Retired DU Professor Proposes Oral Communication Testing at EFLU

Hyderabad: Prof. Rama Mathew, a retired professor from the University of Delhi (DU), on Monday said that assessment practices must adapt to the multilingual needs of India, especially in the context of the National Education Policy 2020. She advocated assessments that prioritise communication and contextual relevance.

Speaking skills, she noted, often went untested, and she recommended that the English and Foreign Languages University (Eflu) consider establishing itself as a proficiency testing centre, with a particular focus on oral communication. She was speaking at an event was organised by the Eflu’s department of English as second language (ESL) studies. aimed to deepen understanding of critical issues in language education.

Concerns such as teachers’ assessment literacy and the anxiety faced by learners during evaluations were also explored in detail. Prof. Kishore Kumar, dean of the School of English Language Education, and Dr M. Udaya, coordinator, were present.

Prof. Mathew also called for teacher training programmes to effectively assess speaking skills and discussed the importance of greater teacher autonomy in the assessment process. She also took a note of the impact of end-of-term exams on classroom activities and proposed that speaking skills should be evaluated by both classroom teachers and examination boards.

Prof. Mathew is a former teacher at Eflu, and has led education projects in Bangladesh, and contributed to teacher development initiatives.