Contextualizing Performances: Comparing Performances During TOEFL iBTTM and Real-Life Academic Speaking Activities

In this study we compare test takers' performance on the Speaking section of the TOEFL iBT(TM) and their performances during their real-life academic studies. Thirty international graduate students from mixed language backgrounds in two different disciplines (Sciences and Social Sciences) responded to two independent and four integrated speaking tasks of the TOEFL iBT and participated in semistructured interviews. For the real-life academic contexts, we recorded the performances of our participants in one in-class and one out-of-class speaking activity. On the basis of an analysis of the participants' speaking (examining grammatical, discourse, and lexical features), we demonstrate that there are some overlapping and some distinct differences in their performances across contexts. Our findings both support and raise questions about the extrapolation inference claim of the validity argument of the Speaking section of the TOEFL iBT.