Ko Guat Hua, Zhang Hui Mei, Li Jing Xin

Abstract

Communication has become important means of acquiring and exchanging information as well as building social relations in the 21st century. Primary school teachers should train their pupils the various communicating skills and assess their communicative ability. In Singapore, primary one oral examination has taken the form of picture conversation to assess pupils' oral expression ability and using short passage reading to assess pupils' pronunciation and fluency in reading, neglecting pupils' communicative ability assessment. American sociolinguist like Hymes pointed out that communicative ability includes knowledge of rules in language and the ability to use language appropriately in social interaction. Canale and Swain proposed that communicative ability includes grammatical rules, social interactive language ability and strategies used in interaction. This paper attempts to investigate using various questioning techniques to assess pupils' communicative ability such as clarifying, questioning, comparing, rejecting, agreeing, explaining etc. We will give examples from one to one pupils' interview in Singapore to explain how to use questioning to assess pupils' communicative ability and made conclusion from the research.

Keyword(s) : Questioning techniques, communicative ability, assessment