Oral Assignments: Speak, Record, Get Real Feedback
Speaking is the moment of truth in any language class. It's also the hardest skill to give every student a fair shot at practicing — and the most painful to grade at scale. With v1.7.0, Lingua introduces Oral Assignments: students record themselves answering a prompt, and they get a full rubric score with written feedback in seconds. No fishing for a quiet recording spot, no thirty audio files to wade through, no late nights with headphones on.
Video Overview
The Bottleneck We've All Hit
You know speaking is the skill your students need the most practice in — and you know the system isn't built to give them that practice. Class time gets you a few minutes per student per lesson. A formal presentation once a semester. Maybe a casual oral here or there if you have the energy. The reason it doesn't happen more often isn't motivation; it's the math. Grading thirty audio files takes a full evening, and a teacher with a full evening of free time is a rare creature indeed. So speaking assignments quietly shrink.
Oral Assignments fix the bottleneck. Students record straight in Lingua, the rubric scoring happens automatically, and you still have the audio whenever you want to listen.
A Rubric That Treats Speaking Seriously
Every oral submission is evaluated across four dimensions, each scored out of five for a total of twenty. The evaluation knows your prompt, your students' proficiency level, and the vocabulary or grammar you wanted them to use. So they don't just get a score — they get specific feedback on what they did well and what they could push further.
Pronunciation
Clarity, intelligibility, how naturally the sounds of the target language are coming out.
Vocabulary
Range, precision, register — and whether they used the words you wanted them to use.
Grammar
Accuracy and complexity, with attention to whatever you set as a focus for the assignment.
Content
Did they actually answer the prompt? Did they have something to say? Was it relevant?
A real score with a real reason behind it
Every category comes with written justification. Students see exactly why they earned what they earned and what would have pushed them up a band. You can override any score and add your own notes when something needs a teacher's eye.
No Apps, No Uploads
Students record right in their browser. A clean recorder with the prompt visible, a timer, a waveform — that's it. No app to download, no file to upload, no "did it save?" panic. You set how long their response should be and a hard cap on the recording length. They see both. If they hit the cap, the recording closes cleanly. No more "I went over and now I can't submit" emails.
Use an Image as the Prompt
Oral assignments can use an image alongside (or instead of) a text prompt. Students describe what they see, react to a visual scenario, or use a picture as a jumping-off point for a story. The image stays visible while they speak so they can keep referring back to it. The grading takes the image into account too — so your feedback isn't generic, it's about how well they actually engaged with what they were looking at.
Quetzalita: A Coach in the Wings
Before they hit record, students can open up Quetzalita and prep. They can ask for vocabulary, clarify what the prompt is asking, get help naming objects in an image, or talk through what a strong answer might cover. She knows the prompt, the topic, the vocabulary you wanted, and the proficiency level. What she won't do is write the response for them.
Preparation, not dictation
Quetzalita will name things, suggest vocabulary, and outline what a good response might touch on. But she won't hand the student a script to read aloud. Reading off a script isn't speaking practice — it's just a different way to avoid it. She's there to help your students think, not to think for them. And the moment recording starts, she closes — no mid-take hints.
Limited Attempts, Honestly Counted
Set how many real attempts each student gets — they always see the remaining count before each take, so they can decide whether to use one. Accidental taps and three-second test clips don't count against the limit; only real recordings do. So nobody gets penalized for fumbling the start button.
Transcript and Feedback, Side by Side
The moment a student submits, they get a written transcript of what they said and the full rubric evaluation alongside it. Score in each category, written feedback for each, summary of what went well and what to work on. You see all the same — plus the original audio, so if you ever want to listen back and compare what's on the page to what's on the recording, it's one click away.
Secure Mode and Hidden Prompts
Oral assignments work with Secure Testing Mode if you need them locked down — students can't leave the page without it being logged, and the session is monitored. You can also hide the prompt so students see only a placeholder, then read it aloud or hand out a printed version in class. Together those two settings give you the control you need for a real high-stakes oral assessment.
A View That Tells You What the Class Heard
The teacher results page has three views: a Rubric card showing how the score distribution sits across all four categories (instantly tells you whether pronunciation is dragging or content is solid), a Submissions tab with every student and their graded response, and an Insights tab that pulls patterns across the whole class. That last one is the one most teachers end up loving — it's not a grade report, it's a teaching plan in disguise.
Patterns over papers
Individual scores tell you how each student did. The class Insights tell you what the class as a whole struggled to express — the vocabulary gaps, the grammar patterns that keep recurring, the topics they couldn't quite cover. That's the data you actually need to plan the next lesson.