Exploring Gender and Oral Proficiency Interview Performance.

Abstract There is growing interest in those factors which affect the test performance of the language learner. Some of this interest is motivated by a desire to detect and eliminate test features which are seen as distorting the tester's attemps to acheive accurate assessment of learners' language proficiency. A number of researchers, however, distinguish between test features which are irrelevant to the ability which is being measured, and those which are relevant. It is important to discover which test features constitute significant sources of true variance in leaners' performance. One feature which has been shown to affect learners' performance on tests of spoken interaction is the gender of the person with whom they interact. Twelve Japanese learners were interviewed, once by a man and once by a woman. Video tapes of these interactions were scored by trained examiners. Comparison of scores awarded indicated that in all but one case the learners performed better when interviewed by a woman, regardless of the sex of the learner. Sixteen interactions, involving eight learners, were then transcribed. Analysis of interviewer-language indicated systematic gender differences, while analysis of the responses of the learners suggest a tendency to produce more grammatically accurate language with their female interviewers.

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