Presenter: Sun-Young Shin
The What’s and How’s of Assessing L2 Interactional Competence
In recent years, there has been the burgeoning interest in developing and assessing second/foreign language (L2) learners’ spoken interactional competence. The ability to interact with others has been regarded as equally important as the ability to produce grammatically accurate L2 utterances with good control of pronunciation. However, many L2 teachers still find it difficult to elicit interactive language use samples and to evaluate L2 learners’ interactional competence using appropriate classroom-based assessment instruments and rubrics. To this end, this talk will provide some guidance for how we should define L2 interactional competence at both theoretical and operational levels and for how we can develop and use specific speaking testing tools and scales with a focus on assessing interactional competence. This talk will also introduce exemplary rubrics featured with salient components of interactional competence and actual speaking test video samples including both one-way and two-way speaking tasks.