Oral Exam, Participation Points and a Survey of Student
Learning Style Preference for English IA2 at Takuma Campus
Kazuma FUJII* and Robert JOHNSTON**

Abstract
Kagawa National College of Technology, Takuma Campus has started team teaching classes inEnglish IA2 since this year. In these classes, there are two classes per week: one is a class by a JapaneseEnglish teacher, and the other is a class by a Japanese English teacher and a native speaker of English.
This practice is implemented with the purpose of giving the students a chance to listen to English spoken
by a native speaker and to speak more.

As the first practice in this style, an oral exam and participation

points have been introduced to make this class more effective. In this paper some educational insights forbetter oral classes are given, based on the results of a questionnaire survey.

Keywords：Oral Class, Oral Test, Participation Point, Name Card, Team Teaching

to construct an engaging environment that
promotes proactive student participation in classes
from the beginning. In this paper, an explanation of
the background as to how and why this class stylehas begun at Takuma Campus is given. Some
devises implemented to improve the class, focusing
on the oral exam and participation points are alsopresented. In addition, some educational insights
for better oral classes are given, based on the resultsof a questionnaire survey.

1. Introduction
At Kagawa National College of Technology,
Takuma Campus, until last year, the “English IA2”
first year high school English course in its entirety
has been taught by Japanese English teachers.
Classes are held twice per week (one class hour is 45
minutes), and are aimed at improving the students’
speaking and listening abilities. A Ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science andTechnology authorized textbook for high schooloral communication has usually been used for thiscourse although the school does not necessarily
have to choose this kind of textbook.
From this year, a native speaker of English (oneof the researchers) started teaching English IA2 in ateam teaching style during one of the two classes
held each week. This is a new format for the
Takuma Campus so much consideration wasneeded as for how to grade, how to teach, and how*

2. BackgroundThe subject English IA2 is an integration subject
with English IA1, which mainly focuses on English
grammar, and is graded as “English IA.” Each of
the subjects has two credit values but the credits are
not given separately. The total grading for English
IA is given to the students and they get four credits ifthey achieve a passing score.
As mentioned in a previous section, the two
English IA2 classes were taught by JapaneseEnglish teachers until the last academic year.

沼津工業高等専門学校 教養科** 香川高等専門学校詫間キャンパス 非常勤講師

57

香川高等専門学校研究紀要 3(2012)

Although listening and speaking activities weresometimes given, having an oral exam wasrealistically very difficult taking into the fact thatJapanese English teachers typically have three orfour classes, each of which has about 40 students.
As a result, only written test was usually done tomeasure the students’ improvement on English
communicative skills. If a native teacher ofEnglish taught this class in a team teaching styleenvironment, the number of students that each of theteachers must evaluate would be halved and there
would be the possibility for administering oral
exams and giving students timely feedback.
In addition to this, there arose requests fromstudents’ parents or guardians that they want anative teacher in an English class because they havealready had some of the classes at Takamatsu
Campus.
These are the backgrounds that a native teacher ofEnglish has started teaching at Takuma Campus. In
the next section, we would like to introduce an oral
exam and participation points as the examples ofdevices that we believe make the classes better.

This results to about 10-12 groups for each class,and each group is assigned a designation fromGroup 1 to Group 10 (12). The odd number groups
are examined in Lecture Hall #4, and the evennumber groups are examined in their classroom. A
five-minute examination time for each group was
allocated. Each group has four minutes if they are agroup of 4, and three minutes if they are a group of 3.
For the evaluation, a rubric was prepared (seeAppendix) and used to evaluate student performanceaccording to the given criterion. Examinations
were also video recorded for reference and toassure fair teacher grading. Examinations weredone within normal class hours, usually the lastclass before the quarterly written tests. That is, four
oral exams were given during the year.
The figure below shows the ratio of skit tomemorization that students chose for each exam.
Henceforth, “Spring 1” is for the mid-term exam ofthe spring semester given in June, “Spring 2” is forthe term-final exam of the spring semester in
September, “Fall 1” is for the mid-term exam of thefall semester in December, and “Fall 2” is theterm-final exam of the fall semester in February.

