ABSTRACT
Tasks in oral assessment have been used to elicit ample amounts of test-taker oral production for examiners to judge the speaking abilities assessed. However, research has suggested that test-takers’ discoursal performance in oral assessment could be culture-specifi c rather than test-driven due to the sociolinguistic variations caused both by the candidates’ interlanguage pragmatics and the conversational styles in their fi rst languages. To investigate if this is the case with Chinese testtakers, this study used a discourse framework based on a hybrid of functional and systemic approaches to examine the initiation, elaboration, cohesion and coherence produced by 22 Chinese test-takers in the speaking test of the First Certifi cate in English (FCE) examination. Comparisons were made between their discoursal performance and that of a group of Italian test-takers and a bilingual group in which the test-takers’ fi rst languages were different. Discourse analysis and statistical data indicated that sociolinguistic variation in the Chinese test-takers’ discoursal performance might not be the only factor that signifi cantly infl uenced their overall performance on the speaking test. Types of tasks and interlocutors may also affect the discourse structures produced and the sociolinguistic variation. A complex picture of test-driven and culture-specifi c performance by Chinese test-takers is presented in this chapter.
