An Analysis of Oral Testing in Pairs

概要

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As English language teaching in Japanese educational settings shifted its focus more towards fostering students' communicative abilities, the need to directly assess their spoken English abilities through oral tests has increased in recent years. If we are to use oral tests as achievement tests, we need to know what actually happens when students converse during oral tests. Although quite detailed qualitative analyses have been carried out on such proficiency tests like those of UCLES (Lazaraton 2002 and others), little research has been conducted on the practice of oral tests in Japanese schools.This study will show what actually happened during an oral test given at the end of a pre-intermediate general English university course. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the language produced during the test will be carried out. Quantitative analyses will be carried out as to the number of turns, gender difference, mean length of utterance (MLU), test marks given, and partner familiarities. In the qualitative analysis, different features of discourse will be highlighted. This will provide an objective look into what could happen in oral tests carried out as part of achievement testing at schools.
2006-12-30