Exploring shared and individual assessment of paired oral interactions

Studies concerning the assessment of second language (L2) paired oral
interaction to date have investigated interactional patterns that emerge from
paired oral tests and identified the factors that create variability in an
individual’s test scores. However, less work has addressed concerns about
whether scores should be shared or individual when assessing L2 speakers’ oral
interactions. Therefore, the present study compared shared and individual
assessment of L2 English paired oral task performances. Paired oral interaction
episodes were sampled from a larger corpus of university-level L2 speakers
engaged in paired speaking tasks and were assessed by 60 raters who were
randomly assigned to rate Speaker A, Speaker B, or both speakers. To avoid any
possible rating effects due to rating stimuli, half the raters evaluated audio
recordings while the other half assessed video recordings. The raters used an
analytic rubric with four domains: discourse management, collaborative
communication, content development, and language accuracy and complexity.
Comparison of raters’ scores revealed that individual discourse management
ratings were significantly higher than shared ratings for both members of the
pair regardless of the rating modality (audio vs. video). Implications for
assessing pair interactions are discussed.