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Putting Rater Confidence in Its Place: A Qualitative Investigation of Raters’ Perceptions on Using Confidence Scoring in Speaking Tests

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Abstract

To provide more evidence for validating a new scoring approach, Confidence Scoring, in speaking tests, this chapter reports a qualitative investigation of raters’ perceptions of using Confidence Scoring. The two approaches, Confidence Scoring and Traditional Scoring, were compared in terms of qualitative interview data of five raters to provide a fuller understanding of similarities and differences between the two approaches. The findings demonstrate that, on the one hand, similarities between the two approaches perceived by the interviewees indicated that Confidence Scoring is based on and develops from Traditional Scoring. On the other hand, differences between the two approaches identified by the interviewees revealed that Confidence Scoring subsumes Traditional Scoring but provides a more flexible way of acknowledging rater confidence in measuring candidate performance as well as contributing a more defensible way of employing confidence scores in quantifying candidate performance.

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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore

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Jin, T. (2014). Putting Rater Confidence in Its Place: A Qualitative Investigation of Raters’ Perceptions on Using Confidence Scoring in Speaking Tests. In: Coniam, D. (eds) English Language Education and Assessment. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-071-1_12

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