This book takes a critical perspective of research on assessing speaking in second and foreign languages. Chapters focus on the complexity brought about by actual interactional competence in speaking tasks and discuss how testing and assessment models and practices can incorporate recent research on the dynamic and situated nature of language use.

M. Rafael Salaberry is Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Humanities at Rice University, USA. His research interests include second language acquisition and use, multilingualism, bilingual education, assessment and teaching methodology. Together with S. Kunitz, he is the co-editor of Teaching and Testing Interactional Competence: Bridging Theory and Practice (2019, Routledge).

Alfred Rue Burch is an Associate Professor at Kobe University, Japan. His research interests include conversation analysis, discursive psychology, second language acquisition and use, and task-based language teaching and testing.