A Study Of The Effect Of Raters’ Professional Background On The Rating Of An Oral English Performance Test

Upon most occasions, an oral performance assessment would typically require the direct participation of human raters to assess candidates’performance. And raters’ background difference can be one of these factors that may greatly influence the rating result of an oral performance assessment. Brown (1995) once posited that the increasing involvement of non-linguistic factors, such as professional factors, in an oral performance assessment may make raters’professional background difference a vital variable to the rating outcomes. However, there has been little research into the effect of raters’professional background difference on the assessment made in language tests.This research intends to explore the effect that raters’professional background difference might have on the rating result of an oral performance assessment. Based on an oral performance test as the Motion Debate section of the Model United Nations, this research involves16candidates and4raters as its participants. And raters in this research arc from2different professional fields as2university professors who have experience in English language teaching and2diplomats who have working experience in the United Nations.This research adopts a mixed-method approach. By using One-Way ANOVA to examine raters" scoring difference and Rank Sum test to compare raters’ranking difference, the quantitative analysis of this research finds no significant differences in raters’rating scores and ranks. However, by observing and comparing raters’ impromptu oral comments on candidates’performance (such as the most impressive aspects of their performance, the most common mistakes they’ve made), the qualitative approach does find that the two different groups of raters as professors and officials differ in their perceiving delegates’performance by having different rating focuses and attitudes. Based on this finding, the research seems to carry both practical and theoretical significance to rater training, rater allocation and rater selections.