Exploring the Quality of the Story Retelling Speaking Test : Roles of Story Length, Comprehension Questions, Keywords, and Opinions

Abstract

A Story Retelling Speaking Test (SRST) was developed to provide a speaking assessment tool that has high practicality and positive impact on teaching and learning. The current study aims to investigate the test quality of the SRST by analyzing test-takers' actual test performance based upon four test components--story length, reading comprehension questions, keywords, and opinions. The results showed that the four SRST components function fully or partially as intended, which is positive evidence for the validity of the test. The effects of text length on production volume were shown to be not consistent, which suggests negligible impact of memory on the SRST performance. Additionally, most test-takers understood the story's content in the reading section and most keywords were used in the retelling section. A substantial number of test-takers stated opinions; further, revisions for further eliciting opinions have been proposed.