As a result of the fact that judgments of non-native speech are closely tied to social biases, oral proficiency ratings are susceptible to error because of rater background and social attitudes. In the present study we seek first to estimate the variance attributable to rater background and attitudinal variables on novice raters’ assessments of L2 spoken English. Second, we examine the effects of minimal training in reducing the potency of those trait-irrelevant rater factors. Accordingly, we examined the relative impact of rater differences on TOEFL iBT® speaking scores. Eighty-two untrained raters judged 112 speech samples produced by TOEFL® examinees. Findings revealed that approximately 20% of untrained raters’ score variance was, in part, a result of their background and attitudinal factors. The strongest predictor was the raters’ own native speaker status. However, minimal online training dramatically reduced the impact of rater background and attitudinal variables for a subsample of high- and low-severity raters. Implications suggest that brief and user-friendly rater-training sessions offer the promise of mitigating rater bias, at least in the short run. This procedure can be adopted in assessment and other related fields of applied linguistics.

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High‐stakes tasks may prevent language learners from performing successfully due to factors of “communicative stress” (Skehan, 1996, p. 52). Little research, however, has directly examined phonological patterns in learners’ performances on low‐stakes, medium‐stakes, and high‐stakes classroom tasks. The current study investigated the oral performance of 37 intensive English program students on a low‐stakes classroom presentation, a medium‐stakes classroom achievement assessment, and a high‐stakes end‐of‐term exit assessment. Suprasegmental measures of rate, fluency, prominence, and pitch were analyzed instrumentally. The researchers conducted mixed factorial analyses of variance and regression analyses to determine the effect of the stakes of the task on speech performance and scores. Findings reveal that students gave prominence to more words, had a decreased mean length of run, and had a narrower pitch range on the high‐stakes exit assessment. Furthermore, frequent phonological features significantly predicted task scores. The researchers discuss implications with regard to how teachers can implement a variety of tasks of different stakes in the classroom to allow opportunities for learners to improve their speech performance inside and outside of the classroom.

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Adopting Brazil’s (1997) prosodic framework, this study examined whether proficiency and study abroad experience impact second language (L2) English learners’ spoken production of speech acts. Twenty-four native English speakers and 64 Japanese learners of L2 English participated in the study. The L2 learner group was divided into three sub-groups: (1) high proficiency learners with study abroad (SA) experience (2) low proficiency learners with no SA experience, and (3) high proficiency learners without SA experience. Participants completed an oral discourse completion task that assessed their ability to produce two speech acts (requests and opinions) in high- and low-imposition situations. Prosodic features including intonation, pitch range, and sentence prominence were analyzed via PRAAT. The findings revealed a complex interplay between proficiency and SA experience on pragma-prosodic production. Implications suggest that SA may have the added benefit of providing the backdrop for authentic contextual functions of prosody in high- and low- imposition situations.