Spanish Secondary School students’ oral competence in EFL: self-assessment, teacher assessment and assessment tasks

Abstract

Although Spanish students start EFL lessons at a very early age, several studies at a national and European level highlight the low competence of Spanish speakers in general and of Spanish students in particular in spoken English. In this context, we set to design a comprehensive questionnaire on the process of teaching and learning oral skills in Secondary Education, which was administered to both teachers and students of English in a representative sample of Secondary Schools in the region of Aragón (Spain), the total number of answers being 2,073 (2,010 from students and 63 from teachers). Our aim was to ascertain whether students perceive themselves as progressively more skilled in speaking and interacting as they advance through the 6-year Secondary Education period. We considered possible differences depending on the type of school students attend: rural or urban, private, state-run or state-subsidised, and non-bilingual or bilingual. In addition, we explored the possible effect of the teachers’ reported methods of assessment of oral skills on the students’ perceived and achieved competence. The results derived from this survey can provide a good diagnosis of the current situation of the teaching and learning of oral skills in Spanish EFL Secondary School classrooms.