Assessing Oral Proficiency: A Comparison of Holistic and Objective Measures

This study examines the relationship between holistic judgments of oral proficiency and objective measures of syntactic maturity in the Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) of 107 students of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Tianjin, China. The analysis compares a holistic rating of proficiency level (Intermediate, Advanced, and Superior) with objective measures (Mean T-Unit Length, Mean Error-Free T-Unit Length, and Percent of Error-Free T-Units) for three separate interview tasks (Describing/Narrating, Role Playing, and Asking Questions). Results of the repeated measures Multivariate Analyses of Variance (MANOVAs) indicate significant main effects for proficiency level and interview task.