In this course, you can learn about how L2 learners’ speaking performances can be influenced by specific features of the context, for instance the task they need to carry out, or certain individual characteristics of the participants themselves. It is important to bear in mind all this in order to design appropriate speaking assessment tasks to help learners perform to the best of their abilities. Since learners’ performance levels are typically assessed in relation to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), you can also familiarize yourself with some scale descriptors for speaking, which will also be illustrated with sample test performances to highlight the requirements of the given levels. Issues in speaking task design will be explored through a variety of awareness raising activities that will enable you to design your own assessment tasks in the future. Finally, you can gain insights into how speaking performances can be evaluated based on an analytic rating scale as well as in informal ways through oral feedback given by the teacher and the learners themselves.

You can access the Course here.