G5 Doctoral dissertation (article)
Rimaa hipoen selviää tilanteesta : yleisten kielitutkintojen suomen kielen arvioijien käsityksiä kielitaidon arvioinnista ja suullisesta kielitaidosta (2022)
Barely passing the test task : NCLP Finnish raters’ beliefs about language assessment and spoken language skills

Ahola, S. (2022). Rimaa hipoen selviää tilanteesta : yleisten kielitutkintojen suomen kielen arvioijien käsityksiä kielitaidon arvioinnista ja suullisesta kielitaidosta [Doctoral dissertation]. Jyväskylän yliopisto. JYU Dissertations, 489. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-39-9005-3

JYU authors or editors

Publication details

All authors or editors: Ahola, Sari

eISBN: 978-951-39-9005-3

Journal or series: JYU Dissertations

eISSN: 2489-9003

Publication year: 2022

Number in series: 489

Number of pages in the book: 1 verkkoaineisto (145 sivua, 95 sivua useina numerointijaksoina, 4 numeroimatonta sivua)

Publisher: Jyväskylän yliopisto

Place of Publication: Jyväskylä

Publication country: Finland

Publication language: Finnish

Persistent website address: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-39-9005-3

Publication open access: Openly available

Publication channel open access: Open Access channel

Abstract

The number of immigrants in Finland has more than doubled in the last 15 years. For that reason, more Finnish learners need to demonstrate their language skills in Finnish for citizenship, work, or study purposes. The Finnish intermediate level test of the National Certificate of Language Proficiency (NCLP) is the commonly used way to prove language skills by learners. In the rating process of test systems raters play a key role because they make decisions about learners’ skills. Statistical analyses provide information on raters’ severity, leniency, and consistency, but they do not provide any information on how and on what grounds raters make their decisions about learners’ proficiency. This study aims at investigating the Finnish raters’ beliefs about language assessment and spoken language skills and at exploring how these beliefs im-pact their rating behavior. This study adopts a contextual approach to beliefs, informed in particular by sociocultural research. The research is a quantitative research consisting of four sub-studies, each focusing on different aspect of raters’ language and assessment beliefs. Sub-studies are based on a thematic interview, written comments on learners’ oral test performances and short questionnaire with open-ended questions. Data is analyzed by using content and discourse analysis. The findings show that despite the same rater training and rating criteria, in their final decisions, the raters are putting more weight one or two assess-ment criteria, such as grammatical accuracy, pronunciation, fluency and comprehensibility. The emphasis on certain linguistic features is related to the learners’ language proficiency and on how raters value these linguistic features. Satisfactory language proficiency was defined through comprehensibility and it was linked especially to language requirements for Finnish citizenship. Good language skills, in turn, required interaction with native language speakers. The findings suggest that raters have different interpretations of candidates’ performances and that L1 recognition affects their rating. Beliefs about spoken language vary according to learners and are mostly influenced by raters’ previous experiences of different learners. Beliefs about language assessment and each rater’s rating behavior are influenced by rating experience, rating training and community of practice that are relevant to the rater identity.

Keywords: immigrants; Finnish as a second language; language skills; oral language skills; language examinations; adult language proficiency test; evaluation; language teachers; conceptions; expectations; doctoral dissertations

Free keywords: raters; rating behavior; language beliefs; beliefs about assessment; language testing; language assessment; Finnish as a second language; test takers; sociocultural theory

Contributing organizations

Ministry reporting: Yes

Reporting Year: 2022