81012495

open access

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Instruction and Evaluation of English-speaking Skills : A Case Study of a Japanese High School

Learner Corpus Studies in Asia and the World

5

145-164

神戸大学国際コミュニケーションセンター

2020-12-21

2020-12-21

The study aims to elucidate the significance of and challenges regarding the collection and evaluation of recorded speech data from English learners at schools in Japan. The study examines recorded responses from approximately 60 Japanese high school students who underwent English-speaking training for six months to determine the effectiveness of instruction. Through an in-depth examination of the subjective and objective evaluation data for the recorded responses, the study clarifies the following points. (1) The reliability of the English-speaking evaluation tends to be questionable with a significant criticism that cautions against introducing such an evaluation especially in high-stake examinations. However, achievement evaluation is carried out in conjunction with instruction given at schools. Thus, subjective evaluation by teachers can accurately capture the actual state of learners’ speech based on the responses. (2) In the context of achievement evaluation, although the reliability of the subjective evaluation of teachers involved in the implementation of instruction planning tends to be relatively high, a certain level of evaluator training is required if the number of evaluators is decreased to reduce the workload. Additionally, although objective evaluation based on the transcription of the students’ recorded responses provides a significant amount of information, the workload is enormous. Therefore, given the proficiency level (i.e., low to intermediate) of the participants, using the number of words that are highly correlated with the number of idea units, which clearly indicates the degree of adequateness in speech content.

objective assessment

紀要論文