The Assessment of Oral Proficiency through Holistic and Analytic Techniques of Scoring: A Comparative Study

It is an acutely hard and intricate matter to assess the skill of speaking. Holistic and analytic scoring are usually utilized as two methods of testing speaking performance. In the current study, these two methods of evaluating the spoken proficiency were examined in depth. English speaking skills of a total of 70 subjects, who were Iranian third-grade university EFL (English as a foreign language) learners, were assessed by an interlocutor and an assessor. The interlocutor carried out the holistic scoring while the assessor conducted the analytic scoring. Categories within the analytic scoring comprised of content and organization, pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. The analytic average for the four criteria was 3.396, while the holistic scoring mean was 3.628. The findings revealed that there existed a statistically significant difference between the holistic and analytic methods of assessment as the p-value was calculated at 0.002 (p < 0.05). It is, thus, suggested that applying both techniques of scoring in the assessment process might be regarded suitable since they seem to supplement each other, and together help towards more comprehensive assessment.