A Contextualized Approach to Describing Oral Language Proficiency

Abstract

Although both raters and elicitation tasks are principal factors influencing the study of learners' second language L2) oral proficiency, the effect of each has always been investigated separately; consequently, any possible relationship between them remains unexplored. In investigating the L2 oral proficiency construct, the present study incorporated a variety of tasks and diverse rater groups. The tasks encompassed an interview, a narration, and a read‐aloud. The rater groups, all NSs of Arabic, included 15 teachers in the US, 3 nonteaching raters residing in the US, and 36 nonteaching raters living in Lebanon. Using multidimensional scaling analyses, I derived dimensions underlying raters' holistic ratings of 6 learners' L2 oral proficiency on each of the three tasks. In addition, I specified the salience of the derived dimensions for each of the three rater groups. The results show that the nature of the L2 oral construct is not constant. Different weighted dimensions emerged when investigating the various tasks and rater groups. I concluded that proficiency researchers should not employ generic dimensions; dimensions should be empirically derived according to the specific elicitation task and audience.

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