It is a fact that the new English textbooks written by Pro. Hoang Van Van and co-authors have made the context of English language teaching (ELT) in Vietnam an enormous shift from teacher-centered to learner-centered which focuses on communication. The introduction of the books, however, has posed many teachers of English at upper-high schools challenges, especially speaking teaching and assessment. From those backdrops, it is necessary to conduct studies to explore teachers and students perceptions of the issue aiming at providing a theoretical framework for assessing speaking. The purpose of this study is to investigate the task types of speaking and criteria for speaking assessment that teachers at upper-high schools used to assess speaking.