A Program of Rater Training for Evaluating Public Speeches Combining Accuracy and Error Approaches

Systematic rater training results in higher validity and reliability for scores from either classroom speeches or speeches from wide-scale testing. This paper includes a complete script for rater training using a combination of two training methods: error training to sensitize raters to their biases and accuracy training to insure rater understanding of criteria and processes of rating. The script is designed to provide training for either the analytic or holistic method and has been shown to result in reliable, valid speech scoring