VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ------------------------ NGUYỄN THỊ OANH A STUDY ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF A MARKING SCHEME FOR END-OF-SEMESTER ENGLISH ORAL TESTS FOR 10th GRADE STUDENTS AT CAM GIANG HIGH SCHOOL IN HAI DUONG. Nghiên cứu xây dựng bảng đánh giá cho bài kiểm tra nói cuối kỳ môn Tiếng Anh cho học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Cẩm Giàng, Hải Dương.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Hanoi – 2017 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ------------------------ NGUYỄN THỊ OANH A STUDY ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF A MARKING SCHEME FOR END-OF-SEMESTER ENGLISH ORAL TESTS FOR 10TH GRADE STUDENTS AT CAM GIANG HIGH SCHOOL IN HAI DUONG. Nghiên cứu xây dựng bảng đánh giá cho bài kiểm tra nói cuối kỳ môn Tiếng Anh cho học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Cẩm Giàng, Hải Dương.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Quỳnh, Ph.D Hanoi - 2017 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I hereby state that I, Nguyen Thi Oanh, declare the thesis entitled “A study on the construction of a marking scheme for the end-of-semester English oral tests for 10th grade students at Cam Giang High School in Hai Duong” is my own research for the Degree of Master of Arts at the Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies- Vietnam National University, Hanoi. This thesis is the result of my own research and efforts and it has not been submitted for any degree at any other university or institution.
Hanoi, 2017 Nguyen Thi Oanh i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I owe my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Quynh for her encouragement, support, and guidance and for giving me constructive feedback throughout this thesis. She has guided me in searching for relevant theory to my thesis and has also assisted in collecting data. Consequently, I have learnt a lot about the assessment of English oral tests and construction of a marking scheme for oral tests.
Secondly, I would like to thank Ms. Bui Thien Sao, an expert of the Center for Language Testing and Assessment of the University of Languages and International Studies for her invaluable assistance during the research time. Thirdly, this thesis would not have been possible without the enthusiastic participation of six English teachers and 150 students at Cam Giang High School where the research was carried out. Lastly, I would like to thank my family whose love and support help me complete this thesis.
ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This thesis was conducted at Cam Giang High School. The participants consisted of 150 tenth-grade students and six English teachers at Cam Giang High School. Two experts in the Center for Language Testing and Assessment of the University of Languages and International Studies also participated in this study. The research aims at constructing a marking scheme for the end-of-semester English oral test of tenth-grade students.
Constructing a marking scheme for oral tests is a complex process. In this paper, a combination of three methods: intuitive, qualitative and quantitative are employed by the researcher. The research started with writing the draft of marking scheme. Then, the researcher obtained the judgments from experts and other teachers.
Next, the marking scheme was piloted with 150 tenth-grade students. Based on analyzing the students‟ scores of the oral tests, the researcher examined how well the marking scheme works. The findings revealed that the marking scheme can be used by the teachers effectively although there is still a need for further investigation to improve and validate the current marking scheme. The majority of the teachers took a positive attitude toward the marking scheme.
They believed in the efficacy of marking scheme in spite of some difficulties at the beginning and recommended the continuation of using the marking scheme for the next school year. Pedagogical implications and suggestions for future studies are drawn out based on the research findings. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS ơ DECLARATION. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. vi LIST OF TABLES. vii PART A: INTRODUCTION. Aims and objectives of the study.
Scope of the study. Significance of the study. Method of the study. Design of the study.5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW.1 Communicative competence in the CEFR .2 What is speaking?.1 What is a marking scheme? .2 Approach to construct a marking scheme .3 Steps to construct a marking scheme .4 Types of marking schemes .5 Structure of a marking scheme .6 Available speaking marking schemes .20 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY .1 Setting of the study.3 Description of the end-of- semester oral test .1 Rationale for using a multiple-method approach .5 Data collection instruments .1 The interview with the teachers.2 Sample oral test .3 Data collection procedure .6 Data analysis method .3 Data analysis procedure .31 CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .1 The finding from interviews with teachers and experts .2 The finding from scores of students‟ oral tests.
Summary of the study. Suggestions for further studies. XXVII v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CEFR: Common European Framework of Reference MOET: Ministry of Education and Training vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Pearson Correlation on Grammar. 38 Table 2: Pearson Correlation on vocabulary.
39 Table 3: Pearson Correlation on pronunciation. 39 Table 4: Pearson Correlation on fluency and coherence. 40 Table 5: Pearson Correlation on Sum. 40 vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION This part is offered to introduce the rationale of the study, the problem to be addressed in the study, the aims and objectives of the study, and the research questions to be answered.
