Tag Archives: Assessment of Speaking and Listening
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has laid down the guidelines for awarding grades in English for classes IX and X for the academic year 2013-14.
As per the notification by the board, a small component of Assessment of Speaking and Listening (ASL) will be present in the Summative Assessment (SA) for class IX and will carry 20 marks, while, the Summative Assessment for Class X will include ASL component carrying 10 marks.
The distribution of marks in the written assessments and the ASL in SA I and SA II for classes IX and X will be 70 +20 (90) and 80 +10 (90) respectively. However, it is the responsibility of the school to provide the marks of the candidates obtained in the ASL assessment in English for SA I and SA II to the board during the collection of assessment data.
The students will usually be asked to speak on different topics like green revolution, pollution and basic mannerism. They might also be questioned on certain allotted topics to enrich their confidence, communication skills resulting in long term improvement.
The CBSE Board is providing the students of classes 9, 10 and 11 with special abilities i.e. with hearing or speech impairment the option of sitting for the Assessment of Speaking and Listening (ASL) in English. The board has come across various issues in relation to the assessment of oral skills of the students, especially those who are partially or wholly impaired.
As told by the CBSE regional head, RJ Khanderao, Panchkula to HT, it becomes difficult for such students while being accessed in the speaking and listening skills in the English Language. The Board however, as per the 2014-15 curriculum guidelines has made it mandatory for the students to sit for both the formative and summative assessments. This in turn will make the students sit for two assignments each of 20 marks on the basis of the long reading text/novel prescribed for the respective class of the student.
The schools are ordered to ask these students sit in the two assignments of 20 marks each. If the student is either speech and hearing impaired or any one of them, then in the lieu of speaking and listening assessment in the first term, he will have to write a story showing his imagination and creativity. The word limit for the story would be around 750-800 words for class 9, 800-950 words for class 10 and 900-1000 words for class 11 respectively.
In the second term of the speaking and listening assessment, the students would be asked to select one novel from the two prescribed for classes 9, 10 and 11 and write a review for the same by the end of the term. A note must be made that this assignment is in addition to answering questions on the novel in the end-of-term examination.
The CBSE Board has declared to outsource the preparation of material for Assessment of Speaking and Listening (ASL) skills test conducted for classes IX and XI. ASL, introduced in the year 2012, is mainly an oral examination testing the language skills of the students but through a comprehensive approach. The ASL accounts for around 10% marks in English. The main reason to outsource the preparation is to get professionally prepared test material which in turn will offer educative options to the students.
CBSE will also be providing certificates to the students who are internationally recognized. The board believes that good communication skills in students will help raising their self-esteem and desires that by the time the student leaves the portal he/she is filled in with proficiency. The board emphasises on the fact that the language skills are essentially important for both practical and theory.
The speaking test will be of 12 minutes and with two students at a time. The test will be divided into three sections where the first section will be of a general introduction with questions like name, place of residence, etc of the students.
The second section is called as mini presentation, where the students will have the option to pick from a cue card or role card. Each card will contain a topic and the student will be allocated to pen down his thoughts on a paper. Once this is done, each student will be given 2 minutes to present their thoughts.
The third section will be based on pair interaction. Both the students will be given visual or verbal incentive and will be asked to reply for the same with each other for 3 minutes. However, in case a student does not speak owing to any factor, he can be given an extra minute by the interlocutor.
Certain sub-skills in speaking test which the students will be evaluated on through the summative and formulated assessments are:
• Speaking intelligibly through appropriate use of words, sentences and intonation patterns
• Narrating events and incidents, either real or imaginary in a logical sequence
• Presenting oral reports/summaries thereby making clear and confident announcements
• Expressing and arguing one’s point of view effectively and clearly
• Actively participating in group discussions and showing the ability to agree or disagree
• Summarising presenting own ideas
• Participating in unprompted spoken discourse in social situations.
The listening skill test focuses on testing the students’ ability to listen to basic instructional, interpersonal and academic purposes. Students will be made to hear a set of recordings/oral reading that will be played twice and the student is not allowed to speak or interrupt the session at any time. CBSE says this works as an essential step in testing the listening skills of the students as will be asked to answer some questions after listening. The listening test will comprise 4 sections which are all compulsory.
Certain sub-skills in listening test which the students will be evaluated on through the summative and formulated assessments are:
• Listening for specific information
• Listening for general understanding
• Predictive listening
• Inferential listening
• Listening for pleasure
• Intensive listening
• Evaluative listening