Strategic Competence, Task Complexity, and Multimodal Speaking Test Tasks

This chapter reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on strategic competence, task complexity, and speaking performance in second language assessment. It discusses how strategic competence has been conceptualised as learners’ use of metacognitive strategies and examines research on task complexity and its potential influence on language performance. Particular attention is given to the characteristics of multimodal speaking tasks in computer-delivered language tests. The chapter also clarifies the key constructs and measurement approaches used in the study and presents the conceptual framework for examining the relationships among strategic competence, task complexity, and speaking performance.