Abstract

Despite the prominence of task-based learning and assessment in language teaching in recent decades, a comprehensive understanding of how learner’s agency interacts with task is missing from the literature. This study takes a sociocultural view to explore how English as an additional language learners negotiate and shape an oral assessment task in constructing their activities. This study is guided by the activity theory and adopts a qualitative exploratory design to analyse 24 recordings of EAL student interaction of in-class language assessment tasks in secondary schools in Australia. The results of this study demonstrate the crucial role of teacher, task, learner’s language level, and interlocutors power relations play in how the learners exhibit agency and construct the activity. The findings of this study offer major contribution for grouping arrangements based on the purpose of the activity (i.e., learning or assessment) and supports a deeper understanding of learner agency and task negotiation.

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