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The influence of interlocutor proficiency in a paired oral assessment

University of Hawai'i at Mnoa, USA, davisle{at}hawaii.edu

The use of pair work in speaking assessment may encourage collaboration in the classroom and has other advantages (Saville & Hargreaves, 1999; Taylor, 2000) but from a measurement perspective, the paired oral format may be problematic because a partner may unfairly influence an examinee's performance or otherwise bias scores. In this study, the influence of interlocutor proficiency on speaking performance was examined in a group of 20 first-year students at a Chinese university. The students were divided into groups of relatively high and low English proficiency and tested once with a partner of similar proficiency and once with a partner of higher or lower proficiency. Interlocutor proficiency level had no observable effect on Rasch analysis ability measures, but lower-level examinees produced more language (words) when working with a higher-level partner. The majority of dyads produced collaborative interactions (Galaczi, 2008), unless an examinee was paired with a much lower-level partner, in which case the interaction tended to be asymmetric. Overall, these data suggest that proficiency differences among examinees need not preclude use of the paired oral test format.

Key Words: interaction • oral proficiency • pair task • Rasch analysis • spoken language assessment

Language Testing, Vol. 26, No. 3, 367-396 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0265532209104667


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