Speaking skill evaluation for secondary students at UK Academy School (Ba Ria Vung Tau Province): A teachers' perception study: Master of TESOL

Abstract

It is widely known that language acts as a crucial and characteristic product of every country according to the fact that it is the typical nature of each country. Once students are exposed to an international language, they must master four skills, especially listening, speaking, reading, and writing in order to effectively master and use it. Among the above four skills, oral English is probably considered to be one that requires a lot of study and practice time. A large number of students encountered challenges in early phonetic learning. In fact, a decent language acquisition is one of the keys for students to gradually open the door to this magical language. The aim of the study is to evaluate the speaking skill of secondary students at UK Academy School in Ba Ria city, Ba Ria Vung Tau province to investigate whether the students using their language ability through their speaking skill suitably meet the requirements of the school curriculum in terms of their language proficiency and especially the speaking skill. Teacher-based speaking evaluation conducted in the classroom are not only strongly recommended at UK Academy policies but are also the only tool used to evaluate students’ speaking skills in the formal schooling system. The data was collected from questionnaires and interviews of 26 English teachers who are recently working at UK Academy school. The result of the survey showed that the teaching quality and the curriculum of school highly met the stakeholder’s requirements in terms of aims. The research also suggested the designing aspect of materials and teaching methods to make them more interesting for students to learn how to speak English better.