Development of a Practical Speaking Test with a Positive Impact on Learning Using a Story Retelling Technique

Abstract

This article presents a test development project for classroom speaking assessment. With the aim of enhancing and specifically easing the process of test preparation and administration and generating positive washback effects on learning, we developed a semi-direct speaking test called the Story Retelling Speaking Test (SRST). Although a story retelling technique has already been widely recognized as a teaching activity, its use for speaking assessment has not been fully studied. Thus, the article discusses the potentiality of using this technique for the SRST and reports its pilot administration to 43 examinees. As a result, the high practicality of the test was confirmed at the test construction and implementation stages. In addition, the questionnaire distributed to the examinees yielded generally positive results regarding their perception toward the test usefulness and the appropriateness of the test procedures and task difficulty. With regard to the appropriateness of the texts, the examinees perceived that the retelling of stories was influenced most by text content and then by text length; however, these two factors appear to be interrelated. On the basis of these responses, we have suggested some revisions of the SRST and future validation and reliability studies.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are very grateful to the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. This study was partially supported by Grand-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) (C) (19520477).

Notes

¹The length of the text for this experiment (100 and 150 words) was estimated based on the previous literature. According to Hirai (2001), the average reading speed of low and intermediate level learners who read an easy text with sufficient comprehension was 85.21 words per minute with the standard deviation of 28.37 (p. 64). In this respect, a text with 113.68 words (= [M − SD] × 2 min = [85.21 − 28.37] × 2) could reasonably be read by most of the examinees in 2 min. Thus, we prepared two 100- and two 150-word-length texts for this study in order to determine an appropriate length for the story retelling text.

²An effect size, Hedges' g (Hedges & Olkin, 1985), was calculated as g = (M₁ − M₂ ) / Pooled SD = (4.51 − 2.67) / 1.05 = 1.75, using the Effect Size Calculator (Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre, 2006). Hedges' g was interpreted based on │0.2│ as a small effect, │0.5│ as medium, and │0.8│ as large (Cohen, 1988, pp. 24–27).