What kind of interaction receives high and low ratings in Oral Proficiency Interviews?

Abstract

Based on a Conversation Analysis (CA) of a corpus of Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPI), the study asks what kind of interaction receives high and low ratings in OPIs. The discussion focuses on issues of interactional organisation, considering turn-taking, sequence, repair and topic development in relation to candidate scores. The study presents findings of two funded studies of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) Speaking Test (IST), which is one part of IELTS, a major international English proficiency test.The article explains how interaction in the IST is organised in interactional terms and how this organisation generates opportunities to differentiate high-and low-scoring interaction. The study then lists the interactional characteristics of high-scoring and low-scoring tests, based on an inductive search through the database and analysis of the micro-interaction. Extracts are presented to support characterisations. Differences in score correlate to the following interactional differences in Parts 1 and 3 of the IST: ability to answer the question, engage with and develop a topic coherently, amount of trouble and repair, lexical choice, and identity construction. In Part 2 of the IST, length of turn may also be related to score.

Interactional Features of L2 Pragmatic Interaction in Role‐Play Speaking Assessment

“…The findings in this study should be discussed in terms of how they can be substantiated and generalizable. The length-based measures are reported as important variables that predict speaking performance levels in OPI (e.g., Seedhouse, 2012) and monologic speaking performance (e.g., Iwashita et al, 2008), which resembles the findings in this study. Yet caution needs to be made, especially when using lengthbased measures for predicting interactive performance of informal pragmatic functions (e.g., a conversation between classmates), which will likely involve a higher degree of interactivity with shorter turns.…”

“…An increasing line of research on assessing interactional and pragmatic competencies (e.g., Galaczi, 2014;Gan, 2010;Lam, 2018;Plough, Banerjee, & Iwashita, 2018;Seedhouse, 2012;Taylor & Wigglesworth, 2009;Youn, 2015) calls for the detailed empirical profile of L2 pragmatic interaction. L2 pragmatics is a theoretically rich multidimensional construct grounded in various theories (Taguchi & Roever, 2017).…”

“…Given that this study examines the language test data, the nature of L2 pragmatic interaction needs to be discussed in relation to assessment task types. The distinct nature of elicited performance specific to assessment task types has been examined qualitatively using CA (e.g., Galaczi, ; Gan, ; Kasper & Ross, ; Lam, ; Ross & Kasper, ; Seedhouse, ; Seedhouse & Egbert, ; Youn, ; Young & He, ). This line of qualitative research illuminates how learners utilize interactional resources to demonstrate their speaking proficiency specific to speaking assessment task types.…”

“…To this end, previous CA‐based research on test‐taker discourse illuminates what interactional features characterize varying levels of interactive speaking performance. For example, Seedhouse () showed that features that distinguish high and low OPI performances were their abilities to answer questions, coherent topic development, and length of turn. Lam’s () CA‐based study on group speaking assessment discourse revealed that speakers’ abilities to respond to a previous speaker were noticeably different depending on their levels.…”

Managing proposal sequences in role-play assessment: Validity evidence of interactional competence across levels

“…Investigations into second language (L2) interactional competence as a target domain in the assessment of spoken language ability have been a growing focus of research (Roever & Kasper, 2018). However, lingering research issues include the difficulty of isolating particular resources that an individual examinee employs during assessment interaction (Young, 2000) and the need for more robust evidence of interactional competence at various performance levels (Seedhouse, 2012). Without addressing these issues, claims of construct validity in assessment that seek to target interactional competence lack a clear empirical basis.…”