Assessing Academic Oral Presentations in English Medium Education: Navigating Linguistic and Social Justice Implications of Decision Making

口头交流技能有助于学习、思考，并使个人能够参与社会。通过谈话，我们与他人合作产生新的想法（利特尔顿和梅塞尔，2013年），这意味着口头技能已经成为职业生活的关键。至关重要的是，演讲能力为公民提供了沟通手段，使他们的声音在公民舞台上被听到。然而，并非所有的语言和非语言交流实践都被认为是平等的，迫切需要加强教育行动，以防止交流不平等破坏公民机构（科尔曼，2012年）。需要教学干预，以发展口语技能的方式，解决不平等的沟通地位。因此，在教育环境中，促进口语沟通技能发展的任务作为学习和评估工具是至关重要的。学术口头报告（AOPs）是英国高等教育中广泛用作学习和评估任务的一种类型，通常提供演讲舞台，学生可以在其中发展和展示学科知识和演讲技能（Palmour 2020）。然而，参与生产和评估AOP的oracy需求可能没有得到充分的认可，而不是教的方式解决communicative inequality.My博士研究如何AOP评估构建和评估英语学术课程和学位课程在英国高等教育的一系列学科。从学生和教师评估员的角度出发，对AOP事件的决策过程产生了重要的见解。对内容学位模块实践的调查提出了一些重要问题，这些问题与AOP中的“隐性口语评估”（Doherty et al，2011）有关。大多数接受调查的高等教育从业者认为交付非常重要，大多数人报告说，他们提供反馈oracy技能，他们认为这是一个成功的AOP性能至关重要，但oracy技能的评估标准的一部分。作为奖学金的一部分，我将进行一项包含的实地研究，调查如何通过AOP评估内容学位课程的学习，特别是对oracy技能的判断。这项新的研究加上我的博士研究结果将确保全面的数据和对AOP事件的更清晰的见解，以生成关于评估高等教育中的AOP的手稿。此外，关于口语评估的实地调查结果有助于英语中等教育研究（Baker和Hüttner，2019年和Jenkins等人，2019年），加深了对国际大学不同语言文化背景下的交际实践的理解。我的博士实地考察，调查了学术英语（EAP）课程用作守门目的的评估，表明评估标准在许多情况下并不能反映任务的社会和交际现实。例如，在EAP AOP评估中，其中包括50%的口语标准，学生显着淡化口语技能，因为有机会使用幻灯片和非语言交流。实地调查还产生了一个全面的模型，教师评估员制定的决策过程时，从事评级AOP。该模型中的一系列工具展示了AOP评估对教师评估者的复杂认知、社会和情感需求。在奖学金期间，这些博士研究成果将通过一系列书面出版物，进一步与HE从业人员和学术讲座的数据为主导的反思研讨会进行传播。这些活动将促进批判性的反思和行动的有效性问题与方式oracy是开发和评估AOP tasks.The奖学金是一个很好的机会，以促进沟通意识和信心的工作人员和学生在学术界和超越.

Oral communication skills facilitate learning, thinking and empower individuals to participate in society. Through talk we generate new ideas in collaboration with others (Littleton and Mecer, 2013) meaning oracy skills have become key to professional life. Crucially, oratorial prowess provides citizens with the communicative means by which to have their voices heard in civic arenas. However, not all verbal and non-verbal communicative practices are judged as equal and there is a pressing need for intensified action in education to prevent communicative inequality from undermining civic agency (Coleman, 2012).Pedagogical interventions are needed to develop oracy skills in a way which addresses unequal communicative status.Therefore, it is vital that tasks which facilitate oral communication skills development feature as learning and assessment tools in educational settings. Academic oral presentations (AOPs) are one genre used widely as learning and assessment tasks in UK Higher Education, often to provide oratory arenas in which students can develop and display disciplinary knowledge and oracy skills (Palmour 2020). However, the oracy demands involved in producing and evaluating AOPs may not be adequately recognised and not taught in ways which tackle communicative inequality.My doctorate investigated how AOP assessments are constructed and evaluated on English for Academic Purposes programmes and degree programmes in a range of disciplines in UK HE. Crucial insights were generated into the decision-making processes involved in navigating AOP events from student and teacher assessor perspectives. Surveys of content degree module practice raised significant questions regardingthe 'hidden assessment of oracy' (Doherty et al, 2011) in AOPs. The majority of HE practitioners surveyed rated delivery as highly important and the majority reported that they provide feedback on oracy skills which they see as vital to a successful AOP performance, but that oracy skills were not part of the assessment criteria. As part of the fellowship, I will conduct a contained fieldwork study which investigates how learning is assessed on content degree programmes through AOPs, particularly what judgements are made on oracy skills.This new research coupled with my doctoral findings will secure comprehensive data and sharper insights on AOP events to generate a manuscript on Assessing AOPs in Higher Education. Furthermore, the fieldwork findings on oral assessment contribute to English Medium Education research (Baker and Hüttner, 2019 and Jenkins et al., 2019) which deepens understandings of communicative practices in diverse linguacultural settings in international universities.My doctoral fieldwork, which investigated AOPs used as assessments for gatekeeping purposes on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses, demonstrated that the assessment criteria in many cases does not reflect the social and communicative reality of the task. For instance, in EAP AOP assessment which includes 50% spoken linguistic criteria, students significantly downplayed speaking skills because of the opportunity to use slides and non-verbal communication. The fieldwork also generated a comprehensive model of decision-making processes enacted by teacher assessors when engaged in rating AOPs. The range of tools represented in the model demonstrates the complex cognitive, social and emotional demands AOP assessment places on teacher assessors. During the fellowship, such doctoral findings will be disseminated through a series of written publications, further data-led reflection workshops with HE practitioners and academic talks. These events will promote critical reflection and action on the validity concerns associated with the ways oracy is developed and assessed in AOP tasks.The fellowship is a wonderful opportunity to foster communicative awareness and confidence among staff and students in academia and beyond.