Problematic Issues
in Teaching and Testing Oral Language Proficiency: Some Practical Suggestions
M. Marcellino
Acquiring the ability to speak
fluently is the single most paramount aspect of learning a foreign language.
This ability presupposes not only the knowledge of using fluent ‘connected
speech’, expressive devices, lexis and grammar, and language functions, but
also the ability to process information and language ‘on the spot’. Thus,
speakers need to structure their discourse, use certain phrases to highlight
the content structure of their discourse, employ any communicative strategy to
show the structure of their thoughts, or reformulate what was said in order to
communicate their message clearly. Also, they need to process language and put
it in into coherent order so that it comes out in the form of comprehensible
input and intended meanings. As teaching oral production skills requires
teachers to prepare their students to possess the ability to develop habits of
rapid language processing, this leads to both procedural and practical problems
in its implementation in class. Further complex and complicated challenges are
still to come when teachers have to construct a valid and reliable test of oral
proficiency. Accordingly, this study will critically look into the multi-faceted
problems that teachers encounter both in the teaching and testing of oral
language proficiency and make some suggestions as to how to solve the problems.
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Marcellino, M. (2003, November). Problematic issues in
teaching and testing oral language proficiency: Some practical suggestions.
Paper presented at the 38th RELC International Seminar,
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