Assessing Korean ESL Learners Interactional Competence through Oral Interviews and Paired Speaking Tasks: A Pilot Study

Abstract

This paper is a preliminary empirical study. It explores several papers on validating Interactional Competence (IC), a construct that has been largely underrepresented in speaking tests, to understand its theoretical basis. Several complexities regarding IC test design and its evaluation methods are discussed. In this field of research oral interviews and paired speaking tasks are two types of tests widely used. The selection of the tasks is another issue to consider in answering the question namely, whether the scores for a co-constructed interaction should be assessed individually or mutually. A vast number of research focus on individualizing the scores due to issues of practicality. This study devises a scoring criteria that can be used for the mutual assessment of IC per pair in different kinds of tasks. Secondly, this study discusses several reliability issues regarding the rating of IC. Lastly, this study analyzes unique interactional features that distinguish oral interview tasks from paired speaking tasks.