What's the Story? A Suggestion for an Oral Exam and Its Assessment in Beginning and Intermediate German Classes

Abstract

Variation being the spice of life, we tried to develop alternative ways of conducting oral examinations after several years of teaching and giving oral quizzes and exams in various guises. The venerable student-instructor interview or a variant thereof, the phone interview, certainly have their merits, and by no means do we want to convey the impression that they should be done away with. On the contrary, they emphasize a certain set of skills practiced widely in the classroom where we constantly ask questions of our students. Yet, variety in the oral testing routine would break the monotony and make the routine less tedious for both students and instructors in courses where more than one oral exam is scheduled per semester. Different courses have different emphases and the communicative focus of the class could be complemented by varying the oral examinations. The type of oral exam proposed in this paper is not intended to be part of a standardized oral proficiency or achievement test, but rather is best suited for a class accustomed to a high level of oral group work and other interactive exercises.