The Disadvantages of Interact and Suggested Improvements
This chapter focuses on the comparative disadvantages of interact, and suggestions for improvement to interact, emerging from Stage I of the two-stage study. Findings from the open-ended section of the survey (Section II) are compared to those elicited fr
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The Disadvantages of Interact and Suggested Improvements
6.1
Introduction
Chapter 5 drew on data generated from the national survey and the teacher interviews from Stage I of this two-stage study. Analysis of the closed-ended section of the survey (Section I) revealed several significant advantages to interact in comparison with converse when interpreted from the perspective of different dimensions of test usefulness. Essentially, interact was perceived to be a more valid and reliable assessment than converse, and more authentic and interactive than converse. Several advantages to interact also emerged from the coding of the open-ended comments (Section II). These comments, substantiated by the interviews, supported the positive perspectives from the closed-ended data and also threw light on those dimensions of student impact that a number of respondents considered to be positive. There were also positive implications for washback. Several limitations to interact were also identified in the closed-ended data. There was a level of ambivalence around impact. Although it was perceived by the teachers that, in the students’ eyes, interact was a better assessment of their proficiency than converse, one measure where interact was perceived to be no different was in terms of student stress – that is, students would feel equally stressed, whatever assessment they took. The closed-ended data also revealed one significant comparative disadvantage to interact – impracticality. In this chapter I consider, from the open-ended data (surveys and interviews) perceived disadvantages of interact and, as a consequence, suggested improvements to interact. Once more, these issues are explored with reference to different dimensions of the test usefulness construct.
© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 M. East, Assessing Foreign Language Students’ Spoken Proficiency, Educational Linguistics 26, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0303-5_6
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6.2
6 The Disadvantages of Interact and Suggested Improvements
Disadvantages of Interact – Survey Data
From the open-ended data, perceived disadvantages of interact (see Chap. 4, Table 4.2), subsequently grouped according to the relevant qualities of test usefulness, were impracticality and negative impact. The frequencies with which these two themes were identified in the data are recorded in Table 6.1. It was clear from the frequency counts that impracticality (i.e., the fact that interact, compared with converse, was seen as considerably more impractical to administer) stood out as a clear disadvantage, with at least four out of every five respondents mentioning this. With regard to this disadvantage, and taking use or non-use into consideration, there was no significant difference in frequency between the groups, χ2 (1) = 0.7156, p = 0.4. In other words, whether teachers were using interact or not, issues of impracticality clearly loomed large in teachers’ thinking. (As with the frequency data on perceived advantages recorded in Chap. 5, χ2 tests were not performed for the second c
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