Assessing Interactional Competence: The role of intersubjectivity in a paired-speaking assessment task

Abstract

Since the turn of the century, the field of language assessment has increasingly turned its eye towards the assessment of Interactional Competence (IC) (Galaczi & Taylor, 2018; Plough et al., 2018; Roever & Kasper, 2018). This study is premised on the argument that a key function of IC is to achieve and maintain intersubjectivity, as made publicly viewable through the practices that participants employ to display that they understand each other, and how they understand each other. The paper thus suggests that IC assessment can and should consider intersubjectivity as a ratable construct. Using Multimodal Conversation Analysis (Goodwin, 2018; Mondada, 2011), the paper examines two paired-speaking assessment tasks conducted by learners of German at the end of their fourth semester of study, focusing on how and when the learners display understanding of prior talk, examining how they receipt turns and display epistemic and affective stances in a publicly viewable way. The study suggests that the same practices the participants employ to display their understandings to each other can be used in a heuristic fashion by language testers to assess IC and concludes by considering the practical implications these have for classroom assessment.