Collaborative turn construction in paired speaking tests across different proficiency levels

ABSTRACT To be able to assess interactional competence (IC), which believed to be shared knowledge rather than an individual skill, talk in paired speaking tests can be analyzed. Accordingly, this study investigates how L2 speakers of English collaboratively construct turns in paired speaking tests mainly through embodied word search sequences and their relation to IC based on a dataset of 48 recorded paired speaking tests collected from a state university in Turkey. Results of the study have revealed that turn completion is mostly constructed at word level but also at sentence level for some cases. It is shown that collaborative turn construction practices vary across different proficiency levels, especially between B1 and B2. In addition to this, there are six different resources employed by interactants to receive turn completion and the higher the students’ proficiency level is, the more varied the resources they use to do so. It is also revealed that interactants almost always achieve mutual understanding following a turn completion. Findings of the study can feed into L2 assessment practices and pedagogical practices in L2 classrooms in a way that can facilitate the teaching of L2 IC.