This study, framed within sociocultural theory, examines the interaction of adult ESL test-takers in two tests of oral proficiency: one in which they interacted with an examiner (the individual format) and one in which they interacted with another student (the paired format). The data for the eight pairs in this study were drawn from a larger…

To what extent are the discourse behaviors of examiners salient to participants of an oral performance test? This exploratory study employs a grounded ethnographic approach to investigate the perceptions of the verbal, paralinguistic and nonverbal discourse behaviors of an examiner in a one-on-one role-play task that is one of four tasks in an…

Teachers' perspectives on the student assessment process and on the role of testing in that process are presented. Primarily ethnographic in approach, this study includes investigations of teachers' ideas and thought processes as well as observation of actual classroom practice. Six elementary teachers participated in a three-stage process of…