3. Oral Exams and Participation Points

100

3.1. Oral Exams
As was mentioned before, English IA2 has twoclasses per week. One is by a Japanese teacher ofEnglish, and the other is taught in a team teachingenvironment. So it was decided to have two kindsof examinations. One is a 50-point written test toassess the achievement of the classes by theJapanese English teacher, and the other is a 50-point
oral exam for the team teaching classes.
The oral exam has two variations. One ismemorization, in which students must memorize six
dialogues or conversations from the textbook thatthat had previously been covered during class.
The other is a skit. Students are to make an original
skit by themselves, referring to the dialogues orconversations in the textbook. The students are toform a group of three or four people and are offered
the choice of either of the exam options. Students
are required to work together and practice for theoral exam on their own time.

80

60
40

20

skit
memorization

0

Figure 1 Skit to Memorization Ratio
As can be seen from this figure, about 60-80% of
students chose the skit option while only about
20-30% students chose memorization as their oral
test option. This ratio appears almost static fromthe first to the last test. This may partly be due tothe fact that students were encouraged by theteacher to try the skit option as it would give them58

Kazuma FUJII and Robert JOHNSTON : Oral Exam, Participation Points and a Survey of Student Learning Style Preference for English IA2 at Takuma Campus

the opportunity to create their own dialogue about

served as a good tool to motivate the students toparticipate positively as can be seen in Figure 3.
Furthermore, by using name cards, a native
teacher can call them by name, which can sometimes
be a great pleasure for the students. However, as apoint of improvement, the name cards should havebeen made bigger with stronger paper. The paper
this year was so weak that a name card cannot
always stand like the one in Figure 2, and because of
the size, the teacher sometimes cannot read thenames on the cards especially of the students sittingnear the back.

something that they were interested in. It was theresearchers’ aim that empowering the students inthis way would encourage deeper meaningful
thinking about the sentences/phrases used and thus
promote a more lasting impression/permanence inlong-term memory.
3.2. Participation Points
To achieve this aim, name cards were introduced.
As Figure 2 shows, students were to make a namecard, on which they write their names and student
numbers on the front of the card and paste aparticipation record sheet on the back of the card.
When students volunteer an answer or demo atextbook dialogue, they receive a point in the formof a seal on the participation record sheet.
Students are also sometimes selected by a teacher at
random to answer and also receive a mark when
they get a correct answer. The highest number ofpoints accumulated by a single student during theyear was 40, while 6 out of 124 students remained at
0. The average number of points accumulated per
student was about 5.6.

Figure 3 Class State

4. The Results from Questionnaire Surveys
How do the students feel about these new trials
and how do the students’ feelings change? To
examine this, two questionnaire surveys wereconducted at the end of the spring and fall semesters,that is in October and February respectively. In thissection, by showing some of the results of thesurveys, the effects of the new trials in English IA2
will be analyzed.

Figure 2 Name Card
These points are easy for both students andteachers to understand and these points serve as theparticipation points.
Students were informed
during the first team teaching class that theparticipation points counted toward their grade, andas such were encouraged to actively participate
during class. It was felt that this has actually

4.1. Student Response to Oral Examinations
A survey was conducted on whether or not thestudents felt that oral exams effectively improvetheir English communicative skills. Figure 4 below
shows the students' response for this question at the59

香川高等専門学校研究紀要 3(2012)end of the spring semester and Figure 5 shows theirc. Learn how to pronounce English words.

response at the end of the fall semester.

d. Practice time to prepare for the exam is
productive.

These figures show that more than half of thestudents strongly feel or feel that the oral exams are

e. Increase vocabulary.

an effective measure for improving their English

f. Learn to put Japanese into English.

communicative skills. This rate increased as they(2) a. Some students just memorized the sentences

progressed through all four oral exams, namely at

without thinking about the meanings.

the end of the fall semester.

b. Material was forgot soon after the exam.

Although aboutc.

one-third students replied that they did not know orStudents

may

mistakenly

memorizesentences with grammar mistakes.

were unsure as to the effects, it can generally be saidd. It is unfair to grade equally within the samethat this style of oral exams are acceptable by thegroup when the majority of preparation work

students as a whole.

always falls to one student.

8% 1%

3%

Students were told that when they finish making

strongly feel

their skits to bring the skit to the teachers before

feel

38%

50%

starting rehearsals. Regarding the comment in (2),don't know

a way as to ensure the students have the

don't feel

opportunity to practice with more natural or

don't feel at alltrue-to-life skits needs to be devised.

