Despite an emphasis on oral communication in most foreign language classrooms, the resource-intensive nature (i.e. time and manpower) of speaking tests hinder regular oral assessments. A possible solution is the development of a (semi-) automated scoring system. When it is used in conjunction with human raters, the consistency of computers can…

This study explores the extent to which topic and background knowledge of topic affect spoken performance in a high-stakes speaking test. It is argued that evidence of a substantial influence may introduce construct-irrelevant variance and undermine test fairness. Data were collected from 81 non-native speakers of English who performed on 10…