2.1 English Oral Communication performance
2.1.5 Components of oral communication performance
As stated above, the six components of communicative competence allow students to use and interact with others in a functional and meaningful way and also to assess oral communication performance. However, in this study, the six previous sub- components of communicative competence mainly supported teachers as a goal of second language pedagogy in classroom activities. Also, it is nearly impossible for teachers and students to include all six components of being a good English communicator, according to Vo (2013), because the traditional teaching method in Vietnam is heavy. This leads teachers and students to focus on learning toward grammar competence with stacks of vocabulary and grammar structure.
Instead of using all six communicative competences in assessing oral communication, several studies have also been conducted to develop measures for evaluating language learners' oral proficiency. From individual research, Harris (1968) suggests a list of criteria for measuring oral skills comprising five criteria to be rated, such as pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension, each of which includes 5 levels. In the study of Mazdayasna (2012), the components of oral communication that might be considered in the assessment scale are grammar, pronunciation, fluency, content, organization, and vocabulary (Mazdayasna, 2012).
From these studies, fluency and grammatical competence (vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation) are two essential factors in oral communication.
In recent studies, Ockey and Li (2015) show that the construct of oral communication assessment has four main components as follows:
• interactional competence (1)
• appropriate use of phonology (2)
• appropriate and accurate use of vocabulary and grammar (3)
• and appropriate fluency (4)
Interactional competence may be considered an individual’s underlying ability to actively structure appropriate speech in response to incoming stimuli, including information from another speaker, in real time.
Appropriate use of phonology is connected to the effective use of both segmental and prosodic aspects of language. Pronunciation, at the segmental level, refers to the ability to articulate words and produce the physical sounds that give a word its meaning.
According to Nation (1990), appropriate and accurate use of vocabulary and grammar refers to vocabulary breadth (the number of words known); vocabulary depth (the knowledge of and ability to use the words accurately and effectively); and grammatical breadth and depth (the number of grammar structures known and usable).
Grammar and vocabulary have been treated as separate constructs, but research suggests that raters do not assign distinct scores for vocabulary and grammar in oral communication assessments.
Fluency is defined as the naturalness of the rate of speech, pausing, and repetition, and it is an important component of oral communication.
Based on the four main components of Ockey and Li (2015), including interaction;
pronunciation; vocabulary and grammar; and fluency, they are not enough criteria to assess a good presenter in oral communication. This is because assessment is focused both on performance and knowledge. In this study, applying metacognitive strategies helps students to use the content (ideas) in three steps of metacognitive strategies:
planning, monitoring, and evaluation. Without the content mentioned as a criterion in the assessment of oral communication, students and teachers cannot evaluate oral communication tasks, and the researcher fails to conduct the research. Hence, content is a must in oral communication components as well.
The components of the oral communication assessment of the study could be summarized in the figure below:
Figure 2.1 Components of oral communication performance assessment
In sum, the five components, including content; interaction; pronunciation;
vocabulary and grammar; and fluency are used by both teachers and students to evaluate their outcomes in teaching and learning English oral communication through metacognitive strategy training. For the researcher, the results collected from the components will be chosen to analyze the data.
Analytic Scoring Schemes
In this study, the researchers employed analytic scoring schemes to collect scores from pre- and post-tests in order to ensure a holistic approach.
Depending on the objective of a test, rating scales are used for scoring, which can be done holistically, discretely, or analytically (Farhady, Jafarpur, and Birjandi, 2001).
The former refers to an overall remark that the student receives an excellent, good, fair, or pass/fail score, whereas the latter rates the interviewee’s performance separately on scales. The implementation of the analytic scoring scheme is better suited to assess students’ oral performance (Tuan, 2012) and provides researchers with a clear and precise definition concerning each scale point so that most measurement errors are minimized.
Analytic scoring schemes, according to Tuan (2012), refer to assessment by breaking down the objective of final products into criteria parts, and scoring each component
independently. The ratings for each of the components being examined are added to get the overall score. When employing analytic scoring schemes, it is vital to consider each criterion or part as separate to avoid bias against the whole product.
Concerning rating scores, the raters evaluate the order of each criterion in the students' spoken performances. To make it easy for raters to monitor and collect the scores, a numerical rating is given from 0 to 10 for each component. The students cannot be introduced to the evaluation form but to the components of oral communication because such components are considered the outcomes of the course.
Prior to using the criteria as an oral communication performance, the researcher should take into account many factors, namely reliability, validity, and bias, that can distort the test results. In order to greatly increase the chances that test results will be worthwhile for the research.
Concerning the term reliability, it is defined as the consistency with which a test measures what it is intended to measure (Backlund, 1994). Interrater reliability is a very important form of reliability; as such, it requires two or more raters using the same scales; having the same behaviors would give the students the same scores. And then, the raters have to check with each other and compare ratings so that the results become more consistent.
Regarding validity, it refers to the necessity that a test measure what it is supposed to measure (Backlund, 1994). He put an emphasis on clear curriculum objectives. That means the researcher makes sure to select or design a test that will tap into those objectives. Moreover, validity is referred to as content or face validity (Backlund, 1994). The researcher needs to predict certain results and whether or not students need the test. Therefore, it suggests some activities need to be done in pairs in oral communication in class because this is a good chance for the researcher to predict the ability of students to speak and listen in real life.
Bias is the last of the factors taken into account. The "rightness" of a response in an interaction between two students cannot be the same as in real life. The researcher
will pay more attention to removing the effects of cultural, racial, or sexual bias from the assessment, although many educators do not consider it as closely as validity and reliability, but sexual bias is a case worth considering.