Discursive construction of a high-stakes test: the many faces of a test-taker

Abstract

As part of a larger project, we studied how a foreign language test got discursively constructed in the talk of upper-secondary-school leavers. A group of students were asked to keep an oral diary to record their ideas, feelings and experiences of preparing for and taking the test over the last spring term of school, as part of a high-stakes national examination. In addition, they took part in discussions either in pairs or groups of three after having learned about the final test results. After transcribing the data, drawing on a form of discourse analysis originally launched by a group of social psychologists, we identified (at least) four interpretative repertoires in the students’ accounts - with different constructions of themselves as test-takers, the test, and their performance in the test - including expectations and explanations for success or failure as well as credit or blame. The findings point to variation in the uses of these repertoires, not only from one context to another but also from moment to moment.