Oral Assessment: Code-Switching and a Noisy Recording
At a secondary school in Rundu, 24 candidates complete the internally assessed oral. Candidate M presents for 3 minutes 48 seconds on the topic 'How young people can keep Rumanyo strong in towns'. The rubric is content 8, fluency 6, language 4, delivery 2. In the recording, a ceiling fan creates a hum for 25 seconds and one sentence is inaudible. M uses 14 English words ('social media', 'interview', 'radio station', 'culture'), two filled pauses, and no long silences. Teacher A proposes fluency 6 and language 4, arguing that the English terms are modern and unavoidable. Teacher B proposes fluency 4 and language 2, arguing that a First Language oral should not reward code-switching. The panel must submit one mark and a short moderation note. The school's policy says background noise not caused by the candidate must not affect the score, and code-switching is penalised only where it prevents communication.
1. Using the rubric, decide the fluency and language marks. Justify each mark with evidence from the recording description, not with general views about code-switching.
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Fluency 5/6. The candidate speaks for 3:48 with no long silences and only two filled pauses; that is sustained, coherent speech. The missing sixth mark is for the two fillers and the slightly uneven flow around the English terms, not for the fan. Language 3/4. Fourteen English words in roughly four minutes is limited code-switching, and the items named are technical or institutional terms. The rubric penalises code-switching only where it prevents communication; here the listener can follow the argument. A 4/4 would imply no noticeable limitation, which is not true; a 2/4 would treat a few borrowings as breakdown, which the evidence does not support. Do not average the teachers' proposals: 6+4 and 4+2 both misread the rubric. Record the two marks separately and note the exact English items so the moderation panel can see the basis.
2. How should the panel handle the 25-second fan hum and the inaudible sentence? State what to do before marks are finalised and what to record.
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Treat the 25-second hum as an environmental fault, not as candidate performance. Before finalising, the panel should listen once more with headphones, mark the inaudible sentence's time-code, and check whether it contains a content point that is made elsewhere. If the sentence is the only evidence for a content point, do not deduct that point; if the whole response is unintelligible, arrange a re-record under the school's oral policy. The moderation note should state the time-code, duration, cause, whether meaning was recoverable, and the decision. Do not add a delivery penalty for the fan; delivery 2/2 may still be defensible if the candidate's own voice is clear. The note protects the school if the candidate appeals and stops the next panel from treating the same noise as a language error.
3. Teacher B wants to add a written warning to the candidate's record about 'mixing languages'. Evaluate this request against assessment validity and fairness.
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Reject the warning. Code-switching is already a rubric issue, not misconduct. A written warning would follow the candidate into later assessments and would punish a feature that the rubric says may be acceptable when it does not block communication. It would also be inconsistent: the candidate used 14 English words, mostly for modern terms, and still communicated. The fair response is a comment on the oral record: 'Uses some English technical terms; keep developing Rumanyo equivalents where they exist.' That is formative, not disciplinary. If the school wants to reduce code-switching, it should teach register and provide a glossary of current terms before the assessment, not single out one candidate after the event.