2014 Articles

Paired and Group Oral Assessment

Sun, Haimei

The assessment of second language (L2) speaking has long been an important yet challenging area of research in language testing. L2 testers are often concerned with designing authentic speaking tasks that resemble real-life speaking activities so that score interpretations are generalizable to non-test contexts. The conversational nature of speaking skills has promoted the widespread integration of more authentic and interactive assessment tasks, such as paired or group orals. Such direct test formats typically involve candidates interacting together to perform a task while one or more examiners observe their performances and rate their language proficiency (Van Moere, 2013, p. 1).