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.
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