Browsing by Subject "FUSE"

The aim of this study is to investigate the use of topic management practices of Finnish upper- secondary school students in an English paired speaking test. Their proficiency is at level B according to the CEFR scales. Important keywords in the thesis are interactional competence, topic management, co-constructed fluency, spoken language and FUSE. The data consists of transcribed recordings taken from the FUSE corpus (Finnish upper secondary students corpus of spoken language). The recording are conversations from a paired speaking test for the spoken English course 8 in upper-secondary school. The research questions are how do Finnish upper secondary school students manage topics during a paired speaking test and how are the topic management practices related to the assessed proficiency level of the students? The categories used to analyze the conversations are topic initiation, extending own topic and extending other’s topic, as well as closing a topic. I analyzed the data by marking all instances of topic management practices in an excel document and compared it to Galaczi’s study (2014) on differences between proficiency levels in topic management practices. The findings reveal that higher proficiency-level students demonstrate more extended and coherent conversations, while lower proficiency-level speakers tend to have abrupt and monologic interactions. The study emphasizes the importance of considering the rater's role in testing situations and suggests further exploration of non-verbal markers in topic closings. It aligns with previous research highlighting the complexity of interactional competence and challenges the notion of standardized scales for assessing interactional behavior. The results also point to the need for a more comprehensive understanding of spoken language fluency, urging further research on topic management practices and teaching methods. The study suggests that open-ended tasks are more beneficial for developing interactional skills, emphasizing the importance of incorporating interactional practices in language learning. The assessment of co-constructed fluency is crucial for holistic language learning, promoting effective communication and linguistic knowledge application.