The Effect of Instrument Specificity on StudentsAssessment of English Oral Performance
This study aimed to investigate the effect of instrument specificity on students assessments of English oral performances. Two cohorts of English majors in a national university participated in this study. They were asked to assess their own and peers English oral performances with two instruments in different sequences. One instrument (categorybased) was based on 4 criteria, and the other (itembased), 20 discrete items. Data included student and teacher scorings, written feedback on the assessment sheets as well as students perceptions of the two assessments on a 5-point scale questionnaire. Results showed that student and teacher scorings were positively correlated with two different instruments. The item-based instrument generated lower mean scores and scores spread out over a wider range, while the category-based instrument elicited more feedback comments. Significant difference was found between the ratio of students marking criteria and the approved ratio in both assessment instruments. A significant majority of students preferred using the item-based instrument because of its specificity, but some noted that taking heed of particular details divided their attention between performance observation and evaluation. This study demonstrated that both category-based and item-based instruments, if designed appropriately, are valid and reliable tools for student assessment, but the category-based helped students gave more feedback.
Yuh-Mei Chen
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature,National Chung Cheng University
国际会议
2009 International Conference on Applied Linguistics & Language Teaching(2009应用语言学暨语言教学国际研讨会)
台湾
英文
55-65
2009-04-01（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）