Figure 4 Student Oral Exam Opinion (Spring)

4.2. Student Exam Form Preference
Until last year, only written tests had been
administered in English IA2. The oral exam was
first introduced this year, but do students prefer anoral exam as an aid to improving their English
communicative competence or do they prefer awritten test only?
For investigating the students’ feelings about
this point, we asked them what test form they prefer
for English improvement. Students were asked to
select one of those among “oral exam only”,

Figure 5 Student Oral Exam Opinion (Fall)“written and oral exam” (this year’s style), or
Then for as to why or why not students feel the“written test only” (testing style used up until theoral exam is an effective tool for improving English

previous year). Figure 6 below shows the results at

speaking ability, students were asked to write thethe end of the spring semester and Figure 7 is the one

reasons. Some of the comments arguing for thisat the end of the fall semester.

type of exam that students pointed out are shown in

These results show that both at the end of spring(1) and arguments against are shown in (2).

and fall semesters most students chose an oral andwritten exams as the preferred examination form

(1) a. Opportunity to memorize English sentenceswith this rate increasing toward the end of thethat were made themselves.

academic year. The number of the students who

b. Increase chances to speak English.

prefer only written tests decreased from 23% to 16%,60

Kazuma FUJII and Robert JOHNSTON : Oral Exam, Participation Points and a Survey of Student Learning Style Preference for English IA2 at Takuma Campus

while the number of the students who prefer onlyis about 50.1 minutes shorter than the time theyspent studying for the written tests in the fallsemester. It can be said this time is valuable inthat the students practice speaking English, but thisis not sufficient for retaining the skit in long-term
memory.
The teachers need to think about
implementing a device for increasing students’practice time.

oral exams slightly increased.

Test

Figure 6 Student Preferred Exam Form (Spring)Time (min.)Spring 1

100.2

Spring 2

92.1

Fall 1

79.5

Fall 2

90.3

Table 1 Preparation/Practice Time for Oral Exams
Test

Time (min.)Fall 1

139.1

Fall 2

142.1

Table 2 Study Time for Written Tests

Figure 7 Student Preferred Exam Form (Fall)4.4. Participation Points and Grading
As mentioned earlier, we introduced name cards

These results show that both at the end of springand participation points to make the participationand fall semesters most students chose an oral andgrading clearer and motivate the students to join thewritten tests as the preferred test form with this rateclass more actively. This was done to promote inincreasing toward the end of the academic year.

students attitudes to try to communicate voluntarily

The number of the students who prefer only written

and actively without being afraid of making

tests decreased from 23% to 16%, while the number

mistakes.

of the students who prefer only oral tests slightly

communication

increased.

participation points were used as a criterion for

The subject English IA2 focuses on oral
and

this

is

a

reasonwhy

grading.
However, the figures below show that the

4.3. Preparation Time for the Oral Exam
The time that the students spent for creating askit and preparing for the exam (including
memorizing) was surveyed. Table 1 below shows
about how many minutes students spent in
preparing for each of the exams.
For thecomparison, they were also asked how many
minutes they studied for the fall semester’s two
written tests. The results are in Table 2.
On average, students spent about 90.5 minutes
making and practicing a skit or memorizing
dialogues or conversations in the textbook. This

students’ feelings are not quite the same as the
instructors. These are the results of a questionnaire
survey of whether students feel the necessity to takeparticipation points into grading.
At the end of the spring semester, only about 30%
students feel that participation points have to betaken into account as grading, whereas about 47%
do not feel the necessity. At the end of the year,
however, the students’ feelings changed a little.
About 47% feel it is necessary while about 32% do
not feel so. About one-third of the students do not

61

香川高等専門学校研究紀要 3(2012)

understand

why

the

participation

pointsareskills. Students were asked to choose one of thoseamong “two times by a Japanese teacher ofEnglish”(only JTE), “one time by a JapaneseEnglish teacher and one time by team teaching”(oneJTE one TT), “two times by team teaching”(onlyTT), “one time by a Japanese English teacher and
one time by a native speaker of English and noJapanese English teacher”(one JTE one NS), or “twotimes by a native speaker of English and no JapaneseEnglish teacher”(only NS).
The results are shown in the figures below.
Figure 10 shows the results of the survey at the endof the spring semester and Figure 11 shows that of
the one taken at the end of the fall semester.

important as a grading material. We should havemade more explanations about the importance of theattitudes trying to convey their feelings or speak
positively.

The researchers would like toinvestigate how to improve this in the future.

