〈Articles〉Some Initial Considerations of Unified Oral Testing in a Japanese University Context

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著者専攻: 異文化コミュニケーション[Abstract] In many oral English programs at Japanese universities, there is still a tendency to test oral proficiency through methods other than an oral speaking test. This paper argues that there are insurmountable validity issues to testing spoken language through other means than a speaking test and offers a sound alternative, the unified oral test. A unified oral test is a program-wide test conducted with teacher exchange in order to satisfy concerns related to both objectivity and validity. Teacher exchange ensures objectivity since the evaluator of the test is not the regular classroom teacher. This author also acknowledges and explores the issues and challenges related to oral testing in general. The issues and challenges raised in this paper are those related to validity, testing formats, evaluation rubrics and rater reliability.