EFL Instructors’ Majors and Their Speaking Activity Choices for Informal Oral Assessment

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to investigate frequently
 used speaking tasks in English classes at tertiary level in Turkey and
 differences in language instructors’ speaking activity choices for informal
 oral assessment with regard to their academic majors. As data collection tool,
 an electronic questionnaire was sent to 82 participant language instructors
 from different universities in Turkey in the academic year 2016-2017. The
 questionnaire included speaking activities that can be used with assessment
 purpose and the participants were asked to report the frequency of the
 activities they used. The data which was collected through the electronic
 questionnaire was analysed by using SPSS 22 software. Kruskal-Wallis test
 revealed statistically significant differences between participants’ academic
 majors and speaking activities they used for informal oral assessment. Seven
 oral assessment activities were found to differ in frequency according to
 academic majors; picture-cued tasks, giving instructions/directions, role-play,
 discussions/conversations, games, picture-cued storytelling, and retelling
 story/news event. The differences were compared by mean ranks and medians, and
 these differences were classified according to the creativity the task
 required. In the light of the findings, practical and theoretical implications
 are given with concluding remarks.