Volume: 19  Number: 3  Page: 212–222

Communicative Competence in Oral Language Assessment

Rhonda Oliver1, Yvonne Haig2 and Judith Rochecouste3 1School of Education, Edith Cowan University, 2 Bradford Street, Mt Lawley WA 6050, Australia, 2School of Education, Edith Cowan University, 100 Joondalup Drive, Joondalup WA 6027, Australia and 3Centre for Learning and Teaching Support, Monash University, 900 Dandienong Road, Caulfield East, Victoria 3145, Australia

This paper reports on a review of the teaching and assessment of oral language in Western Australian secondary schools. Results show that teachers have considerable difficulty in incorporating oral language tasks into their pedagogy because of a curriculum biased towards developing writing skills. Teachers also revealed that they do not have the skills to assess oral language even though they acknowledge the importance of their students’ communicative competence both within the school environment and outside it. Students involved in the study were also aware of many weaknesses in their communicative competence and that these were not being addressed in the classroom.

Keywords: oral language, communicative competence, adolescent speech, oracy

© 2005 R. Oliver et al.

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