Developing a Rating Scale for Assessing Young Language Learners’ Speaking Performance

With a growing interest in the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach in Korea, the national English language curriculum has emphasized the improvement of students’ productive skills. Since CLT was first included in the curriculum, the main focus has been on how to teach speaking and writing communicatively. After about 15 years of practice, however, little has yet been known about how to evaluate speaking and writing ability. Most of all, teachers often have difficulty evaluating students’ performance. To this end, the present study explored the usefulness of an empirically derived, binary-choice, boundary-definition (EBB) scale in the assessment of elementary students’ speaking performance. In the first phase of the study, an EBB scale was developed by three elementary English teachers, based on sample performances of an oral version of a discourse completion task. In the following phase, the teachers scored 23 students’ responses using the scale. The results of the students’ test scores indicate that the EBB scale functions well in distinguishing students’ performance levels with concrete response features. Comparisons of the three raters’ scoring patterns also imply the reliability of their ratings.