Face-to-face interview has been used to elicit language samples in oral proficiency testing. The direct testing is believed to measure more authentic and interactive language ability. However, it is argued that speech samples from unstructured interviews are different from ones in natural communication settings, and that the interviewees are forced to play as passive roles. Furthermore, inexperienced interviewers often allow superficial fluency rewarded. Communicative task (e.g., long-run narrative and descriptive speech) meaningfulness tends to be underestimated. In the unstructured interview situations where intuition driven interviewers do not provide meaningful communicative tasks (or prompts), personality is implicitly focused, and interpersonal strategies are overestimated. When a test intends to assess ‘language’ skills, the nonlanguage skills make test usefulness dubious. This study explores inappropriateness issues of face-to-face English language proficiency interviews in Korea. This study also values the usefulness of semi-direct (tape- or computermediated) speaking tests in terms of task meaningfulness. Samples of superficial fluency collected in testing settings are commented upon. Points of view from Korean contexts are repetitively discussed over the study.
한국외국어교육학회 [The Korea Association of Foreign Languages Education]
설립연도
1995
분야
인문학>언어학
소개
본 학회는 외국어 교육 분야 상호간의 연구 성과 교류를 통하여, 외국어 교육의 이론과 실제를 발전시키고, 회원 상호간의 친목을 도모함으로써 외국어 교육 분야간의 학문적 교류를 활성화하는 것을 그 설립 목적으로 한다. 그리고 더 나아가서는 국제 협력 차원에서 다양한 언어 및 문화의 이해를 증진시키는 동시에 언어 정책과 관련하여 국제 관계 개선을 위한 가교 역할을 담당하고자 한다.