The present paper looks at the issue of standardization in L2 oral testing. Whereas external examiners are frequently used globally, some countries opt for test-takers' own teachers as examiners instead. In the present study, Sweden is used as a case in point, with a focus on the mandatory, high-stakes, summative, ninth-grade national test in English (speaking part). The national test has the typical characteristics of standardized tests and its main objective is to contribute to equity in assessment and grading on a national level. However, using teachers as examiners raises problems for standardization. The aim of this study is to examine teachers'/examiners' practices and views regarding four aspects of the speaking test - test-taker grouping, recording practices, the actual test occasion, and examiner participation in students' test interactions - and to discuss findings in relation to issues concerning the normativity and practical feasibility of standardization, taking the perspectives of test-takers, teachers/examiners, and test constructors into account. In order to answer research questions linked to these four aspects of L2 oral testing, self-report survey data from a random sample of teachers (N = 204) and teacher interviews (N = 11) were collected and quantitative data were analyzed using inferential statistics. Survey findings revealed that despite thorough instructions, teacher practices and views vary greatly across all aspects, which was further confirmed by interview data. Three background variables - teacher certification, work experience, gender - were investigated to see whether they could provide explanations. Whereas certification and gender did not contribute significantly to explaining the findings, work experience bore some relevance, but effect sizes were generally small. The study concludes that using teachers as examiners is a well-functioning procedure in terms of assessment for learning, but raises doubts regarding assessment of learning and standardization; a solution for test authorities could be to frame the test as non-standardized.

Despite a long-standing interest in repair practices, much is yet to be learned about participants' selections of components of the repair operation, and their systematic variation across contexts and languages (Hayashi et al., 2013b; Kitzinger, 2013). The present paper targets the initiation of self-repair through examination of a particular discursive object, the Swedish conjunction eller ('or'), located in repair-prefacing position in a corpus of 79 second language (L2) oral proficiency tests. In the corpus, eller is systematically produced in Swedish, while surrounding talk is produced in the target language, English. As such, the repair initiations are code-switched (e.g., Auer, 1998b). Building on the recent work on or-prefaced repair initiations in English (Lerner and Kitzinger, 2015), we examine the role of eller-initiated repair (EIR), i.e., repair prefaced by eller, in the context of paired L2 tests. We also contrast EIRs with or-prefaced repair initiations in the same dataset. Findings indicate that EIRs serve to display trouble awareness, which may relate to necessary revisions of both form and content of the talk in English. The 'other-languageness' (Gafaranga, 2000) of the momentary code-switch amplifies test-takers' attention to what needs to be replaced or revised, and indicates to co-participants that self-repair is underway. The practice helps push forward turn transition and pre-empts conclusions about the speaker's stance or linguistic competence, which may be particularly relevant in a language testing context. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

In this paper, we address language teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD) and engagement with research by demonstrating how research on English as a foreign language (EFL) speaking tests can be applied in professional training workshops on oral test interaction and assessment. Data were drawn from an ongoing research project targeting 9^th-grade national English speaking tests in Sweden. Authentic test recordings analysed in a previous study (Sandlund & Sundqvist, 2013) formed the basis for workshops designed to initiate discussions on testing and assessing EFL oral proficiency. The two-fold aim of the study is to implement a research-based workshop model for increasing teachers’ awareness of interaction in speaking tests, and to analyse teachers’ self-reported insights from workshop participation with regard to conducting speaking tests and assessing oral proficiency. Workshop experiences were followed up with questionnaires. Findings reveal some noteworthy pedagogical implications of collaborative work with test recordings and assessment.

In this review article, empirical studies published from 2004 through 2014 on second-language (L2) oral proficiency testing are analyzed, with a specific focus on discourse and social interaction in such tests. Taking three common test setups, oral proficiency interviews (OPIs), paired peer tests, and group peer tests as an organizing principle for the studies examined, recent developments in L2 oral proficiency testing research are situated, reviewed, and discussed, with a particular focus on tests conducted in face-to-face contexts. Findings from the review of selected journals, databases, monographs, and edited collections indicate (1) a prevalence of studies of the OPI format, but a growing research base on paired and group tests, (2) an absence of oral test studies in discourse journals, and (3) an emphasis on assessment, validation, and rater perspectives, as opposed to detailed analyses of interaction in L2 tests.

This paper examines how a standardized question is launched and received in a corpus of performance appraisal interviews, with a focus on how pre-formulated questions are translated into interaction. Using conversation analysis, we demonstrate that the same question becomes many different actions in practice. Prefaces as well as prosodic and lexical alterations make relevant different responses, and as such, the question can be recruited to initiate diverse interactional projects such as assessments and other socially delicate activities. As a consequence, goals of uniformity and standardization may be subverted. The interactional adaptations further evidence the strength of recipient design as reformulations also result in more fitted and personalized answers. Our study contributes to the understanding of standardization versus interactionalization, and points to the strong interrelationship between question design and the fitting of response options.