Assessing the speaking skill: an investigation into achievement tests of the 9th grade students in Anatolian high schools

Speaking assessment in high schools has recently gathered substantial attention seeing that speaking tests have been compulsory in high schools since 2014 in Turkey (Regulation for Secondary Education Institutions, 2014). This paper offers an investigation of speaking tests in Anatolian high schools. Furthermore, it attempts to describe the whole process of speaking tests in these schools and examine the 9th grade students’ and their teachers’ attitude towards speaking tests. This research was conducted during the spring term of 2016-2017 academic year. Participants were 358 students and 22 English language teachers from six different Anatolian high schools in Denizli. The research combined quantitative and qualitative research methods. Thus, our data were collected through questionnaires and interviews. In the analysis of the data, for questionnaires, Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 22.0 and for interviews, content analysis was used. Results revealed that there was no standard process in speaking assessment among schools. Teachers planned speaking test in a detailed way, and then they informed students about testing and grading procedures of speaking tests. In speaking tests, the course teacher assessed each student individually in classrooms where the student’s classmates were also. At the end of speaking tests, both teachers and students expressed that they were satisfied with timing. However, teachers pointed out that they gave high marks to show their support and encouragement in scoring, and this condition threatened reliability of the speaking tests. Another finding was that both teachers and students had positive attitudes towards speaking tests. While students were advocating that speaking test was useful to improve their English, teachers believed that they needed it to see the speaking level of students