Performing Identities in Speaking Tests: Co-Construction Revisited

Poststructuralist perspectives on the discursive construction of identity and critical approaches to linguistics, discourse analysis, and language testing have contributed to a growing awareness of the complex social nature of performance in speaking tests. In this article, I explore how the concept of co-construction is useful to understand how candidate and interviewer identities are created in the discourse of speaking tests but argue for an expanded notion of co-construction that draws upon the concept of intertextuality to recognise the myriad of other ‘voices’, representing those who craft the tests, are interwoven into the discourses produced. The study adopts a qualitative approach, drawing upon discourse analysis to examine co-construction and intertextuality in two levels of Cambridge speaking tests. The findings reveal how interviewers and candidates co-construct particular identities through their interaction with each other, the interlocutor frame, and the test materials, and this can account for variability in performance, which is relevant to assessment. The key implications of the analysis for test preparation, interlocutor training, and speaking test development are also discussed.

[1]  Pamela A. Moss,et al.  Can There Be Validity Without Reliability? , 1994 .

[2]  E. Cohen.  Re-Investing Authenticity: tourism, Place and Emotions , 2011 .

[3]  James Simpson.  Differing expectations in the assessment of the speaking skills of ESOL learners , 2006 .

[4]  Luk Van Langenhove,et al.  Positioning theory : moral contexts of intentional action , 1999 .

[5]  K. Gergen,et al.  Texts of Identity , 1989 .

[6]  Tom Lumley,et al.  The effect of interlocutor and assessment mode variables in overseas assessments of speaking skills in occupational I settings , 1997 .

[7]  F. Erickson,et al.  The counselor as gatekeeper : social interaction in interviews , 1982 .

[8]  Elinor Ochs,et al.  Co-Construction: An Introduction , 1995 .

[9]  N. Fairclough,et al.  Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis , 1999 .

[10]  Deborah Tannen,et al.  Interactive Frames and Knowledge Schemas in Interaction: Examples from a Medical Examination/Interview , 1987 .

[11]  Ryuko Kubota,et al.  Japanese Culture Constructed by Discourses: Implications for Applied Linguistics Research and ELT , 1999 .

[12]  R. Forman.  Using notions of scaffolding and intertextuality to understand the bilingual teaching of English in Thailand , 2008 .

[13]  Jay L. Lemke,et al.  Intertextuality and educational research , 1992 .

[14]  Constant Leung,et al.  Teacher formative assessment and talk in classroom contexts: assessment as discourse and assessment of discourse , 2004 .

[15]  Leo Van Lier,et al.  Reeling, Writhing, Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils: Oral Proficiency Interviews as Conversation , 1989 .

[16]  K. Richards,et al.  ‘Being the Teacher’: Identity and Classroom Conversation , 2006 .

[17]  Larry Davis,et al.  The influence of interlocutor proficiency in a paired oral assessment , 2009 .

[18]  Annie Brown,et al.  Assessing paired orals: Raters' orientation to interaction , 2009 .

[19]  Evelina D. Galaczi,et al.  Peer–Peer Interaction in a Speaking Test: The Case of the First Certificate in English Examination , 2008 .

[20]  Alexandra Galbin.  AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM , 2014 .

[21]  Paul Seedhouse,et al.  Conversation Analysis as Research Methodology , 2005 .

[22]  Eli Hinkel,et al.  Handbook of Research in Second Language Teaching and Learning : Volume 2 , 2011 .

[23]  Micheline Chalhoub-Deville,et al.  Second language interaction: current perspectives and future trends , 2003 .

[24]  N. Fairclough.  Discourse and social change , 1992 .

[25]  Nessa Wolfson,et al.  Speech events and natural speech: some implications for sociolinguistic methodology , 1976, Language in Society.

[26]  Merrill Swain,et al.  Examining dialogue: another approach to content specification and to validating inferences drawn from test scores , 2001 .

[27]  Mervyn F Bendle,et al.  The crisis of 'identity' in high modernity. , 2002, The British journal of sociology.

[28]  D. Bloome,et al.  The social construction of intertextuality in classroom reading and writing lessons , 1993 .

[29]  C. Leung,et al.  The Idealised Native Speaker, Reified Ethnicities, and Classroom Realities , 1997 .

[30]  P. Have.  Doing conversation analysis , 2007 .

[31]  K. O’Loughlin,et al.  The impact of gender in oral proficiency testing , 2002 .

[32]  Anne Lazaraton,et al.  The Structural Organization of a Language Interview: A Conversation Analytic Perspective. , 1992 .

[33]  Patricia A. Duff.  Intertextuality and Hybrid Discourses: The Infusion of Pop Culture in Educational Discourse , 2003 .

