Evaluating English oral skills through the technique of writing as if speaking

Abstract

English elicited as language written-as-if-spoken (WAIS) may be helpful in evaluating oral productive skills. Although EFL teachers' blind rating of 1,000 brief WAIS English responses showed low inter-rater reliability, when hundreds of Finnish advanced learners wrote complete imaginary WAIS dialogues, these proved highly predictive both for interview- and for classroom-performance. Medical and veterinary students' WAIS dialogues, compared with actual taped discourse, exhibited generally accepted characteristics of spoken, as contrasted with written English. Guidelines for eliciting, modeling, and evaluating such WAIS dialogues are offered, for testing learners prior to interviewing or in place of interviews.