Exploring Difficulties of Oral Formative Assessment: Case of Oral Expression Teachers at Department of English at Tlemcen University

Abstract

he process of teaching English as a foreign language requires teachers to mainly focus on the four language skills instruction. Language testing seems to be an effective instrument to figure out how well learners perform progressively in the target language. However, testing the oral abilities of EFL learners sounds to be one of the most difficult tasks teachers may face because of the challenges that may emerge during this process. Arguably, this research aims at investigating teachers‟ difficulties when assessing formatively learners‟ oral skills and also reflecting on the challenges of assessing first-year students‟ speaking skills formatively. For the sake of gathering information, researchers employed three research instruments; a questionnaire which has been directed to first year students, an interview with oral teachers, and classroom observation. The revealed results showed that each teacher faces several problems and a number of challenges impact students‟ speaking outcome. Eventually, in order to help teachers and learners, a number of practical suggestions and recommendations will be presented to facilitate the process of formative assessment. To conclude, it is found that oral expression teachers really encounter several challenges during the process of formative assessment of students speaking skills which negatively influence learners‟ oral outcomes