Despite a growing awareness that pragmatic, intercultural, and interactional competence are essential skills for successful multilingual and multicultural interactions, assessing these set of skills in second language (L2) classrooms is largely ignored. Challenges, such as the ill-defined nature of the constructs and layers of complexity involving language variety, individual differences, and difficulty in developing reliable and valid assessment materials, contribute to this reluctance. Meeting these challenges has been made practically attainable by emergent technological tools which are able to deliver lifelike scenarios in an immersive digital environment. In this context, learners’ abilities to interact in culturally appropriate ways can be observed in simulated, but realistic and replicable situations. Some of the affordances of digital simulations for this purpose include the capability of (a) engaging in extended sequences of turns; (b) establishing situational context via graphical backgrounds; (c) virtual characters who act as standardized interlocutors; (d) progressing along multiple interactional pathways depending upon the individual choices; (e) including non-verbal actions as responses; (f) stopping the interaction to elicit learner self-reflections; and finally (g) collecting continuous data about learners’ behaviors (Sykes, 2010; Taguchi & Sykes, 2013; Thorne, Black, Sykes, 2009).

This proposed assessment project targets learners acquiring an L2 in formal educational contexts and the purpose of the assessment is to provide instructors with a profile of their students’ pragmatic, intercultural, and interactional competence, which we define as “learners’ ability to express and interpret meaning in situationally appropriate ways.” L2 learners’ performance will be measured based on the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) National Council of State Supervisors of Foreign Languages (NCSSFL) Can-Do statements, and the assessment will provide information about the learners’ abilities on dimensions critical to successful multicultural interaction based on evidence in each of several dimensions gathered across multiple scenarios. This information can then enable instructors to provide their students with appropriate instructional interventions. Although creating an assessment that can capture this complex set of skills is challenging, approaches utilizing digital simulations can ameliorate many of the difficulties encountered by prior efforts. This collaborative project is an effort to move forward to meet the current and future needs of stakeholders using the affordances of new technologies; this assessment framework represents an initial effort to utilize such an approach.

 

References

 

Sykes, J. ( 2010). Multi-user virtual environments: User-driven design and implementation for language learning. In G. Vicenti & J. Braman, Teaching Through Multi-user Virtual Environments: Applying Dynamic Elements to the Modern Classroom, (pp. 283-305). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Taguchi, N., & Sykes, J. ( Eds.). (2013). Technology in Interlanguage Pragmatics Research and Teaching. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.

Thorne, S., Black, R. & Sykes, J. (2009). Second language use, socialization, and learning in Internet interest communities and online games. Modern Language Journal, 93, 802-821.