“Screen-to-screen” testing: An exploratory study of oral proficiency interviewing using video teleconferencing

Abstract In many oral testing situations a direct meeting is arranged of an examiner and an examinee. This type of face-to-face testing requires the physical presence of both participants at the same location. Because this requirement cannot always be met in practice, alternative oral testing procedures using audio recordings have been developed in the past. These semi-direct procedures, however, preclude direct linguistic interaction. This paper reports and discusses a study on the use of modern media techniques in long-distance oral testing that preserve the possibility of interaction by using video teleconferencing. Two test administration modes, face-to-face and screen-to-screen are compared in an experimental design. It is shown that based on quantitative analyses high agreement between both modalities of test administration can be achieved. Qualitative evaluation seems to indicate that the screen-to-screen modality is acceptable although there is a general preference for the face-to-face modality. It is concluded that long-distance oral testing offers a viable alternative if the high costs involved can be justified.