Figure 8 Student Participation Points Opinion(Spring)

Figure 10 Student Preferred Class Form (Spring)

Figure 9 Student Participation Points Opinion(Fall)

4.5. Student Class Form Preference
From this year, the first year students at Takuma
Campus have attended English IA2 in the form of
two classes per week, one time with a JapaneseEnglish teacher, and one time with a JapaneseEnglish teacher and a native speaker of English. Thisis one of the big changes from last year.
As such, how do the students feel about thisyear’s class form? Do students prefer a teamteaching class two times a week or two classes by aJapanese English teacher like the previous year or
do they prefer the class form from this year?
Students were asked about the class form that they
feel will improve their English communicative

Figure 11 Student Preferred Class Form (Fall)
As can be seen in these figures, students most
prefer class form from this year. More than
two-thirds of the students prefer this style. The twoclass team teaching style follows but this showed
little change, whereas the only JTE style increased
from 6% to 12%.
5. Conclusion
In this paper an explanation of the background62

Kazuma FUJII and Robert JOHNSTON : Oral Exam, Participation Points and a Survey of Student Learning Style Preference for English IA2 at Takuma Campus

limited to Kagawa National College of Technology.

and implementation of the new oral class style at
Takuma Campus was presented in Section 2. In
Section 3, an introduction of the oral exam andparticipation points with their purposes is presented.
In Section 4, students’ feelings towards the oral
exam and participation points were examined basedon the results of a questionnaire survey.
As Figures 4-7 show, many students feel that theoral exam is an effective means to improve theirEnglish communicative skills and also prefer thisform of exam accompany a written test over a
written test only examination form. In addition,
this rate increased as the year progressed.
However, as Figure 8 and Figure 9 show, students
had to be told why participation points would be
used as part of the grading criteria, although thisseemed to encourage the students to take a more
active role in class as seen in Figure 3.
Finally, some points that demand more attention
or further study are as follows.
First, some students (about 4 students in eachclass) had trouble forming groups for the oral exam.
Many of them did not communicate with otherstudents for the purpose of making a group without
assistance from a teacher.
In this case, theJapanese teacher needed to council those students,
find and place them with a suitable group. Thisoccurred during every exam preparation period.
Therefore, from next year, students must be told in
advance the importance of communication, whether
in English or Japanese. Additionally, some steps
must be devised for handling those students.
Otherwise, it will remain a burden for the teachers.
Second, in some classes, students who raise theirhands voluntarily are limited, even though theyknow the participation points are counted towards
their grade. These attitudes are partly related to thestudents’ personality, and this is a difficult problem.
In these cases, the teachers will have to devise someother activities that engage all students. By having
thestudents realize
theimportanceofcommunicating positively, it is hoped that they will
enjoy communicating in English with others.
It is the goal of the researchers that this study
directs future actions taken in implementing amore effective English IA2 course at but not

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香川高等専門学校研究紀要 3(2012)

AppendixStudent #Student Name

Assessment Rubric for Oral Communications I Exam III
Kagawa Kousen, 2011
CATEGORY4

3

2

A few minor

Grammatical errors

difficulties arose

led to many minor

from not using thedifficulties or one

grammar studied in

major breakdown inclass.

communication.

Grammar covered

errors severely

to communicate

hamperedeffectively.

Vocabulary

Score

Grammaticalin class was used
Grammar1

communication.

A few minor

AB
Communication

Some difficulties
studied in classdifficulties arose

was used tofrom not using

express ideas

appropriate

was severely
arose due to limited

Vocabulary

hampered due tovocabulary and/orlack ofbad diction.

eloquently.

vocabulary.

vocabulary.
Much effort wasSome effort wasStudent acted asSome minor

required torequired to maintaina facilitator,difficulties

maintain thethe conversation.

Fluency

helping themaintaining theconversation.
There may have

conversation flow

conversation were

There may havebeen a few longand develop.

evident.

been many longpauses.
pauses.
Students' oral

Students' oral

Students' oral

Students' oral

activity lasted theactivity lasted about

activity lasted

entire time

¾ the total time

approximately ½ theexpected.

expected.

time expected.

activity lasted
less than ¼ ofTime

the time
expected.
Some
No serious problems
communication

Pronunciation,

problems arose due

inflection, and/or

to unclear

expression

pronunciation

confused

arose, but better
Pronunciation
pronunciation,
was clear andinflection, and/or

Voice andinflection andnon-verbal

non-verbal
expressions were

and/or lack ofcommunication.

inflection and/orStudent may

expression. Student

have been very

may have beendifficult to hear.

communication could

communication
used to enhance

have madecommunication.
communication more
efficient.
difficult to hear.
Total64