In oral proficiency tests there are occurrences of trouble in interaction such as misunderstanding, non hearing or lack of understanding which may cause breakdown in communication. Within the context of the question-answer framework of an oral proficiency test this study investigates the interactive nature of spoken discourse between students and assessors when there is trouble in talk as perceived by the assessors, with a focus on how they accommodate to the students. A sample of twenty oral transcripts and tapes of the 1992 Victorian Certificate of Education (V.C.E.) Italian Common Assessment Task (C.A.T. 2) were randomly selected and examined. By using Conversation Analysis methodology the purpose of the study was to investigate in repair sequences types of assessor accommodation – how the assessors modified their utterances – the kinds of trouble perceived by assessors, what triggered assessor accommodation and whether the accommodations facilitated student response and participation. This study has implications for assessor training since it highlights which strategies are most successful for ensuring student understanding, participation and appropriate responses as well as demonstrating why and in which environments assessors accommodate.
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Cited by (7)
Cited by seven other publications
Filipi, Anna, Binh Thanh Ta & Maryanne Theobald
2022. Storytelling Practices: Methods and Insights from Conversation Analysis and Their Applications. In Storytelling Practices in Home and Educational Contexts, ► pp. 3 ff.
Ince, Emine
2021. Le jugement des examinateurs dans le cadre de l’épreuve d’expression orale du Test d’évaluation de français (TEF). Mesure et évaluation en éducation 44:3 ► pp. 87 ff.
ShinDongil & 김종국
2009. Exploring the relationship between predicted and actual test task functions in English speaking test. English Teaching 64:2 ► pp. 103 ff.
Brown, Annie, Noriko Iwashita & Tim McNamara
2005. AN EXAMINATION OF RATER ORIENTATIONS AND TEST-TAKER PERFORMANCE ON ENGLISH-FOR-ACADEMIC-PURPOSES SPEAKING TASKS. ETS Research Report Series 2005:1 ► pp. i ff.
Kondo‐Brown, Kimi
2004. Investigating Interviewer‐Candidate Interactions During Oral Interviews for Child L2 Learners. Foreign Language Annals 37:4 ► pp. 601 ff.
Brown, Annie
2003. Interviewer variation and the co-construction of speaking proficiency. Language Testing 20:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
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