[34]  George Kamberelis.  Producing of Heteroglossic Classroom (Micro)cultures Through Hybrid Discourse Practice , 2001 .

[35]  Lyn May,et al.  Interactional Competence in a Paired Speaking Test: Features Salient to Raters , 2011 .

[36]  Henry Widdowson,et al.  Defining Issues in English Language Teaching , 2003 .

[37]  Jane Zuengler,et al.  Encouraging Learners' Conversational Participation: The Effect of Content Knowledge , 1993 .

[38]  Marysia Johnson.  The Art of Non-conversation , 2008 .

[39]  Lindsay Brooks,et al.  Interacting in pairs in a test of oral proficiency: Co-constructing a better performance , 2009 .

[40]  T. McNamara.  Measuring Second Language Performance , 1996 .

[41]  Barry O'Sullivan,et al.  The impact on candidate language of examiner deviation from a set interlocutor frame in the IELTS Speaking Test , 2006 .

[42]  Anne Lazaraton,et al.  A Microanalytic Perspective on Discourse, Proficiency, and Identity in Paired Oral Assessment , 2008 .

[43]  Nessa Wolfson.  Speech Events and Natural Speech , 1997 .

[44]  Book Review: Performance testing, cognition and assessment: selected papers from the 15th Language Testing Research Colloquium, Cambridge and Arnhem , 1999 .

[45]  Anne Lazaraton,et al.  A qualitative approach to the validation of oral language tests , 2002 .

[46]  Tim McNamara,et al.  ‘Interaction’ in second language performance assessment: Whose performance?1 , 1997 .

[47]  George Psathas,et al.  Conversation Analysis: The Study of Talk-in-Interaction , 1994 .

[48]  Tim McNamara,et al.  Language assessment as social practice: challenges for research , 2001 .

[49]  Patricia A. Duff,et al.  The Negotiation of Teachers' Sociocultural Identities and Practices in Postsecondary EFL Classrooms , 1997 .

[50]  Annie Brown,et al.  Interviewer variation and the co-construction of speaking proficiency , 2003 .

[51]  Nick Saville,et al.  Assessing speaking in the revised FCE , 1999 .

[52]  Anne Lazaraton,et al.  Interlocutor support in oral proficiency interviews: the case of CASE , 1996 .

[53]  L. Taylor.  THE CAMBRIDGE APPROACH TO SPEAKING ASSESSMENT , 2003 .

[54]  A. Pavlenko,et al.  Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts , 2001 .

[55]  Michael Milanovic,et al.  Discourse Variation in Oral Proficiency Interviews , 1992, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[56]  Constant Leung,et al.  Expanding Horizons and Unresolved Conundrums: Language Testing and Assessment , 2006 .

[57]  B. Norton.  Language, Identity, and the Ownership of English , 1997 .

[58]  S. Ross.  Divergent Frame Interpretations in Oral Proficiency Interview Interaction , 1998 .

[59]  Andrea Tyler,et al.  The Effect of Discourse Structuring Devices on Listener Perceptions of Coherence in Non-native University Teacher's Spoken Discourse. , 1988 .

[60]  Lyle F. Bachman,et al.  语言测试实践 = Language testing in practice , 1998 .

[61]  Richard Young,et al.  Interactional Competence: Challenges for Validity. , 2000 .

[62]  B. Davies,et al.  Positioning: The Discursive Production of Selves , 1990 .

[63]  E. Goffman.  Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience , 1974 .

[64]  Lyle F. Bachman.  语言测试要略 = Fundamental considerations in language testing , 1990 .

[65]  Dan Douglas,et al.  Wrestling with ‘Context’ in Interlanguage Theory* , 1985 .

[66]  Researching intertextuality within collaborative classroom learning environments , 1992 .

[67]  Annie Brown,et al.  Interviewer Variability in Oral Proficiency Interviews , 2005 .

[68]  Yusuke Okada,et al.  Role-play in oral proficiency interviews: Interactive footing and interactional competencies , 2010 .

[69]  Sylvia Green,et al.  University of Cambridge Local Examination Syndicate , 1943, The Mathematical Gazette.

[70]  Lyle F. Bachman.  Some reflections on task-based language performance assessment , 2002 .

[71]  Steven J. Ross,et al.  The Discourse of Accommodation in Oral Proficiency Interviews , 1992, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[72]  Wang Xu.  Identity and Language Learning , 2006 .

[73]  John Holmes,et al.  Intertextuality in EAP: an African context , 2004 .

[74]  Jeff Connor-Linton,et al.  TALKING AND TESTING: DISCOURSE APPROACHES TO THE ASSESSMENT OF ORAL PROFICIENCY.Richard Young and Agnes Weiyun He (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1998. Pp. x + 395. NLG 138 cloth. , 2000, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.