ESL Development 7: Grading a talk or oral activity

Marianne Raynaud

We will now deal with questions about how to grade oral work. Stimulating and unbiased oral skill testing can hugely motivate students.

We have already insisted that the essential aspect of our work is teaching "language" so that students can enjoy our proposed activities. Language skills should be practiced regularly and thoroughly. We cannot expect students to perform correctly without the "linguistic tools" they need. Language acquisition is the bottom line for students to become operational!

Grading a Talk—A Difficult Task

A colleague recently wrote me to ask how she should grade a talk. She wondered whether "content," "fluency," "accent," and "spontaneity when answering questions" were good criteria. This is what I answered.

Evaluating by Using a Grid

It is a very delicate task to grade talks fairly, as there is always an element of subjectivity. You can use a grid like the one I developed for 12-minute talks plus workshops. It is very detailed and perhaps too complicated to be user-friendly—but it can be shown to students to give them an idea of the evaluation criteria. Using it will give the students a good idea of what they did right and what needs improvement.

Talk Evaluation Grid

Grading by Using Questions

With my team of teachers, we elaborated on questions that we applied in our evaluation. I encourage the teacher to print them in their students’ booklets so that students can use this checklist when preparing:

• Did they speak without notes and with only keywords on the visuals? (Reading a paper was an obvious fail.)`

• Could we easily understand what the speakers were saying?

• Was their English correct? In other words, did they use the appropriate language (i.e., the right tenses, prepositions, adverbs, etc.)?

• Did the topic they chose interest most of the students?

• Did they alternate speaking throughout the talk?

• Did they look at the audience while speaking?

• Did they appear friendly and enthusiastic—even when their partner was speaking?

• Did they use the language presented in the instructions?

• Were all their handouts well presented and engaging?

• Had they asked their teacher to correct the handouts beforehand, and were these perfect when distributed in class?

• Did they answer questions without getting annoyed or acting impolitely?

• Did they animate the group well at the end during the "Workshop"?

• Did they choose stimulating activities for the "Workshop"?

• Did they get everyone to participate?

• Was there good teamwork among the speakers?

Very Detailed Instructions

The best way to ensure the success of a talk is to help the students before their performance. If you give advice, show by example, and correct student work BEFORE a talk, you can sit back and enjoy it! Be sure to give the high grades the students deserve for all their work!

The trick is to give very detailed instructions. We printed ours in the booklets, and the students knew they would get a good or excellent grade if they did all we expected. In the version of QualityTime-ESL: The Digital Resource Book , you will find files with explanations and advice that you can customize to suit your specific needs.

Unfortunately, QualityTime-ESL: The Digital Resource Book 2.0 is currently unavailable, but you will soon find more uploads here to help you.

Giving a Talk is Not an Easy Activity

Giving a talk can be a stimulating experience for learners—an experience they will never forget. Usually, students put a great deal of work into preparing, and the actual presentation can be harsh on their nerves. That’s why we must be cautious with the evaluation. My colleagues and I realized how difficult it was to give a good talk, so our grades were generally high—if our students had followed the instructions. It is better to grade written work severely and be more "generous" with oral work. You want to encourage the type of autonomous work involved in preparing a talk and build their confidence. Public speaking is one of our top fears, and it is even worse when you must perform in a foreign language you are learning. It is easy to criticize, but being creative and appealing to an audience can be challenging.

Grades Must Reflect Your Commentaries

One last point: be sure you give a grade equivalent to your comments. The French system is based on a perfect score of 20 and a passing score of 10:

Excellent: 18 or more (19, 20)

Very good: 16

Good: 14

Quite good: 12

Just passing: 10

Weak: 8

Very weak; 6

Insufficient: 4 or less

If you say a talk is "excellent," you must give an equivalent grade; for an English course in France, that would be 18. If a talk (or any written work) is near perfect, it deserves a "20." French teachers will never give a grade of "20" for any work. Still, let us give high or very high grades when the students have met all the requirements and spoken beautiful English for over twenty minutes while explaining their topic and animating the class.

Unfortunately, QualityTime-ESL: The Digital Resource Book 2.0 is currently unavailable

We are, however, uploading documents from the book onto this site. They will be free of charge, but it will take us some time. Below is an explanation of the digital resource book:

In [ QualityTime-ESL: The Digital Resource Book 2.0 ], you will find pages of explanations and advice for the students. There are also examples of student outlines. Giving learners the opportunity ahead of time to see what others have done and what we expect of them is a good strategy. Students will often produce materials that are even better than those shown. Listening to students speaking near faultless English always gives us teachers enormous pleasure.

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