The data used in this study were secondary, kindergarten data from a longitudinal, five-year, federal experimental research project: English and Literacy Acquisition (ELLA) (R305P030032). The overall goal of ELLA was to examine the impacts of two different programs (Bilingual and Structured English Immersion) on the performance of Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs) in grades K to 3. My first research question was to determine to what extent a curriculumbased measure could be developed and validated to measure oral proficiency and vocabulary knowledge among ELLs who are participating in a controlled oral language development intervention. In addressing validity the scores of the S4 were compared with the scores of the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery - Revised (WLPB-R) and the IOWA Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) language and vocabulary subtests. The correlations were .283 to .445 and they were statistically significant (p<.01). The S4 underwent several iterations. With each iteration intrarater reliability improved (Kappa .817 to 1.00 and Cramer's V .330 to 1.00). Interrater reliability also improved (Kappa .431 to 1.00 and Cramer's V .616 to 1.00). The second research question was to determine to what extent teachers could use the Semantic and Syntactic Scoring System (S4) for the STELLA vocabulary fluency measure with minimal training to accurately assess students' vocabulary knowledge and oral proficiency. The teachers' Kappas ranged from .786 to 1.00 and Cramer's V from .822 to 1.00. On average they were able to score a given student measure in under 22 minutes. The third research question was to determine to what extent the Semantic and Syntactic Scoring System (S4) differentiates the level of knowledge regarding expressive vocabulary and oral proficiency of kindergarten students under two different program placements: enhanced Traditional Bilingual Education and the enhanced Structured English Immersion Program in comparison to the WLPB-R (language and vocabulary subtests). The S4 was able to distinguish between the control and experimental groups (unlike the other subtests); but was not able to distinguish program type (bilingual and structured English immersion).

Research shows that oral proficiency is a big part of communicative competence, and therefore highly relevant for EFL teachers in today’s society. This study aims to investigate what types of activities four EFL teachers in secondary school in Sweden prefer to use in order to practice and assess their students’ oral proficiency. This study further seeks to give an insight in what the four teachers focus on when assessing their students’ oral proficiency. The method used for this study was qualitative, semi- structured interviews with four EFL teachers of different secondary schools in south of Sweden. Furthermore, the data was later coded and analysed with inspiration of the Grounded theory methodology. The results of this study showed that the four teachers used different oral activities very often in their teaching, especially different kinds of discussions. The oral activities were often connected to other projects and assignments that included other skills such as reading and writing. Therefore, the oral proficiency activities were only said to be clearly planned and assessed once or twice per term. Moreover, the four teachers main focus when assessing the students’ oral proficiency seemed to be phenomena like fluency, clearness, adaption to purpose and strategy- usage.

Elicited imitation (EI) is a method of assessing oral proficiency in which the examinee listens to a prompt and attempts to repeat it back exactly as it was heard. Research over recent decades has successfully established correlation between EI testing and other oral proficiency tests, such as the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and the OPI by computer (OPIc). This paper details the history of oral proficiency assessment as well as that of EI. It then outlines the development process and validation of a Portuguese Elicited Imitation test. The processes of item selection and item validation are detailed followed by the criterion-related validation through a statistical correlation analysis of participants' results on an official American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) OPIc and their predicted OPIc scores which were based on their results of the Portuguese EI calibration test. Results of the statistical analysis revealed a strong correlation between the predicted scores of the EI test and the actual OPIc scores. In order to go beyond previously completed EI research, this paper addresses the issue of face validity which has been a challenge for the proliferation of EI testing. Analysis of a survey administered after participants' completion of the two tests (OPIc and EI) addresses the experiences and reactions of the participants to the two testing formats. Suggestions for future use of EI as well as future research will be presented.

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My aim is to find out about teachers’ perceptions of methods concerning learning and assessment of oral proficiencies. My questions are: What perceptions are there among teachers concerning assessment of oral proficiencies? How do teachers describe their ways of promoting and assessing oral proficiency? In order to answer my questions and obtain data I have accomplished two focus groups interviews with seven language teachers. The result shows that teachers are concerned with several factors regarding assessment of oral proficiency. They express that they try to include all students and that all students get the chance to express themselves, but one problem is that students often tend not to speak or practice their oral skills in the classroom. To prevent this issue teachers try to have discussions and oral tests in smaller groups, something which seems to be successful according to teachers. However, another problem with reference to promoting and assessing oral skills, is that time is not sufficient enough for the teachers to help all students to reach the oral goals. Because of that teachers tend always to have special occasions where they assess students whereas the continuous assessment takes place in the classroom at suitable opportunities.

