چکیده:
Impact of Gender on Discourse of Oral Proficiency Testing
(The Case of IELTS)
Maryam Meshkat, Ph.D.
Shahid Rafaei University
&
Davar Javidzadeh, MA
Islamic Azad University Ardabil
Abstract
This study was carried out to find out whether the gender of the interviewer
and interviewee influence the discourse of oral proficiency tests. In oral
interviews such as the case of the IELTS, it is possible that the gender of
interviewer and interviewee have an impact on the discourse produced from
the interview, thus modifying the results of the interview. A total of 83 FCE
students of Simin Educational Institute participated in this study, Based on
their scores on a TOFEL test, the participants of the study were rank-ordered
and then divided into 3 groups: high (HG), intermediate (IG), and low (LG)
proficiency groups. Thirty of them (15 male and 15 female) from the top of
the list were assigned as the main group of the study who formed the
experimental group. Following HG in the list, another 30 (15 male and 15
female) were selected and assigned as the pilot group who took part in the
standardization and validation processes of the IELTS speaking test. The
rest of the participants (LG) were eliminated from the study. The data
collected for the main part of this study consisted of the audio-taped
performances of 15 male and 15 female candidates who undertook the
IELTS interview on two different occasions, once with a male and another
time with a female interviewer, thus yielding in 60 interviews. The
interviews were then transcribed and analyzed regarding five pre-
determined gendered discourse variables, namely interruptions, overlaps,
minimal responses, talk time, and topic selection. The results of the analysis
and the indices produced from the Chi-square calculations indicated that the
gender of interviewers and candidates did not have a significant impact on
the discourse produced from the IELTS oral proficiency interview.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Oral Proficiency Interview, Gender, Candidate, Interruptions, Minimal responses, Overlaps, Talk time, Topic selection Introduction The world has shrunk into a smaller place than it used to be and people from diverse personal, social, and cultural backgrounds come together thus necessitating the need to interact and communicate through a shared linguistic medium which more often than not tends to be English, and this is the reason why people all over the world are trying to learn it.
Factors including interviewer variables such as the amount of support they give to candidates, the amount of rapport they establish with candidates, the extent to which they follow the instructions relevant to their role (Young and Milanovic, 1992; Lazaraton, 1996; McNamara and Lumley, 1997), peer variables and the influence of peer feedback on self- and peer assessment of oral skills (Bachman and Palmer, 1989; Williams, 1992; Stefani, 1994; Jafarpur, 1991; Rolfe, 1990; Patri, 2002), performance condition, accommodation, task types and their properties, and the influence of those properties on candidates' performance (Bachman and Palmer, 1996; Douglas, 2000), and finally, rater variables and examiner background ( Yet another key, though less touched, factor which is thought to have potential effects on the discourse of OPI is gendered language use in communicative style.
Although it could be argued that pre-selecting these features meant that the research ignored other gender-based variables which could affect the oral interview, this strategy was taken in order to allow direct comparisons with Coates (1993) specific claims about the use of these conversational features and O'Loughlin's (2002) work on realization of interruptions, overlaps, and minimal responses on the oral discourse of the IELTS speaking test.