Paper short abstract:

This test is aimed at business people or students who have plurilingual/pluricultural competence, aiming to measure the functional language proficiency required in that world. The usefulness and validity of the task will be discussed in this presentation.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, securing talented human resources has become important in a global society. As international mobility of people in plurilingual/pluricultural world expands, especially in the business industry, development of a test to evaluate Japanese language proficiency as one of plurilingual/pluricultural competence is hoped especially in multilingual and multicultural environments. There is a great interest in measuring conversational ability with an emphasis on communication in Japanese language, and a test to measure practical conversational ability with validity and reliability is desired.

　　　Due to the nature of the performance test, a method of measuring conversational ability, no remarkable approach or research has been made on the development of a speaking test or measurement and evaluation of it. An existing test is the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) developed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages（ACTFL), but its practical use has not progressed.

　　　In this presentation, we will focus on the business of the target language use areas, give a progress report on the development process, the constructs to be measured, and the evaluation method, and aim for the future multilingual and multicultural society. We want to lead to highly valid test development.

　　　This test is aimed at business people who have plurilingual/pluricultural competence, and students who intend to enter the business world in the future, aiming to measure the functional language proficiency required in that world. Functional linguistic ability in this area means that you can understand the scene and situation from illustrations presented in the test, express it in Japanese that is socially and culturally appropriate as a professional, and further consider the current or future, and anticipate their ability to express their opinions and suggestions. Rather than assessing in terms of the stereotype of what a Japanese business person should say, using the linguistic knowledge possessed by people with plurilingual/pluricultural competence, the extent to which they can perform tasks including problem solving and critical thinking, which should be the main aim of the test.

We will discuss the usefulness and validity of the task in this presentation.