225 / 2018-04-13 23:45:58

Constructing standards for diagnostic assessment of evidence use in presentation: A case study

evidence use,standards,diagnostic assessment,presentation

全体主题 > Standards in developing language assessments

In evaluating the quality of oral presentation, using evidence to support one’s opinions, an essential skill to achieve effective communication (Kibler & Hardigree, 2017), has long been recognised as indicative of speakers' public speaking competence (Joe, Kitchen, Chen, & Feng, 2017), whereas limited amount of research has systematically investigated the diagnostic standards for assessing the patterns of using evidence in an EFL (English as a foreign language) context, such as China. In this connection, this research reports on a qualitative case study that explored the development patterns of evidence used by EFL presenters within one semester. The study examined the presentation performance of three first-year college students in China, focusing specifically on their patterns of using evidence to support and develop their ideas throughout different stages during the whole semester. The data sources consisted of participants’ presentation outlines, PowerPoint files, audio tapes and their performance transcripts. By adopting public speaking competence rubric put forth by Herbein et al. (2017), which includes three dimensions of knowledge, motivation and skills, we first interviewed the participants about their perceptions on evidence and their motivations on selecting certain supporting examples, and then observed their oral presentation to investigate whether their performances reflected their cognitive processes. Subsequently, a group of experts were invited to refine the previous rubric based upon participants’ presentations. The participants were afterwards asked to make the second presentation respectively and interviewed again to track any changes in using evidence. The findings of this study hopefully could serve as an empirical foundation for future large-scale research on evidence use in oral presentations, and would provide language teachers with pedagogical implications on developing pragmatic diagnostic standards in improving EFL learners’ presentation skills.