Tilannetehtävät Yleisten kielitutkintojen suomen keskitason tutkinnon puhumisen osakokeessa

Authors

• Sari Ahola Jyväskylän yliopisto
• Henna Tossavainen Jyväskylän yliopisto

Keywords:

language testing, assessing oral skills, oral tasks, content analysis

Abstract

One task type in the oral test in the Finnish National Certificates (NC) language testing system is reacting to situations. This paper reports a content analysis of the task rubrics of five situational tasks used in the L2 Finnish intermediate level test. The analysis was based on the standards
set in NC specifications and framework and focused on the requirements that the tasks impose on test takers. The theoretical framework is that of communicative language testing. This post test analysis utilized the results and background information of 1084 test takers. The aim of
the analysis is to contribute to our understanding of task requirements and to find qualitative tools for item analysis. Results indicate that many factors in the situational tasks influence test performance; the tasks were found to be more diffcult than the speaking test in general. For example, language requirements in the rubrics, task complexity, limited definition of the context along with the test takers’ background may impact performance.