Copyright © The Author(s) 2021 Jurnal Studi Guru dan Pembelajaran, Vol. 4, No. 1, April 2021 https://e-journal.my.id/jsgp/article/view/459 24 Oral Placement Test as The Indicator of Bilingual Students’ Speaking Skills Hanifah Hifni 1 , Nida Husna 2 , Didin Nuruddin Hidayat 3* 1, 2, 3, UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, Indonesia hani.hifni@gmail.com 1 , nida.husna@uinjkt.ac.id 2 , didin.nuruddin@uinjkt.ac.id 3* Abstract This study investigates whether there is a significant relationship between the speaking ability of students in bilingual classes and their daily conversation performance, as reported in the oral placement test. The researchers analysed the relationship between the placement test scores and the speaking performance of 146 first-year bilingual students attending an Islamic Junior High School. An oral interview was applied to determine their speaking ability on the placement test and was conducted again to test their speaking ability at the end of the semester. Pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, comprehension, and fluency were the scoring criteria for assessing the oral interview to indicate the learners’ English performance in speaking and their oral abiliti es. Each student is tested individually in more or less than ten minutes. A Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was applied to determine the strength of the correlation between the oral placement test and those from the oral interview at the end of the semester. The data indicated that the results of the oral placement test when the students are still considered first-year students are still the same with their speaking at the end of the term; therefore, there is no significance and changes. These results turned out to be affected by the students’ learning style at the previous school, background knowledge, and the teacher’s teaching methods. Keywords: billingual class, language test oral interview, placement test, speaking test Introduction For decades, public institutions have used placement exams to determine whether incoming students were prepared or not. When students have finished their studies, they need to continue to the next level of an academic institution. To have a place and being accepted into a particular level or school, one needs to take a placement test. However, emerging information reveals that the test has little correlation to students’ future success in society, casting doubt on their use and achievement. One of the prominent disadvantages of the use of placement tests was shown on Shimizu's (2002) study, which showed that placement tests can affect the psychological impact on lower-level students. The results of the placement test can express the sense of inferiority and diminish their motivation to learn, as the respondents know their level (Shimizu, 2002). The idea of the test could explicitly prevent the students’ real progress, and knowledge is giving them to think twice (Burdman, 2012). Some of them are rethinking whether the tests are fair to students and wondering if their traditional use produces an actual barrier to complete institution application. Some studies argued that test scores from placement tests are interpreted based on the purpose and context, in this case, whether the students ready for developmental education rather than producing a predictive relationship between their previous scores and grades. The potential to develop students’ outcomes has intrigued many writers in recent research studies.