Oral tests for speaking skills evaluate two major skills: linguistic competence, including accuracy of pronunciation, vocabulary, and structure, and communication ease. Four factors affect students' oral performance: verbal intelligence, short-term auditory and visual memory, sound-symbol association skill, and grammatical analysis. Personality also affects test performance. Oral exams come in a variety of formats and types, and these differences may affect student output. Students need continuous feedback on their oral skills, which can be done by frequent in-class evaluation or a series of short speaking tests. Regular oral test formats can be indirect (including story retelling, cloze procedure, description of events, marking a picture, and reading aloud), or direct, which are closer to real life situations and use another person as a stimulus for response (including mock lectures, interaction in groups, role-playing, and oral interview). Both direct and indirect tests are usually administered by two examiners, with either simultaneous or delayed scoring, either of which requires human participation. Scoring methods are sometimes controversial because of difficulties in assessing certain criteria. Several rating scales are currently in use. A variety of problems are associated with oral testing, including validity, practicality, and lack of trained evaluators, but the need for it remains. (MSE)