It will also present the scope of the study, significance of the study, an overview of the employed methods and the design of the study. Rationale English is the most popular official language in the world and the primary language of global trade and commerce. It is an international means of interaction and communication in almost all countries. Proficiency in English is seen as a desirable goal for a lot of people in the world.
In many countries including Vietnam, English is taught as a compulsory subject at school and it is included in many exams. Of all four skills: reading, speaking, listening and writing; speaking is generally thought to be the most important due to the fact that a lot of learners have spent years studying English but they still cannot speak it fluently. In order to speak a foreign language, the learners must master the sound system of the language, use appropriate vocabulary and be able to put words together intelligibly with minimal hesitation. Moreover, they also need to understand what is being said to them and respond appropriately to maintain good–natured relation to achieve communication goal (Luoma, 2004).
Although students‟ speaking skills are often practiced and developed, it is not extensively assessed. Comparing to other skills, speaking is the most difficult language skill to assess the reliability. The student‟ speaking ability is usually judged during a face-to-face interaction, in real time between the teacher and the student. Besides, the factors such as the nature of the interaction, the kind of tasks, the questions asked, the topic raised and the opportunity given students to speak in English will all have an impact on the student‟s performance (Luoma, 2004).
On assessing speaking skills, the teacher has to take on the role as an interviewer and assessor at once, which puts him or her under a lot of pressure. This makes teachers hesitant to assess speaking and focus on assessing other skills instead (Rychtarik, 2014). However, “if you want to encourage oral ability, then test 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com oral ability” stated by Hughes (1989). Testing and assessment is a very important part of teaching process, which helps provide necessary information to the students and teachers about the progress made and the work be done.
If assessment is carried out accurately and fairly, it will have a positive impact on both teachers and learners. It helps learners define the aim of their learning and contributes to improve the quality of teaching. Perceiving the importance of testing oral proficiency, on September 9th, 2014, the Ministry of Education and Training signed the decision No 5333/BGDT-GDTrH to promulgate the applying of speaking test in the final term test (account from 20 % to 30 % of the total score) with the 10th grade students (seven –year program and ten-year program) and the 6th grade students (ten-year program). However, there is no standard marking scheme for the teachers to follow.
Each teacher evaluates students‟ speaking based on the marking scheme he/she individually creates and uses different criteria to assess. The marking schemes produced by teachers consist mostly or only numbers without descriptor or with very short descriptors such as very good, good and bad. Besides, other factors such as language level, gender, status of the teacher, the familiarity between the teacher and the students also affect the evaluation student‟s performance and the score that the students get. In order to overcome some of these problems, the researcher is fully aware of the need of constructing a marking scheme for students‟ speaking ability.
Therefore, a lot of attempts have been made to do a study titled “A study on the construction of a marking scheme for end-of-semester English oral tests for 10th grade students at Cam Giang High School in Hai Duong”. Hopefully, the study, to which I will devote all my efforts, will make a contribution to the English teaching and learning of the teachers and students at Cam Giang High School. Aims and objectives of the study The study is aimed at constructing a marking scheme for end-of-semester English oral tests for 10th grade students at Cam Giang High School in Hai Duong with hope to find an effective tool for assessing students‟ English speaking competence. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com In order to achieve this aim, the following objectives will be addressed in the study: + To find out the marking criteria and descriptors of the target marking scheme + To investigate the feasibility of the proposed marking scheme 3.
Research question The study aims at answering the following questions: 1. What are the marking criteria of the marking scheme for end-of-semester English oral test for 10th grade students at Cam Giang High School? 2. What are the descriptors for each criterion of the marking scheme for end-of -semester English oral test for 10th grade students at Cam Giang High School? 4. Scope of the study The scope of the research has been made quite clear from the title: “A study on the construction of a marking scheme for end-of-semester English oral tests for 10th grade students at Cam Giang High School in Hai Duong”.
Firstly, the study only focuses on oral testing, namely the construction of a marking scheme. To be more specific, it refers to the process to find out the marking criteria and descriptors for a marking scheme which helps teachers at Cam Giang High School assess students‟ oral test. This will help teachers at Cam Giang High School assess students‟ speaking more accurately and objectively. Secondly, the subject of the study is restricted to tenth-grade students at Cam Giang High School.
Significance of the study The study is of great significance to both the 10th grade students and the teachers at Cam Giang High School because it may have a great contribution to teaching and learning speaking.