Читать книгу The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics - Carol A. Chapelle - Страница 126

In an early attempt to measure interactional abilities, Walters (2007, 2009) worked in a conversation analytic framework and attempted to measure test takers' receptive and productive knowledge of features of sequence organization and responses to social actions. He attained only very low reliabilities, illustrating the difficulty of measuring minute features of interaction.

In a groundbreaking study, Youn (2013, 2015) took a different approach. Employing an interactional competence perspective, she had 102 test takers of different proficiency levels perform two role plays with a trained interlocutor as well as a monologue. She scored performances on the following criteria:

 content delivery: smooth and fluid turn taking;

 language use: deployment of pragmalinguistic tools;

 sensitivity to the situation: tailoring contributions to the recipient;

 engagement with the interaction: displaying understanding of interlocutor talk;

 turn organization: providing responses without excessive pausing.

A Rasch analysis showed that the test spread test takers out well and that the criteria functioned independently and were easy for raters to implement. Youn's study was a significant step forward as it was the first that clearly demonstrated the feasibility of assessing interactional competence.

Ikeda (2017) also investigated measurement of interactional competence but employed three role plays and three monologues with six rating criteria. Similar to Youn, he found a good spread of test takers and high inter‐rater reliability. There was significant overlap between scores on the monologic and dialogic tasks, raising the possibility of capturing a large amount of variance attributable to interactional competence with monologue tasks, which would greatly increase practicality.

Focusing on another aspect of interaction, Galaczi (2014) described differences in topic management, listener contributions, and turn‐taking management between learners at different levels of the Common European Framework of Reference (Council of Europe, 2001). She found that these interactional abilities improved with increasing proficiency and argued for their greater inclusion in rating scales. It must be noted that a feature like “topic management” was more likely to figure prominently in Galaczi's data, which involved test taker dyads discussing a set topic, than in Youn's and Ikeda's work, where interactions were based around requests.

Two other interaction‐focused assessment studies have been conducted which did not situate themselves in an interactional competence framework. Grabowski (2009, 2013) employed role plays and rated test taker performance based on criteria derived from Purpura's (2004) model of communicative language ability. Timpe (2013) employed Skype‐delivered role plays as part of a larger testing battery of intercultural competence (Byram, 1997). She scored test taker performance on two large holistic criteria, discourse management and pragmatic competence.