Speaker
Description
Eliciting specific behaviors in speaking tests can be complex. This is especially so in peer-to-peer tests in which control over the flow of interaction is left up to the students. This presentation will detail and evaluate the steps taken to refine a peer-to-peer speaking test intended for Japanese university students. The paired speaking test was created with the intent to elicit and assess student production of key skills and behaviors related to interactional competence in English. The presentation will focus on how the task design has been amended over time in an attempt to incorporate ideas such as patterns of interaction (Galaczi, 2008), intersubjectivity (Burch and Kley, 2020; Lam, 2018), and Galaczi and Taylor’s (2018) construct of interactional competence into task design and assessment. How these ideas are represented in task types, and the efficacy of those tasks in eliciting the desired behaviors from test takers will be evaluated using selected excerpts and general data from student performances. Results from a questionnaire related to speaking experiences in Japanese high schools that was completed by first year students from three Japanese universities will also be used to give supplementary contextual insight into aspects of task design and student performances. Strengths and weaknesses of past iterations of the test, as well as the current approach will be discussed to hopefully serve as a useful reference for other teachers and researchers who are interested in utilizing peer-to-peer speaking tests to measure interactional competence.
