The Challenges of Assessing Oral Expression Skills in Romanian as a Foreign Language of Study

Iftıme A.

ACROSS - Journal of Interdisciplinarity Cross-Border Studies, cilt.7, sa.3, ss.12-22, 2025 (Düzenli olarak gerçekleştirilen hakemli kongrenin bildiri kitabı)

Özet

Learning  a  foreign  language  means,  first  of  all,  knowing  how  to  speak  it,  knowing  how  to use  it  to  communicate  in  different  situations  in  everyday  life.  A  foreign  language  is,  above all,  a  means  of  interaction  with others.  Therefore,  the  assessment  of  oral  expression skillsplays an essential role in the development of students’ communication skills.We  chose  to  develop  this  subject  in  this  paper  for  two  main  reasons:  the  first  is  purely subjective and it results from a reality observed during the experience we had during the RFL courses, as anRFL lecturer who faced the sensitive situation of assessment of students’ oral performances. And the second reason is objective and it refers to the difficulty of evaluating oral  production. So, the  purpose  of this paper is to provide an answer to the  question: How do we evaluate the oral productions of learners studying RFL?Wepropose  two  solutions  that wehave  verified  during ourexperience,  namely:  designing grids  to  evaluate  the  oral  productions  of  RFL  learners  and  establishing  specific  criteria  to evaluate students’ oral performances.This  paper  will  focus  on  the  presentation  of  the  different  forms  of oral  assessment,  its difficulties,  as  well  as  the  assessment  grid  that  we  propose  for  the  assessment  of  this  skill. This  mini-research  might  be  of  interest  becauseit  could  inspire  teachers  to  give  more importance to the assessment of oral production, which will also have an impact on learners, making them more motivated and aware of their learning process.