The main point of this forum entry is to weigh up the benefits / disadvantages of an oral presentation format of an exam compared with other forms of oral exams of spoken English.
Here's the background to my situation:
Recently, a debate has arisen between the language section of the university English department where I work, and some lecturers from the literature/linguistics sections, as well as the faculty administration. We (langauge teachers) are asked to test students' oral skills in English at the end of their first semester of an English Studies degree, in an official exam that will count towards their final grades. Our assessment, as it stands, consists of a 10-minute oral presentation (topic of student's choice, with some relation to the English-speaking world), followed by a 5-minute Q&A or discussion on that topic and possibly some general topics, loosely related to the student's chosen topic. The examiners are two native-speaker language teachers of English, usually one American and one British, and noone else is present during the examination (i.e. it's not a presentation within a class). We chose this format as the students have a course on 'Giving academic presentations' in their language classes of the first semester, and so we thought (think) it would be most appropriate to test them in a format that they have been trained in. However, we have had a couple of problems with students plagiarising, in that they learn by heart or read from notes information they have found in published sources (most often internet). We asked the department and faculty for support in preventing/tackling the plagiarism issues and now some lecturers in the department and higher up would like us to exchange the presentation for a classic German-university-style Q&A on a choice topics that either we or the students choose in advance, even going so far in their comments as to doubt the value of oral presentations in assessing students' communicative compentence in English.
I'd like to gather some other thoughts on how to approach this whole assessment situation:
- Do you think presentations (still) have a place in assessing spoken English?
- How do you prevent/tackle plagiarism in oral assessments.
- What kinds of topics could we choose if we followed the suggestion to scrap the presentation (bearing in mind that we have not yet taught the students any 'content', focusing in the first semester only on skills)
- Any other comments or suggestions that are relevant and interesting?
Thanks in advance for your contributions to this discussion!
Clare
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“Do you think presentations (still) have a place in assessing spoken English?”
YES! Especially since the students have had a 'Giving academic presentations' course and as they are most likely to give presentations in their future career.
I must admit that I am glad and relived that more and more universities have recognized the need to nurture presentation skills of their students, be it more academic in nature, or general conference presentations, commercial product presentations, or project /design presentations to one’s project team or manager. Classic ESOL speaking exam parts were not designed for these; yet such presentation skills are most valuable, both in academic and business world.
Nonetheless, presentation skills are not equal to oral skills and some of your opponent may argue against presentations in exams, but having presentations enables a more interdisciplinary approach, which is still encouraged at most universities.
Nonetheless, if your primary goal is to assess their oral skills, just maybe perhaps perchance decrease the number of minutes devoted to the presentation itself and either increase the time for Q&A, or perhaps have something like:
- 5-7 minutes for the student’s presentation, followed by
- 3-5 minutes related to the presentation (either just to have the student understand the examiners’ Q (most probably there wouldn’t be time for more than 3 Qs max) and repeat what has already been presented or to rephrase or summarize the facts, provide illustrative examples, or dig deeper and provide synthesis or evaluation),
- 5 minutes of interaction between the students and the examiners, providing personal reflections on the presentation and/or dwelling on more general topics.
(Alternatively, you could have 2 students, where the student presenting the audience would have to pose a question to the presenter, which would also enable assessing interaction and listening comprehension. Additionally, this could also increase the transparency of the process.
“- How do you prevent/tackle plagiarism in oral assessments.”
If the point of assessment is presentation and/or skills, plagiarism – though to be discouraged – is of minor importance. (For fun or just the …….. of it, you could try assigning the same presentation to each and every one ;-) )
Prevention? (Well, it’s a process.) Naturally, by clearly communicating to students that plagiarism is a ground for annulling the exam (with some universities, the punishment is more severe). Pound it into their heads to always acknowledge the sources – be it for just a photo. And I guess, as part of the monitoring, by asking the students to provide you the presentation document and/or a recording of their presentation prior to the exam – so that you could provide them with a few extra tips AND check the (anti)plagiarism databases. Or you could run the database after the exam.
In any case, it would be beneficial to establish the assessment goal (as well as the teaching/learning objectives) for the first semester English also by seeing the big piucture -taking into consideration the entire framework of the langugae studies provided by the English department (preferably also finding links with other courses).
Apologies for my lengthy post.
And enjoy the holidays/weekend.
Hi,
I am really pleased to see angol's response. I agree with what she has suggested; it is of crucial importance now to teach the presentation skills. Also, I do have the same understanding that since we have the internet resources available so why stop students from using those resources.; but YES we need to guide them to acknowledge sources. One we have established those norms nobody is going to plagarise anything.
In short, if we update and adapt our teaching according to the demands of time we will be able to help our students learn better.
