The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics

PPaired and Group Oral Assessment

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The paired and group oral assessment formats involve candidates interacting together to perform a task while one or more examiners observe their performances and rate their language proficiency. Communicative language teaching led to the popularity of pair work and group work in the language classroom, and so too has pair and group work become more widespread in communicative approaches to assessment. The five examinations of the Cambridge Main Suite are particularly well known for incorporating paired tasks (Taylor, 2003). Examples of tasks utilized in these exams include candidates discussing color photographs, constructing a story together when each speaker knows half of it, or making a joint decision on an issue presented in the task material. The College English Test‐Spoken English Test (CET‐SET) in China is perhaps the most large‐scale use of group tasks (He & Dai, 2006). Here, the task is for a group of three or four candidates to discuss a topic among themselves. Paired and group oral assessments are also used in schools and universities for placement testing, progress monitoring, and exit testing or matriculation, and are the subject of much validation research (e.g., Csépes, 2009; Ockey, 2009).

Testing candidates in groups can be advantageous in numerous ways: It is more practical than one‐to‐one interviews in terms of time and cost; it is less burdensome to examiners, who can focus on rating without also having to act as ...