This presentation uses CA to analyze two styles of test prompt for a paired EFL speaking test. The analysis suggests that the wording of the prompt can influence the test-takers' turn-taking and topic development, leading to differing assessments of their interactional competence.
When assessing students' interactional competence (IC), teachers and test makers are increasingly designing formats that attempt to more closely approximate the characteristics of mundane conversation. This means an overall shift away from oral proficiency interview (OPI) style tests between an assessor and the test-taker in favor of dyadic or group conversation tests between peers. Although previous studies have explored the differences between paired and OPI style tests, there is a need for further interactional research comparing different styles of paired conversation test to one another. Adopting a conversation analytic (CA) approach, this presentation analyzes a dataset of over 200 EFL conversation tests video-recorded at a Japanese university. By providing grounded observations on the test-takers' interaction, we show that slight variations in the paired test format have major implications for the way the discussions unfold. The analysis shows that a relatively minimalistic style of prompt containing only a general theme often leads to the sort of collaborative conversation reminiscent of natural talk. Conversely, complex prompts with explicitly stated goals (e.g., agreeing or disagreeing with a stated opinion) result in the solicitation of target pragmatic forms at the risk of a (less natural) parallel style of topic development.
Further, the study suggests the presence of multiple (versus one) textual objects in the test setting can be an affordance or impedance to progressivity of the talk. Test-takers at times indexically refer to the prompt cards as a means of topic management. However, the cards can also become a focal point for student gaze and attention. A single general prompt and fewer textual artifacts appears more likely to result in the use of certain practices associated with IC than one containing explicit tasks. On the other hand, explicitly focused tasks can prove valuable when assessing test-takers' ability to accomplish certain prescribed actions.
