Validity of Role Play in Sociocultural Competence Assessment in Year 12 Examination in Latvia

Abstract

The article examines different facets of the role play task, its application in the Year 12 English language examination and the statistical analysis of its results with the purpose to validate the use of role play for testing the sociocultural competence in Latvia. The research method of the role play here combines the features of external validation (construct validation) with internal validation (contents and response validation). The statistical findings suggest that the role-play task ensures a reliable and valid method of assessment of the student performance; it also provides a means for reliable assessment of a large proportion of the curriculum, as the skills tested by role play differ from the skills tested by other examination tasks. The findings of the curricular validation suggest that removing role-play from the examination would undermine the curricular validity of the Year 12 examination. The contents analysis of the task suggests that the difference in the student performance level in Speaking is created by the impact of the assessment of the sociocultural competence as defined by Celce Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell (1995).