ERIC Number: EJ943300
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011-Oct
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0265-5322
EISSN: N/A
Testing of Second Language Pragmatics: Past and Future
Roever, Carsten
Language Testing, v28 n4 p463-481 Oct 2011
Testing of second language pragmatic competence is an underexplored but growing area of second language assessment. Tests have focused on assessing learners' sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic abilities but the speech act framework informing most current productive testing instruments in interlanguage pragmatics has been criticized for under-representing the construct. In particular, the assessment of learners' ability to produce extended monologic and dialogic discourse is a missing component in existing assessments. This paper reviews existing tests and argues for a discursive re-orientation of pragmatics tests. Suggestions for tasks and scoring approaches to assess discursive abilities while maintaining practicality are provided, and the problematicity of native speaker benchmarking is discussed. (Contains 2 figures.)
Descriptors: Speech Acts, Second Language Learning, Interlanguage, Testing, Native Speakers, Pragmatics, Language Tests, Guidelines, Scoring, Benchmarking, Construct Validity, Oral Language, Language Proficiency, Role Playing
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A