Ensure students have the opportunity to demonstrate their best

For students, it is necessary to be familiar with what they are striving to accomplish in order to earn the highest score they can - to show what she or he can do. If students are involved in choosing their own texts and even their own assessment tasks, this will enhance confidence. This will be particularly important in the case of students who are very shy or lack self-esteem, or whose oral skills are very weak.

During the formal assessment task the teacher-assessor may interact individually with a student at any time by asking specific question(s) (see Appendix VI Framework of Guiding Questions) to:

• clarify and/or encourage the student to extend ideas.
• help prompt and/or scaffold the student's oral interaction.
• probe the range and depth of the student's oral language skills.
• authenticate the student's work (ie. ensure it is the student's own).

The questions should be used flexibly to ensure that students have the opportunity to show the full range of their responses, hence achieving the most valid "true" judgment of students' ability. That is, the guiding questions are not designed to be a set of standardised questions with the same questions asked of all students.

To view Dr Chris Davison talking about how to use the Framework of guiding questions.

The teacher-assessor also needs to take into account the amount and nature of teacher support required and the specific contextual conditions of the assessment task when making their assessment judgments. Such contextual information needs to be clearly recorded and communicated to the student and fellow teacher-assessors.