Talking and testing : discourse approaches to the assessment of oral proficiency

✍ Scribed by Richard Young; Agnes Weiyun He

• Publisher: J. Benjamins Pub. Co
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 368
• Series: Studies in bilingualism, v. 14
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book brings together a collection of current research on the assessment of oral proficiency in a second language. Fourteen chapters focus on the use of the language proficiency interview or LPI to assess oral proficiency. The volume addresses the central issue of validity in proficiency assessment: the ways in which the language proficiency interview is accomplished through discourse. Contributors draw on a variety of discourse perspectives, including the ethnography of speaking, conversation analysis, language socialization theory, sociolinguistic variation theory, human interaction resea. Read more...

✦ Table of Contents

Content: Language profiency interviews : a discourse approach / Agnes Weiyun He and Richard Young --
Re-analyzing the OPI : how much does it look like natural conversation? / Marysia Johnson and Andrea Tyler --
Evaluating learner interactional skills : conversation at the micro level / Heidi Riggenbach --
What happens when there's no one to talk to? : Spanish foreign language discourse in simulated oral proficiency interviews / Dale April Koike --
Answering questions in LPIs : a case study / Agnes Weiyun He --
Framing the language proficiency interview as a speech event : native and non-native speakers' questions / Carol Lynn Moder and Gene B. Halleck --
Miscommunication in language proficiency interviews of first-year German students : a comparison with natural conversation / Maria M. Egbert --
Knowledge structures in oral proficiency interviews for international teaching assistants / Bernard Mohan --
The use of communication strategies in language proficiency interviews / Yumiko Yoshida-Morise --
Meaning negotiation in the Hungarian oral proficiency examination of English / Lucy Katona. Maintaining American face in the Korean oral exam : reflections on the power of cross-cultural context / Catherine E. Davies --
Confirmation sequences as interactional resources in Korean language proficiency interviews / Kyu-hyun Kim and Kyung-hee Suh --
Divergent frame interpretations in oral proficiency interview interaction / Steven Ross --
"Let them eat cake!" or How toavoid losing your head in cross-cultural conversations / Richard Young and Gene B. Halleck.
Abstract:

A collection of papers that document various dimensions of the ways in which the language learner and the language proficiency interviewer use language to accomplish oral language assessment tasks. Read more...