Designing speaking tasks for different assessment goals

Sasayama, Shoko; Norris, John M.

doi:10.1075/task.21020.sas

Cited by 1 publication

(3 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Here too, sources of extraneous load have been treated as a feature of task conditions that, when reduced or controlled, can lead to improvements in linguistic performance. For example, ample research on the provision of planning time prior to task performance (i.e., leading to a reduction in the extraneous load associated with having to perform the task "cold" or spontaneously) has shown clear positive effects for the linguistic complexity and accuracy of communicative performances (see Sasayama & Norris, 2023).…”

Section: The Impact Of Simulated Context On Learner Response and Perf...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Participants' email responses were also analyzed in terms of the linguistic indices commonly used to capture key features of L2 learners' written task performance (e.g., Norris & Ortega, 2009): (a) syntactic complexity, (b) accuracy, (c) lexis, (d) syntactic fluency, and (e) speed fluency. These measures were not intended to provide comprehensive coverage of any of the CALF constructs; instead, they were selected as representative or "marker" measures, so that the distinct dimensions of linguistic performance could be investigated relative to each other and to overall performance on the task (see related discussion in Sasayama & Norris, 2023). For syntactic complexity, accuracy, and syntactic fluency, the T-unit was chosen as the basic unit of analysis.…”

Section: Linguistic Indicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Performance by L2 learners on open‐ended constructed response language tasks is most typically captured in two primary ways. First, human judgments of performance, generally based on holistic rating scales that describe degrees of task accomplishment, provide an overall estimation of ability to perform the task (e.g., Kuiken & Vedder, 2017; Révész, 2014; Sasayama & Norris, 2023). In addition, more fine‐grained aspects of linguistic performance may reveal important dimensions of language ability that are affected by task conditions, in particular, measures of the grammatical and lexical complexity, accuracy, and fluency of language use (the so‐called CALF measures; see Housen et al, 2012; Norris & Ortega, 2009; Sasayama & Norris, 2023).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Simulating Real‐World Context in an Email Writing Task: Implications for Task‐Based Language Assessment

Norris¹,

Sasayama

Kim

2023

ETS Research Report Series

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Accomplishing a communication task in the real world requires the ability not only to do the task per se but also to manage aspects of the context in which it occurs. For this reason, simulations of target language use contexts have been incorporated into the design of communicative language tests as a way of enhancing the authenticity of assessment task performance. Although some contextual factors may increase extraneous cognitive load and distract learners from focusing on the task at hand (Sweller, 1994), they represent important design considerations in task‐based language assessment (TBLA), where the purpose of assessment is to determine what second language (L2) learners can do with the target language in the real world. In that sense, the extraneous cognitive load might well be part of the construct we are interested in assessing. Accordingly, the current study simulated aspects of a real‐world task performance context as part of an email writing task assessment. Simulated context was operationalized as (a) additional information about the task scenario, (b) a visual image to simulate the physical context, and (c) an audio to replicate the real‐world experience. A total of 276 L2 English learners performed the email task, half with simulated context and the other half without it. Findings revealed that, when presented with simulated context, the tasks were perceived by participants to have induced more time pressure and to be more interesting. In terms of performance effects, the provision of simulated context negatively affected the syntactic complexity of participants' writing but positively affected their syntactic fluency. It also led to greater discrimination among learners at different proficiency levels on various measures of language performance. The paper concludes by highlighting implications for task design and validity evaluation, especially in TBLA.

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Section: The Impact Of Simulated Context On Learner Response and Perf...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Linguistic Indicesmentioning

confidence: 99%