Regards,
Haseen Fatima
Hi Clare,
I feel presentations have an important place in assessing spoken English. In real life, dialogue is more common than monologue but there are times when monologue is important - especially seeing as many learners need English for business or academic reasons, both of which may require presentations. That said, I think the balance of time on presentations versus interactive communication should favour the latter.
I was going to suggest roughly the same ideas Angol already covered:
Regarding plagiarism, rather than prevent it, you could just aim to make it unimportant. I'd suggest that students be encouraged to come to the presentation with only a mind-map or flow-chart as notes. The notes are checked, by the assessors before the presentation starts, to ensure that they follow the correct style and don't have any information that can just be read aloud.
The students may be able to memorise some of their presentation, but a lot of the time they will simply have to recall the meaning using the mind-map/flow-chart as prompts, then convey it in their own words.
Not only does this lessen the value of plagiarism, but it also helps them to further develop a useful presentation skill.
Let us know if you get any useful responses on the IATEFL site. I haven't registered yet, so I saw your post there, but wasn't able to reply.
Heath
(Separately - having problems posting on this - I'll try again, may appear several times!)
I think it is valuable to assess presentations but agree with Angol to shortening the presentation and allowing for a Q&A session. That way you'd maximise the chances of gauging their fluency. You could also try giving some presentation skills to the students, you might do this anyway, where they learn to use prompt cards for instance, and don't become so reliant on learning their presentation verbatim. To reduce the possibility of plagiarism, you could possibly give them less time to prepare their presentation. Not sure how long they have on their topic but that might help. Do the students know what is expected of them, or what they're being assessed on, if they haven't had any language training to up to that point? If you selected a topic for their presentation, whatever that is, could you brainstorm some language that might be appropriate for use.
I would like to say that there are two aspects in presentation. One is that if presentation is only meant to particular topic like in companies then it will be helpful in only interpreting the skill underlying. On the other hand, if presentation is focused on correct use of english like in many english teaching institutes then it will be helpful in improving.
Further more, use of plagiarism may be helpful in earlier stages of presentation. Person who is giving presentation is little bit nervous in the beginning. And imitating other ideas along with his own improves his own creation.So in the starting stages, if person plagirises and tries to modify other ideas into his own than one can ignore its use.
Moreover, presentation will only be considered helpful if there is Q&A round to it. It will boosts the presentor confidence and motivates him to use his own ideas.
I agree with Anglo's perspective that presentation timings should be less and Q&A round should be given more importance.
To begin with, structured oral presentation helps in building the confidence level of the students. gradually they can be encouraged to make it without any kind of help or memorizing.
To test spoken skill I tried giving the students newspaper clippings on the spot, related to different topics and asked him to choose any one of them. Gave 10 minutes to think about it The actual test was conducted in another room so that one doesn't get to know what was discussed. Then have a free flowing discussion on the topic he has chosen. You could evaluate on various aspects of oral skill in this process of discussion. To cut short a bit of time -- if you have to evaluate 30 students-- may be you could try putting two students together in a single discussion.
Thanks everybody for your detailed responses!
I also agree that the Q&A is very important, and perhaps that part should be extended. However, I recently had to give a presentation of only 5 minutes and I found it extremely difficult to present my ideas within the time, in a logical flow (with intro, conc, etc) without being far too superficial. At degree level, and with English at B2 level, do you think only 5 minutes presentation really suffices? For me, it just added to the stress. (This is not an angry reaction, just a further question about how the suggestions would work in practice).
Regarding two students / us giving them the topics:
Most of my colleagues are not really in favour of having two students examined together as weaker or shy students may prevent stronger ones from conducting a good debate and really showing off their level. There are over 300 students in total who we need to examine, and we really don't know them well enough to pair them according to level, etc.
We also considered us giving them topics or newspaper articles to prepare 8either at home, or for a short time immediately before the exam), but since they have had no cultural studies classes yet, many may not know much or have much to say about the topics - it also then slightly changes the focus of the exam onto content, and actually it is only supposed to test the level of their spoken English. That's why we allow them to choose their own topics; they are allowed to choose something they are interested in and know about. We therefore assume that they know certain vocabulary items, etc, related to the topic as they presumably are exposed to English sources regarding their topic. I don't think this is an unreasonable expectation, since they are studying English Studies at university and therefore must find certain aspects of the subject interesting enough to read/watch/etc outside of the classroom.
In the classes they have in their first semester (at the end of which the exam takes place) are based on oral language/skills and giving presentations in English. There, they learn how to plan, sturcture and give a successful presentation, and we believe that they are given a good basic plan to work with when presenting any topic. The only 'rule' governing the topics handled in class and that they can choose for the presentations (practice ones in class and the one for the exam) is that they must have some connection to the English-speaking world.
I just wanted to add a bit more information and my initial reactions to the posts so far. I'm really pleased that this has turned into such a lively debate! I'm looking forward to even more discussion!
Thanks!
CMF