This paper examines the University of Edinburgh's three-week Spoken English course, focusing on curriculum development, assessment, and methodology. The course aimed to enhance fluency, pronunciation, and listening skills for upper-intermediate adult learners through communicative language teaching (CLT). However, assessment methods were misaligned with course aims, failing to fully engage students and assess communicative skills. This paper identifies four key problems with current assessment practices, including teacher-centered feedback and a narrow focus on isolated performance. The paper proposes integrating self-assessment and peer assessment to foster learner autonomy and better align assessment with course objectives. Evaluation methods include updated student questionnaires and teacher interviews.
Jason Taro Somerville (Fri,) studied this question.