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Assessing Oral Proficiency: A Comparison of Holistic and Objective Measures
Author(s) -
HALLECK GENE B.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
the modern language journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.486
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1540-4781
pISSN - 0026-7902
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4781.1995.tb05434.x
Subject(s) - language proficiency , multivariate statistics , psychology , variance (accounting) , repeated measures design , multivariate analysis of variance , multivariate analysis , statistics , mathematics education , mathematics , accounting , business
This study examines the relationship between holistic judgments of oral proficiency and objective measures of syntactic maturity in the Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) of 107 students of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Tianjin, China. The analysis compares a holistic rating of proficiency level (Intermediate, Advanced, and Superior) with objective measures (Mean T‐Unit Length, Mean Error‐Free T‐Unit Length, and Percent of Error‐Free T‐Units) for three separate interview tasks (Describing/Narrating, Role Playing, and Asking Questions). Results of the repeated measures Multivariate Analyses of Variance (MANOVAs) indicate significant main effects for proficiency level and interview task.