Technology-Enhanced Delivery Models for Oral Communication Assessments
Gary Ockey
Iowa State University, USA
Keynote for ALLT, NTUST, Taipei, 2021
Over, the last decade, the assessment of oral communication has taken center stage in the language assessment arena, in part, due to technological developments that have aided their delivery. A big part of this movement has been driven by demands from teachers who are using communicative language teaching approaches, English as a lingua franca proponents (Jenkins & Leung, 2016), and interactional competence researchers (Galaczi & Taylor, 2018) who insist that language assessments should directly assess the ability to interact with someone in the target language.
Increased demand for virtual assessments has also played a role in this movement. Three delivery models that have emerged to meet these demands are virtual environments (VEs) with real-time voice communication through avatar representations that represent each test taker and test administrator (Ockey et al., (2017), video-mediated visual presence via software such as Skype, WebEx, or Zoom (Ockey et al., 2019), and spoken dialogue systems (SDSs) with a computer serving as a real-time communication partner (Chukharev-Hudilainen & Ockey, in press).
In this talk, I will discuss and evaluate each of these approaches for delivering oral communication assessments. The evaluation will be framed in current conceptualizations of the construct of oral communication drawn from diverse fields, including English as a lingua franca, interactional competence, and psychometrics. I will conclude by talking about what I believe oral communication assessments will look like in the next decade.
Reference
Chukharev-Hudilainen, E., & Ockey, G. J. (in press). The development and evaluation of Interactional competence Elicitor (ICE) for oral language assessments. ETS Research Report Series.
Galaczi , E. & Taylor, L. (2018). Interactional competence: Conceptualisations, operationalisations, and outstanding questions. Language Assessment Quarterly, 15(3), 219-236.
Jenkins, J., & Leung, C. (2016). Assessing English as a Lingua Franca. In E. Shohamy, I. G. Or, & S. May (Eds.), Language Testing and Assessment (pp. 1–15). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02326-7_7-1
Ockey, G. J., Gu, L., & Keehner, M. (2017). Web-Based Virtual Environments for Facilitating Assessment of L2 Oral Communication Ability. Language Assessment Quarterly, 14(4), 346–359.
Ockey, G. J., Timpe-Laughlin, V., Davis, L., & Gu, L. (2019). Exploring the Potential of a Video-Mediated Interactive Speaking Assessment: Video-Mediated Interactive Speaking Assessment. ETS Research Report Series. https://doi.org/10.1002/ets2.12240
Biodata
Gary J. Ockey is a professor of applied linguistics and technology at Iowa State University. He investigates second language assessments, with a focus on the use of technology and quantitative methods to facilitate measurement of oral communication. His recent books include “Assessing L2 listening: Moving towards authenticity”, John Benjamins, 2018 (co-author) and “Another generation of fundamental considerations in language assessment: A festshrift in honor of Lyle Bachman” (Co-editor). He has published in various journals, including Applied Linguistics, Language Learning, Language Assessment Quarterly, Language Testing, and Modern Language Journal. He has served as the Editor of the TOEFL Research Report Series, and is currently an editor of Language Assessment Quarterly.