The Influence of Interlocutor Personality on Discourse in Pair and Group Oral Tests

초록

This study examined if interlocutor personality influences on discourse in pair and group oral testformats. Data were collected from 174 Korean university students who took pair and group oral tests. Their performances were video-taped and transcribed. The data were analyzed in terms of goal-orientation, interactional contingency and dominance. The findings were as follows. First, test-takers initiated more topics, talked more, and had longer persistence of topics in POT (Pair Oral Test) and in GOT (Group Oral Test). Second, the more extroverted test-takers tended to talk more in both tests, and it was more marked in GOT. Third, test-taker’s own personality was theonly significant variable, but not his (or her) interlocutor(s). Lastly, extroverts’ topic initiation, amount of talk, and topic persistence were significantly associated with their scores both in POT and in GOT: The connection was stronger in GOT than in POT.

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