LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 13 : 3 March 2013
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Testing Oral Skills
An Innovative Approach to Promote Fluency

U. Thanesh, Ph.D. Research Scholar


Introduction

English language is a ‘complex skill’ comprising four basic skills (skill of listening, skill of speaking, skill of reading and skill of writing). The four language skills are also known as the different modes of communication. Listening and reading are the receptive skills which are involved in the decoding process of communication. The other two skills are the productive skills which perform the encoding process of communication. Language teachers strive to impart the requisite four skills by adopting innovative approaches depending on the state and minds of their learners.

Among the four skills, writing was given the major focus in teaching till 1990 but with the liberalization of Indian economy and with the entry of Multi-National Companies, Call Centres, Business Process Outsourcing companies, and so on, there is a shift in focus in favour of the spoken skills. Now-a-days there is a huge need for young employees fluent in spoken English. ‘Today only twenty five percent of India’s technical graduates and ten to fifteen percent of other graduates are employable at once,’ comments Kiran Karnik, President, NASSCOM in Business November, 2007. This means that seventy five percent of all those who graduate even from technical colleges and reputed institutions cannot be employed. This he attributes largely to the inability to communicate fluently in English.

Need For Testing Oral Skills

In the present scenario, career opportunities depend on the candidate’s communicative ability in English. Even those who are interested to shift their base to the developed countries need professional help to succeed in tests like TOEFL, IELTS and so on. Hence improving speaking skills is of paramount importance. Testing oral skills becomes an indispensable facet in this context.

According to Penny Ur (1996), of all the four key language skills, speaking is the most important in learning a second or a foreign language. She states that speaking includes all the other skills of knowing (learning) that language. Though speaking is a crucial part of Second Language Learning and Teaching (SLLT), it is the one that gets the least attention in classroom teaching. Teacher Speaking Time (TST) is generally more than the Student Speaking Time (SST) even in the Communicative Language Classes.

Most of the learners at the tertiary level secure a minimum pass through cramming and rote learning in the Semester Examinations. However, success in English examination does not ensure fluency and independent use of English. Learners from rural areas are diffident to speak in English to communicate their thoughts. They therefore do not perform well in job interviews and are easily branded as ‘unemployable’.

In the syllabus design, equal importance may have been given to all the four skills but when it comes to testing, it is restricted to written skills of the learners. Testing other skills is never given importance. The second productive skill, speaking, remains unassessed in most of the schools and colleges. This shows that there is a dearth of one to one correlation between what is taught and what is tested. There is also the absence of models for assessing speaking skills.


This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.


U. Thanesh, Ph.D., Research Scholar, AMET University
Department of English
AMET University
Kanathur
Chennai 603 112
Tamil Nadu
India
thaneshviveka@gmail.com

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