Setting the Standards for the Foreign Language Speaking Tasks of the New Baccalaureate General Test

Abstract

One of the most significant aspects of the Spanish new educational reform is the Baccalaureate General Test which is intended to replace the former University Entrance Examination. The new test will include an oral part, which needs to be created, based on current research on the field (Bueno-Alastuey & Luque, 2010), and tested with students from different regions in Spain to confirm its validity. This paper describes the preparation and first results of a pilot study using some proposed tasks. The speaking tasks were based on the ones currently used in the Cambridge Preliminary English Test but conveniently adapted to the Spanish context as suggested by some studies (Amengual-Pizarro & Mendez Garci a, 2010). This paper shows the perceived strengths and weaknesses of those tasks and the test based on current testing literature on construct definition (Bachman & Palmer, 1996) and validation (Weir, 2005; Fulcher, 2010; Ekbatani, 2011). Results showed that the test corresponds better to classroom practice and favors both washback and language development at a lower cost. Index Terms—Spain Baccalaurate General Test, speaking competence testing, pilot speaking test, oral test validation I. INTRODUCTION One of the most significant aspects of the Spanish new educational reform has been the introduction of the Baccaulerate General Test, which will replace the former University Entrance Examination. Apart from the fact that this test is to be carried out in a different setting (the high school where each students is enrolled instead of at the university), another major change is that the test will include an oral component to test receptive and productive oral communicative competence. The different setting may help to reduce the anxiety this kind of high-stakes tests produce because the setting will be more familiar and, thus less threatening, and it will imply a reduced number of students taking the test at the same time in the same place. Both facts will probably provide a more supportive environment for the students. However, the inclusion of an oral competence part will greatly increase anxiety as oral skills are the ones that cause more anxiety in Spanish students. Previous research has put forward proposals for the tasks to be included in the oral part of the test (Bueno-Alastuey & Luque, 2012; Amengual & Mendez, 2012), but literature on pilot studies about the implementation of such proposed test remains limited (Martin-Monje, 2012) and more research should be done on the implementation of such tasks in real environments. In this paper, we report on an experience using the proposed tasks in four different provinces in Spain with the aim of illustrating the validity of such proposal both in terms of students' results and in terms of the strengths and the constraints found in those settings. The creation and evaluation of the test is part of a wider project, the OPENPAU project (Spanish Ministry of Education, 2011-2014, FFI2011-22442), whose aim is to put forward a solid proposal to facilitate the implementation of the oral part of the exam. The analysis done in this paper is based on a wide range of factors such as testing procedures, teachers' attitudes, and test organization and delivery (i.e. pen & paper or computer based).