
Evaluation Items: 
Presentations: 

---

6 

Content 

Language 

Eye contact 
Interviews: 

Comprehensibility 

Pronunciation 

Fluency 

Ability to explain an idea 
Discussing and dabating: 

Able to be part of the conversation to help it flow naturally 

Uses fillers/ additional questions to include others in conversation 

Transfers skills used in dialogues to group discussions 
The rating scale ranged between poor and good with the symbols from 1 to 4. 
The finding of their study reveals that among the three test types, the discussion tests was 
the most difficult followed by interview test and the presentation test.
In the context of Saudi Arabia, I believe that the types of tests discussed above 
could be successfully used in the assessment of students who are learning English for 
certain purposes such as; to study in a university abroad where the first language is 
English, or to be able to work in an environment where English is used largely as in 
banks or hospitals. The learners, who have these intentions, are in need to master these 
skills that were tested in the study mentioned above.