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

口头沟通能力有助于学习、思考和增强个人参与社会的能力。通过交谈，我们与他人合作产生新的想法（Littleton和Mecer， 2013），这意味着交际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，并不是所有的语言和非语言交际实践都被认为是平等的，迫切需要加强教育行动，以防止交际不平等破坏公民代理（Coleman, 2012）。需要通过教学干预来发展演讲技能，以解决不平等的交际地位。因此，在教育环境中，促进口头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，通常提供演讲场所，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，在制作和评估AOPs过程中所涉及的oracy需求可能没有得到充分认识，也没有以解决沟通不平等的方式进行教授。我的博士学位研究了AOP评估是如何在英国高等教育的一系列学科的学术英语课程和学位课程中构建和评估的。从学生和教师评估者的角度来看，在导航AOP事件中涉及的决策过程中产生了重要的见解。对内容学位模块实践的调查提出了关于AOPs中“隐藏的oracy评估”的重要问题（Doherty et al, 2011）。大多数被调查的HE从业者认为交付是非常重要的，并且大多数人报告说他们提供了关于他们认为对于成功的AOP性能至关重要的演讲技能的反馈，但是演讲技能不是评估标准的一部分。作为奖学金的一部分，我将进行一项包含在内的实地研究，调查通过AOPs评估内容学位课程的学习情况，特别是对演讲技能的判断。这项新的研究加上我的博士研究成果将确保全面的数据和对AOP事件的更清晰的见解，从而生成一份关于高等教育中AOP评估的手稿。此外，口头评估的实地调查结果有助于英语媒介教育研究（Baker和h<e:1>特纳，2019年和詹金斯等人，2019年），加深了对国际大学不同语言文化背景下交际实践的理解。我的博士实地考察调查了学术英语（EAP）课程中用于把关目的的AOPs评估，结果表明，在许多情况下，评估标准并不能反映任务的社会和交际现实。例如，在EAP AOP评估中，包括50%的口语语言标准，由于有机会使用幻灯片和非语言交流，学生们明显低估了口语技能。实地调查还产生了一个综合的决策过程模型，该模型是由教师评估人员在对AOPs进行评级时制定的。模型中所代表的工具的范围表明AOP评估对教师评估者提出了复杂的认知、社会和情感要求。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、与高等教育从业者举行的进一步以数据为主导的反思研讨会和学术讲座来传播。这些事件将促进对与AOP任务中开发和评估soa的方式相关的有效性问题的批判性反思和行动。该奖学金是一个极好的机会，可以培养学术界内外教职员工和学生之间的沟通意识和信心。

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.