Task-Based Speaking Assessment in an EFL Academic Context: A Case of Summative and Formative Assessment

Consistent with the paradigm shift in language assessment from psychometrics to educational assessment, from an examination culture to an assessment culture, the present study was an attempt to compare and contrast the two forms of speaking assessment: Summative and formative and to see how much consistency existed between the two.  To this end, ۴۶ undergraduate Iranian EFL students participated in the study. To achieve the formative assessment, some pedagogic speaking tasks were designed and EFL learners’ speaking abilities were assessed over a three-month period based on pre-determined criteria. As for the summative assessment, a semi-structured interview was conducted at the end of the course, and learners’ performances were assessed by two different raters based on the same criteria. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics, MANOVA, and Pearson correlation were utilized. The results indicated a significant agreement between formative assessment of the first-rater and summative assessment of the second-rater. The findings revealed that from both formative and summative perspectives, pronunciation posed the least challenge whereas coherence and range presented the greatest difficulty to EFL language learners. The study implies that the formative and summative assessment procedures will have to be integrated within classroom settings with more emphasis on the former.  

Keywords:

Summative assessment , coherence , Formative Assessment , Pronunciation , Range