Children's Perceptions and Attitudes of Using an Open-ended Mapped Role-play as an Oral Assessment

Abstract

This paper examines whether ‘Open-ended Mapped Role-plays’ (abbreviated as OMRs hereafter) can reduce the learners’ test anxiety and activate their performances in the test. For this question to be answered the following two questions are asked. Firstly, it asks about the learners’ perceptions of using OMR compare to interview types (abbreviated as IT hereafter). Secondly, it also examines whether their decreased test anxiety and positive perceptions toward the assessments would encourage them to perform their best. In order to answer these questions, the IT and the OMR were conducted in two English classes of two schools. Two post surveys were carried out after taking the two assessments. From this research it was found out that this type of OMRs can be effective in reducing test anxiety of the testees and in increasing learners’ best performances on the test.