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2019 Publications

BRITISH COUNCIL

TOWARDS A MODEL OF MULTI-DIMENSIONAL PERFORMANCE OF C1
LEVEL SPEAKERS ASSESSED IN THE APTIS SPEAKING TEST
Fumiyo Nakatsuhara, CRELLA, Parvaneh Tavakoli, Anas Awwad

The current study draws on the findings of Tavakoli, Nakatsuhara and Hunter’s (2017)
quantitative study which failed to identify any statistically significant differences
between various fluency features in speech produced by B2 and C1 level candidates in
the Apt is Speaking test. This study set out to examine whether there were differences
between other aspects of the speakers’ performance at these two levels, in terms of
lexical and syntactic complexity, accuracy and use of meta discourse markers that
distinguish the two levels. In order to understand the relationship between fluency and
these other aspects of performance, the study employed a mixed-methods approach to
analysing the data. The quantitative analysis included descriptive statistics, t-tests and
correlational analyses of the various linguistic measures. For the qualitative analysis,
we used a discourse analysis approach to examining the pausing behaviour of the
speakers in the context the pauses occurred in their speech. The results indicated that
the two proficiency levels were statistically different on measures of accuracy
(weighted clause ratio) and lexical diversity (TTR and D), with the C1 level producing
more accurate and lexically diverse output. The correlation analyses showed speed
fluency was correlated positively with weighted clause ratio and negatively with length
of clause. Speed fluency was also positively related to lexical diversity, but negatively
linked with lexical errors. As for pauses, frequency of end-clause pauses was positively

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