Assessing and Grading Presentations
Using presentations for assessment By Judith Mader by Judith Mader © Cambridge University Press 2012 © Cambridge University Press 2012
This article deals with how learner presentations can be used for assessment. By 'presentation' I mean a structured monologue of any length on one subject. It can be as simple, at low levels, as a personal introduction at a meeting, or as complex, at high levels, as an academicstyle lecture. The skills learners will need are basically the same for all the different types.
Why are presentations useful assessment tools?
Presentations are a useful way of assessing learners’ spoken language skills as they: • allow for individual assessment • do not seem like interrogations • assess authentic skills which many learners will need. Depending on the focus of the teaching context, emphasis can be placed on linguistic, communicative or other aspects. Individual oral assessment is important in many high-stakes contexts, where grades given for group assessment tasks are felt to be too heavily dependent on how others in the group perform. Oral assessment through individual interviews is often felt (by candidates and teachers) to be more like an interrogation than a real-life communicative task. In addition, time (often at a premium for oral assessment) is taken up by the examiner’s questions or prompts. A prepared monologue can allow individual assessment under time constraints.
Assessing and Grading Presentations by Judith Mader © Cambridge University Press 2012
Presentations: an authentic task
We use prepared monologues in more situations than you may think. Introducing yourself in a formal or semi-formal situation is one example where you need to have prepared and structured what you want to say and only have a certain time to do it. It is surprising how few people can introduce themselves briefly really well. Longer presentations are now seen as an essential skill in business and other contexts. The intention of the presentation may be to inform, instruct, persuade, convince, sell or any combination of these. In real life, there will usually be a time constraint, which may range from a couple of minutes to an hour or more. The presenter will almost always have time to prepare and structure the content of what they want to say.
Assessing presentations
For assessment purposes, to be fair, time and other constraints should of course be the same for all candidates. All candidates should have the following information: • Type of presentation • Length of presentation • Time allowed for preparation • Content of presentation (if only certain content is allowed) • Information on audience. The final point may be important if the English skills assessed are to be used outside the classroom. Clearly in an assessed presentation, candidates are presenting for the examiners. Depending on the set-up of the assessment, members of the class may also be present, be allowed to ask questions or to take part in a discussion afterwards. The criteria for assessment must be designed with the following questions in mind: • What can I expect of the candidate? • What level of language do I expect? • How important is linguistic (e.g. grammatical) correctness in my assessment context? • What should the content of the presentation be? • How important is the message of the presentation? • Which media and visuals should be used? • How important is delivery and body language?
Assessing and Grading Presentations by Judith Mader Š Cambridge University Press 2012
Assessing presentations: a case study
I have been using learner presentations to assess university students for several years. Each student presents for 15 minutes to fellow students and then answers questions and conducts a discussion over 15 minutes. The instructor takes no part but concentrates on marking. The scores are used to award a grade which counts towards a degree so the stakes are high. After all the students have given their presentations (around fifteen over four or five sessions) I ask them to vote on which one or two they thought were the best. Their vote invariably corresponds to the grades I have awarded (i.e. the best grade gets the most votes). I started doing this to make sure that what I was looking for as an examiner corresponded to the audience’s perceptions of a good presentation. This also makes the students feel the presentation situation is authentic. This form of assessment is accepted (i.e. considered valid and fair) by the vast majority of students.