This study, adopting a case study approach with a group of beginning-level FFL (French as a foreign language) learners, investigated the possibility that initial level foreign language learners may acquire oral skills through synchronous CMC, and the impacts of synchronous CMC learning on their motivation, as well as their social presence. The participants were 12 FFL beginners in a Taiwanese university. Divided into three groups, they were required to conduct three tasks in three different learning environments (video/audio, audio and f2f) during an academic semester (18 weeks). The semester constituted cycles of three-week practices on those tasks. The contents of the tasks were inter-connected. Before each oral task, all the participants had to conduct the same task in synchronous text chat. The data for this study was collected from the participants’ performance in three oral tests held at the initial, middle and final phases of the study, their online chat records, interview transcriptions, learning journal, questionnaires completed at the beginning and the end of the study, and the instructor’s observation journal. The results suggest that these three CMC learning modes bring only partial benefits in terms of learners’ oral proficiency development. It is factors generated by the three learning environments, rather than the environments themselves, that have the largest impact on the learners’ oral proficiency development, learning motivation and attitudes towards the target language. However, the differences in the environments are reflected in particular in the learners’ perception of social presence.

In this study, the oral participation in L2-learners' English classroom was analysed in order to investigate what specific factors motivate och discourage pupils in EFL classroom to particpate orally. Additionally, this paper identifies the motivational factors of pupils and discusses how they affect their oral participation during English lessons. Therefore, the main reserach question of this paper are: How do the participating pupils feel about particpating in oral tasks? What helps or hinders pupils to participate in oral tasks during English lesson? This qualitative study in which we preffered the usage of semi-structured interviews (see: Appendix Interview Guide) was conducted with eight particpants between the ages of 13 and 15 from three different schools. The data analysis showed that the pupils' engagement to participate is influenced by external factors such as motivation, environment and individual factors. According to this study, it can be concluded that motivation and participation are linked and work together to achieve the main goal of participation and involvement during English lessons. Furthermore, the study paid extra attention to environmental and human elements, such as fear, anxiety and self-consciousness. In addition, pupils stated that strong feelings, such as being judged for being in the spotlight are the most common reasons for a pupil's lack of motivation to participate and angage during English lessons. Finally, this study and its results are most beneficial to English teachers to get inspired and influenced to construct an active EFL classroom where pupils develop a willingness to communicate and use their L2.

The traditional language laboratory consists of computer-based exercises in which students practice the language individually, working on language form drills and listening comprehension activities. In addition to the traditional approach to the laboratory requirement, students in the study participated in a weekly conversation hour focusing on improving oral proficiency. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to determine the effect of two different types of conversation hours, face-to-face and virtual, on the oral proficiency levels of students enrolled in intermediate Spanish classes at the college level. Oral proficiency was measured using the Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview (SOPI), before and after treatment. The face-to-face conversation hours took place at the language laboratory in a classroom and the virtual conversation hours took place in the online multi-user virtual environment known as Second Life. The research question was: What is the effect of attending virtual conversation hours or face-to-face conversation hours on students' oral proficiency? The statistical data analysis was conducted using the conversation hours as the independent variable (face-to-face or virtual), the SOPI posttest scores as the dependent variable, and the SOPI pretest scores as the covariate. A total sample of 52 students was involved. Posttest data were collected following 14 weeks of treatment during which students in each group attended the weekly conversation hours. Data analysis showed there was significant difference in oral proficiency gain between the face-to-face group and the virtual group. The results of the ANCOVA test allowed the rejection of the null hypothesis, as there was a significant difference in effect on the adjusted SOPI posttest scores of the participants in the virtual conversation group versus those in the face-to-face conversation group. The virtual group improved their oral proficiency significantly better than the face-to-face group. In addition, the SOPI scores of both groups increased significantly. The SOPI posttest scores were significantly higher than the SOPI pretest scores for both groups. Therefore, both face-to-face and virtual conversation hours could yield a supplemental method to the traditional approach of the language laboratory to improve communicative competence.

Developing a time- and cost-efficient method for second language (L2) oral proficiency measurement is one of the research topics that has attracted much attention in recent decades. The purpose of this study is to develop a computerized oral testing system for L2 Japanese using automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology. Two testing methods called elicited imitation (EI) and simulated speech (SS) are proposed to quantify L2 accuracy and fluency via ASR processing. This study also suggests systematic EI item creation leveraging corpus technology and discusses the effectiveness of the test items created through analyses of item difficulty. Further, refinement of the EI grading system is described through a series of statistical investigations. For SS, this study reports the five most influential L2 fluency features identified through machine learning and proposes a method to yield individual SS scores with these features based on previous studies. Lastly, several methods to combine the EI and SS scores are presented to estimate L2 oral proficiency of Japanese.

This research study aimed to create an alternative method of measuring the language proficiency of English as a Second Language (ESL) missionaries at the Missionary Training Center (MTC). Elicited imitation (EI) testing was used as this measure of language proficiency and an instrument was designed and tested with 30 ESL missionaries at the MTC. Results from the EI test were compared with an existing Language Speaking Assessment (LSA) currently in use at the MTC. EI tests were rated by human raters and also by a computer utilizing automatic speech recognition technology. Scores were compared across instruments and across scoring types. The EI test correlated highly with the LSA using both scoring methods providing initial validity for future testing and use of the instrument in measuring language proficiency at the MTC.