In school-based assessment it is vital that students are given the opportunity to perform to the best of their abilities. At the same time the teacher and the school must be sure that the oral language produced is the students' own work, not the result of memorisation without understanding. Hence, there are some important requirements or ‘conditions’ that teachers and students must follow in the school-based assessment component of the HKDSE English examination.

Students will NOT give their best under the following conditions:

• if the type of assessment task is unfamiliar;
• if they are too stressed and nervous to speak;
• if the teacher is intimidating, unfamiliar, or makes the task seem too much like an exam;
• if the students are allowed to rehearse so much that they lose all spontaneity;
• if they read aloud from a power point presentation or note cards instead of speaking naturally; and
• if the task does not give them the opportunities to demonstrate natural authentic oral language use.

Hence, the following conditions must be met for a task to qualify as an assessment task for the purposes of SBA:

1. The type of task (i.e. communicative purpose, grouping arrangement, etc.) and the type of text used for assessment must be familiar to students, i.e. the planned assessment task should not be the first time the students face this type of task or text (but see g. below).

2. The task must not expect students to take on the role of an unfamiliar character, act out a role in a story or play, read aloud poems or short stories engage in formal stage debates, sports commentary, job interviews, etc; i.e. specific background knowledge and skills in drama, poetry or debating, etc are not to be included in the assessment. However, such activities are very useful learning and teaching activities, e.g. to develop intonation and voice projection. Formal SBA assessments need to be constructed with the aim of eliciting natural and authentic spoken language which conforms to the broad task-types of group interaction and individual presentation.

3. The task must be undertaken with the student’s English teacher as the assessor and in the presence of at least one fellow student. The other student(s) can take part in the interaction or be the audience for a presentation.

4. Tasks used to elicit an individual presentation must provide students with the opportunity to make an extended individual presentation (about 3-5 minutes). Note that this is a guide only, as some students may require more time than others.

5. Tasks used to elicit interaction must provide students with multiple opportunities to demonstrate appropriate interaction skills and make a balanced contribution without either dominating the discussion or being too reticent. Again, some students may need more time than others and / or may need to be prompted by the teacher to demonstrate their best (see h. below).

6. Students must not read aloud or take notes during the assessment activity. Students are only permitted to refer to brief notes or prompts during the assessment activity (maximum of one 4x6 note card) or PowerPoints in point form only during an individual presentation. These notes or PowerPoints are not part of the formal assessment and should not be taken into account in making a judgement about students’ oral language levels.

7. Individual students can be given more than the minimum number of assessments, especially if this results in an improvement in their oral standards, but they are not permitted to repeat (i.e. retake) the same assessment task without any change in input, nor should they engage in extensive rehearsal for any task inside or outside school as this may undermine the authenticity of their oral language use.

8. In any task the teacher-assessor may, if they wish, interact individually with a student at any time to ask specific question(s) to clarify and / or extend the student’s ideas, to help prompt and / or scaffold the student’s oral interaction and to probe the range and depth of their oral language skills (see Appendix IV Framework of Guiding Questions). This will be particularly important in the case of students who are very shy or lacking confidence, or whose oral skills are very weak. The teacher-assessor needs to take into account the amount and nature of teacher support required and the specific contextual conditions of the assessment task when making their assessment. The contextual information needs to be clearly recorded and communicated to the student and fellow teacher-assessors.
   
   

Note: There are no restrictions on the maximum number of tasks that can be used for assessment in any one year, but teachers are reminded that the SBA component is only a relatively small part of the overall public assessment. Over-assessment should be avoided.

To view Prof Chris Davison talking about when teachers should evaluate students' oral language at different stages of an assessment task.

Some common misinterpretations of the assessment conditions have been identified, including:

• Case I
• Case II
• Case III