M. Rafael Salaberry is Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Humanities at Rice University, USA. His research interests include second language acquisition and use, multilingualism, bilingual education, assessment and teaching methodology. Together with S. Kunitz, he is the co-editor of Teaching and Testing Interactional Competence: Bridging Theory and Practice (2019, Routledge).Alfred Rue Burch is an Associate Professor at Kobe University, Japan. His research interests include conversation analysis, discursive psychology, second language acquisition and use, and task-based language teaching and testing.

A refreshingly provocative collection challenging traditional large-scale approaches to oral language assessment. A convincing case is made for how assessment of interactive communication requires small-scale efforts. The volume concludes that the assessment of interactive communication in all its sociolinguistic grandeur requires new approaches to test construction and ratings, as well as revised thinking as to how results are to be utilized.

• ContributorsPart 1: Conceptual and Theoretical Issues1. M. Rafael Salaberry and Alfred Rue Burch: Assessing Speaking in Context: Expanding the Construct and the Applications2. Carsten Roever and David Wei Dai: Reconceptualising Interactional Competence for Language Testing3. India Plough: A Case for Nonverbal Behavior: Implications for Construct, Performance and AssessmentPart 2: Collecting and Rating Speaking Data4. Alfred Rue Burch and Gabriele Kasper: Task Instruction in OPI Roleplays5. Soo Jung Youn and Shi Chen: Investigating Raters’ Scoring Processes and Strategies in Paired Speaking Assessment6. Erica Sandlund and Pia Sundqvist: Rating and Reflecting: Displaying Rater Identities in Collegial L2 English Oral AssessmentThis chapter is open access under a CC BY NC ND licence and can be downloaded for free at https://zenodo.org/record/5163340#.YQvJ0IhKjcsPart 3: Designing Speaking Assessment Tests7. Katharina Kley, Silvia Kunitz and Meng Yeh: Jiazhou? Is it California? Operationalizing Repair in Classroom-based Assessment8. Remi Adam van Compernolle: Observing and Assessing Interactional Competence in Dynamic Strategic Interaction Scenarios9. Shane Dunkle: Using Social Deduction Board Games to Assess and Strengthen Interactional Competence in ESL Learners10. Dagmar Barth-Weingarten and Britta Freitag-Hild: Assessing Interactional Competence in Secondary Schools: Issues of Turn-takingPart 4: Using New Technologies to Assess Speaking11. Jayoung Song and Wei-Li Hsu: Design and Implementation of a Classroom-based Virtual Reality Assessment12. Noriko Iwashita, Lyn May and Paul Moore: Operationalising Interactional Competence in Computer-mediated Speaking Tests13. M. Rafael Salaberry and Alfred Rue Burch: Assessing Speaking in the Post-COVID-19 Era: A Look Towards the FutureIndex