This study provides a detailed description of interview discourse, analyzing interactions between an interviewer and an interviewee in a Korean Oral Proficiency Interview (K-OPI). An attempt is made by analyzing interview discourse to explain utteranc...
This study provides a detailed description of interview discourse, analyzing interactions between an interviewer and an interviewee in a Korean Oral Proficiency Interview (K-OPI). An attempt is made by analyzing interview discourse to explain utterances of interviewers and interviewees and to describe interactions between them and to figure out original characteristics of interview discourse. To verify the purpose of this study, a discourse analysis was conducted. I transcribed and coded 63 recorded, authentic interviews which were provided by 13 interviewers and 120 interviewees in K-OPI. I was able to find out characteristics of interviewers’ utterances, features of communicative strategies used by the interviewees, and characteristics of interactions between interviewers and interviewees in terms of turn-taking, topic initiation, interruption and adjacency-pairs.
Interviewers’ utterances can be divided into three types by functions: utterances for eliciting interviewees’ performances, utterances as an interlocutor in conversation, and utterances as a tester. ‘Referential questions’ are significantly more frequent than any other types of interviewer utterances. Interviewers quite often repeat the same or similar questions in one speaking turn. They also help interviewees to keep speaking by using various backchannels. They usually employ ‘clarification requests’ and ‘comprehension checks’ to elicit adequate answers from the interviewees. The use of humor by the interviewer can play both a positive and a negative role. It’s usually positive when the interviewer laughs at the interviewee since it lightens the mood of the interview.
Interviewees’ utterances can be classified into two categories: fluent answers to an interviewer’s question without any problems and utterances using communicative strategies in problematic situations in which the interviewee cannot continue to speak. Most of the utterances provided by the interviewee are answers to the interviewer’s questions over an entire interview. The interviewee is willing to employ communicative strategies in problematic situations. The most frequently used strategy is the time-gaining strategy. It can be used with some other strategies cooperatively, particularly, self-admiring. Laughing with time-gaining is employed to remove anxiety because of a lack of fluency and a need to obtain confidence. The subjects are more likely to accomplish utterances by ‘message reconstruction’ than to avoid and abandon topics and messages when they are in trouble. It is shown that interviewees usually use social strategies such as ‘clarification requests’, ‘appeals for assistance’, and ‘comprehension checks’ to accomplish their performance successfully.
I analyzed turn-taking, interruption, topic organization, and adjacency-pairs in terms of interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee. In the interviews, there are apparent asymmetric, power relationships since the interviewers control most of the turn-taking, frequently interrupt the interviewees’ utterances and nominate most of the topics. Question-answers are the most common ‘adjacency-pair’ that appear in the interviews. It can be typified that the general interview interaction structure is an IRF (Interviewer’s Initiation - Interviewee’s Response - Interviewer’s Feedback) style which is similar to the ‘teaching exchange fundamental function structure’. It may be repeated after initiation through feedback and can be expanded into a larger structure.
Finally, from this analysis, I provided some suggestions that can solve problems and improve K-OPI. It is necessary that the interviewer understand their complex role in an interview as an interviewer, interlocutor, tester or rater. It is necessary to make various interview patterns with specific context and to develop many elicitation methods to ensure an interviewee’s adequate performance. The interview should provide the interviewee the opportunity to initiate topic and to ask questions. The interviewer should not emphasize their power over an interviewee through interruption, and exclusive topic nomination. There also must be enough time provided for the interviewee to complete their utterances.
The results of this study can be applied to examine the validity of K-OPI and can be used as basic data for developing a standard Korean Speaking Ability Test.
，韩语论文范文，韩语毕业论文 |
