Education Commons^™

Specific-Purpose Language Performance Tests : Task And Interaction, Tom Lumley, Annie Brown

Dr Tom Lumley

Oral performance tests designed to assess candidates' ability to function in a particular professional role typically involve role plays which simulate aspects of professional interaction between a candidate, in his/her professional role, and an interlocutor, in the role of client or consumer of the professional services. This paper reports on an investigation into the role which expert professional informants can play in providing post hoc content validation of tasks used in this kind of occupation-specific test, focusing on both the content of the tasks and the behaviour of the interlocutors. The study draws on data from the oral interaction component …