The Assessment Of Communicative Strategies In English Speaking Tests

The speaking English test, an important component of English test, has won more attention and concern from experts and test participants. Although many popular speaking test are guided by the communicative competence theory which claims to test candidates'overall language competence including both language competence and strategic competence, after examination of the construct and rating scale, it is not hard to find that all language competence has been directly evaluated through pronunciation, grammar, lexical resource and so on, while the strategic competence have no corresponding item designed to directly evaluate. Strategic competences mostly are reflected by some vague descriptions. Though the review of language testing history; it is difficult to find an appropriate module which can bring strategic competence into systematic and direct evaluation.This study tries to analyze candidate's strategic competence directly on the basis of Faerch and Kasper's theory about the potential effect of the selection of communicative strategies. To fulfill the purpose, a questionnaire and an oral task are designed. Three raters are trained to score 44 candidates''response under two different rating scales, the first rating scale is based on current popular ones adopted by IELTS and CET-SET speaking test, while the second one is based on Faech and Kasper's classification of communicative strategies according to their potential learning effects.144 questionnaire results are got and analyzed, 44 candidates''speaking responses are recorded and transcribed. Results show that candidates are not sure about the word-coinage strategies, non-language strategy and code-switching strategy, when they deal with communicative problems; they tend to use explanation, paraphrase and topic avoidance strategies. Paired sample t-test show that two scores obtained from the two different rating scales are significantly different, and there is low correlation between the two results in both three groups.Based on the research results, it is proposed that it is feasible and possible to integrate strategic competence evaluation into current speaking tests, because it can assess candidates overall oral ability more objectively. Introducing strategic competence evaluation into speaking tests can make speaking tests more objective, descriptive and comprehensive, it is of vital importance nowadays given the situation that English learning emphasizes more on speaking ability and English test should involve speaking tests.