Interview during the Russian language Basic State Exam: Interpretation of assessment criteria

This paper sets out to clarify the criteria «Performance of a communicative task» and «Ability to consider the conditions of a speech situation» used for assessing the dialogue assignment at the Basic State Exam interview in the Russian language, as well as to outline directions for training conversational vocal responsiveness. The applied methodology included a correlation and discourse analysis of 9th-grade Russian students’ responses to the questions of the interlocutor-examiner, as well as a review of research and methodological sources. The author of the paper postulates that the fulfilment of the first criterion – «Performance of a communicative task» – entails an adequate interpretation of the question and consequent formulation of a detailed vocal response correlating with the question. A correlation analysis of interviews revealed that students’ inability to interpret questions and their insufficient apperception base generate such errors as violation of the subject domain of the question, question substitution, violation of the theme-rhematic structure of the answer, tautological character of the answer, poorly defined nominal group in the answer, absence of an answer to one of the questions in the series (question pair), formalistic answer. The second assessment criterion «Consideration of the conditions of a speech situation» – is correlated with the recipient factor, expressed in the speech code through the speaker’s performance of rapport-building and metalinguistic speech actions. A discourse analysis of interviews showed that students use numerous non-speech and nominal-speech units in their responses, which enable them to regulate their own mental activity, but appear to be invalid in terms of organising their speech with regard to a recipient. Vocalised pauses, puffs of sounds and filler phrases in the responses indicate tense speech production and a low level of lamprophony, thus making such responses difficult for the examiner to perceive. On the basis of the proposed interpretation of the criteria used for assessing dialogue speech, the author postulates the necessity of training speech responses in a dialogue situation, which can be organised in the following areas: 1) enrichment of the apperception base; 2) training the interpretation of interrogative statements; 3) teaching rapport-building and metalinguistic speech actions aimed at regulating mental activity and considering a recipient. The obtained results can be used for improving the methodology of preparing students for task 4 of the final interview in the Russian language, strengthening the continuity of training for interview at the 9th and Unified State Exam at the 11th grade.