This book analyses oral proficiency interviews, a mainstay of second language speaking proficiency assessment for several decades. Adopting a mixed-method perspective involving micro-analytic approaches, discourse analysis and quantitative methods such as multi-level modeling and event history analysis, the author focuses on interaction and discourse processes common in language assessment interviews. This innovative book will appeal to students and scholars of language assessment, conversation and discourse analysts, as well as practitioners and providers of oral proficiency assessment.

Steven J. Ross is Professor of Second Language Acquisition at the University of Maryland, USA.  He has served on the editorial boards of several journals, and was an Associate Editor of Language Learning 2011-2016.  He has been Director of Training for the Language Proficiency Interview at the Institute for International Business Communication in Tokyo, and has taught research methods and language assessment in Japan, Mexico, Australia, and the USA.  

Chapter 1. Language Proficiency Interviews and the Assessment of Speaking.- Chapter 2. Preliminary Talk and LPI Tasks.- Chapter 3. The ILR Rating Scale and Rating Criteria.- Chapter 4. Role Plays as Pragmatic Assessments.- Chapter 5. Task Selection Strategies.- Chapter 6.- Task Frames and Task Repairs.- Chapter 7. Interviewer Accommodation in Tasks and Transitional Talk.- Chapter 8. Co-Construction and its Limits.- Chapter 9. Task Sequencing and Sampling on a Japanese LPI.- Chapter 10. Rater Decision Consistency and Formative Feedback.- Chapter 11. Measuring Growth in Speaking Proficiency.- Chapter 12. Language Proficiency Interviews and Emerging Alternatives.