Hu2015

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Hu2015
BibType ARTICLE
Key Hu2015
Author(s) Jian Hu
Title Interaction in assessment-oriented role play: a conversation analytic approach
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Assessments, Role play, Applied, Education
Publisher
Year 2015
Language English
City
Month
Journal Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics
Volume 38
Number 4
Pages 472–489
URL Link
DOI 10.1515/cjal-2015-0030
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

To date, only a handful of studies have investigated the interlocutor effects on peer-peer test discourse, and they focus almost exclusively on the paired format in the Cambridge speaking tests, which is mostly a discussion type collaborative task. In the oral English test administered by a Chinese university under the present study, role-play is a major test type. This study chose for analysis three out of over 100 video recordings of test takers participating in roleplay- based interaction. The author adopted conversation analysis (CA) and Young’s (2000) constructivist, practice-oriented view of interaction and competence to assist the interpretation of speech exchange throughout the interaction. It is evident from the data that learners make use of various interactional resources and employ different strategies in the assessmentbased role play. It could be tentatively concluded from the conversation analysis of the paired interaction that the interaction framework together with the participants’ strategic competence in negotiating their own interactional resources, to a great extent, determines their joint performance of the collaborative task. The configuration of pairing in terms of proficiency is found to have an impact on joint interaction performance and strategic use. The implications of the current study include: interactional competence could be more readily accessed via role play than discussion type of pair work; qualitative conversation analysis of test takers’ actual practices can reveal what quantitative methods are unable to detect, and therefore is an indispensable complement.

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