SUBANG JAYA: The change from centralised testing of oracy to school-based evaluation last year will help students develop their listening and speaking skills in English, according to education experts and teachers.
Presenter Mawarni Hassan from the Malaysian Examinations Syndicate spoke about how teachers could help students to develop competency in reading and writing skills, and listening and speaking skills.
“You may get some students who are better in one than the other but we should concentrate on the simultaneous development of both. Assessment for learning should also be assessment for motivation,” she said yesterday at a forum on the Malaysian English Language Teaching Association national conference on oracy.
Presenting a paper on Testing of oracy – between policy and practice, Mawarni encouraged teachers who were at the conference to incorporate continuous assessment methods into the teaching and learning process.
SM Ulu Klang teacher Manoharan Nalliah, who also spoke at the forum, voiced his support for the continuous assessment method.
He also pointed out that the main problem facing English language teachers were that they were dealing with students whose primary language was Malay.
“They need to have confidence and we have to be able to motivate them and give them that confidence in an environment where the language can survive,” he added.
Other speakers at the forum included Ali Ghani from the Centre for Curriculum Development and Datin Dr Siti Zaleha Abdullah Sani from the National Teacher Training Division.
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