Integrating learner corpus data into the assessment of spoken interaction in English in an Italian university context

This paper reports on ongoing research conducted at the University of Padua on the teaching and assessment of spoken interaction in English at level B2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR, Council of Europe 2001). The study is mainly based on a small learner corpus (about 18,000 words) composed of transcripts of interactions between second-year English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students recorded during assessment sessions. It presents the context of the interactions, the corpora used and the results of a series of investigations carried out into some pragmatic aspects of the interactions. The paper then explores how these findings can help us to flesh out the construct for ‘Discourse Management’ and, ultimately, to set more reliable scoring criteria.