An Evaluation of Oral Interview and Voice thread as Elicitation Techniques to Assess EFL Learners’ Speaking Skill

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and rate two selected elicitation techniques, oral interview and Voice thread, an on-line program, to assess the speaking skill of the EFL students at the Zand Higher Education Institute in Shiraz, Iran. Testing techniques were selected based on the level of the students (upper-intermediate). The speaking ability of a group of the students was evaluated using both techniques, numerical results and data were specified and analyzed in accordance to the communicative competence. As testing speaking is one of the main issues in the foreign language testing, the implication of the study reveals an overall view of the rating of the above mentioned testing techniques which further enhances the evaluation of   speaking skill.