I am opposed to assessment of speech – ever. We wait until it happens and then, when it happens, why assess what they say when we can just enjoy it? Why assess when the goal of the class is to teach them the language so that they can profit from knowing it in a million different ways connected to their self-esteem and happiness in life? Because language is beauteous. Or does that count? Have our jobs become about getting the fastest language gains possible to a few of the students or are we teachers? Why judge those innocents so much? Why rank kids against each other? Because that’s what grading is – judging. I say we stop judging them and start lifting them up. How? By looking realistically at how long it takes to get to any degree of authentic speech output even with comprehensible input. They are not dancing bears. They are human beings. And they process language at different speeds. And there is nothing we can do about that, except avoiding making the slower processors feel stupid in languages by the way we test them, or don’t.
