Pixel International Conferences

“By assessment, we mean the act of determining the extent to which the desired results are on the way to being achieved and to what extent they have been achieved” (McTighe & Wiggins 1998: 6). Summative assessment, that is, when the information gathered from students’ learning is analyzed at the conclusion of the course to determine whether they have achieved a set of identified goals, is especially useful for scoring and grading at the university level. In the case of English for Tourism —a core and ESP subject in the Online Degree in Tourism at the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria—the assessment of speaking skills is part of a final performance task in which the students have to submit a video (oral) presentation on a topic covered during the course. To complete the task successfully, they have been given feedback periodically to improve their overall performance and language skills. Since online classrooms require a special consideration when selecting and implementing assessment for speaking skills, the students have to be provided with models and samples to be followed, alongside with tools that help them overcome any difficulty they may encounter and a rubric adapted to the level and expected results for guidance. In this paper, we explain the steps taken to assess speaking skills in students of Tourism that bring different levels of prior knowledge into the virtual classroom but need to acquire and develop, at least, a B2 oral fluency and accuracy for their professional careers.

Keywords: Online courses; assessment; speaking skills; oral presentations; rubric;