Introduction


Testing language abilities has become a widely discussed point of foreign language teaching in recent years. In the past, “the areas of second language development and second language testing have remained remarkably separate from one another and have been influenced by generally different perspectives” (Skehan 1998: 153). Moreover, new approaches to teaching English put an emphasis on developing speaking and real life communication. Additionally, the success in learning a foreign language is often associated with the ability to speak freely in everyday life situations.
These days, language teaching and language testing come hand in hand, overlap with each other, which is due to the development of The Communicative Approach. In this method the stress is put on the equal development of four basic skills: speaking, writing, listening and reading. In such a case, it is obvious that testing must be pointed directly at these four skills and that tests have to be constructed in such a way as to measure students’ abilities within these skills.
The aim of this paper is to try to answer several questions connected with the testing, for example: What are tests in general? What are the most and least popular oral testing techniques? What is the lowest percentage level of satisfactory mark? How do teachers cope with students’ stress? And how do teachers treat different types of mistakes?
Nevertheless, it should be taken into consideration that speaking is that aspect of English which brings about difficulties and causes anxiety in learners. All the teachers have to cope with students’ reluctance and also with their lack of motivation to speak in the classroom. Therefore, these requires foreign language teachers to search for attractive and effective methods of developing speaking in the classroom as well as catching the learners’ attention.

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