Abstract
The role of English as the international language of business and education has grown immeasurably in recent decades. With a burgeoning population of English language learners the world over, there is a clear and increasing need for valid measures of communicative language ability. Business people, international students, and ordinary citizens need the English skills necessary to operate in their target language use domain; the acquisition of English is critical to their educational opportunities, money-making potential, and upward mobility — this is undeniably a high-stakes issue. For better or worse, language tests are critical to language learners and end-users (companies, universities, communities, among others) in that they help determine who is proficient enough to work, study, and survive in the target culture, and who needs further instruction and/or exposure. Therefore, the constructs underlying language tests should reflect theoretical notions of what it means to know a language.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bachman, L. & Palmer, A. (1996). Language Testing in Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beebe, L., & Waring, H. Z. (2002, April). The pragmatics in the interlanguage pragmatics research agenda: The case of tone. Paper presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Bouton, L. (1994). Conversational implicatures in the second language: Learned slowly when not deliberately taught. Journal of Pragmatics, 22: 157–167.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Enochs, K., & Yoshitake-Strain, S. (1996). Self-assessment and role plays for evaluating appropriateness in speech act realizations. ICU Language Research Bulletin, 11: 57–76.
Enochs, K., & Yoshitake-Strain, S. (1999). Evaluating six measures of EFL learners’ pragmatic competence. JALT Journal, 21: 29–50.
Farhady, H. (1983). New directions for ESL proficiency testing. In J. Oller (ed.), Issues in Language Testing (pp. 253–69). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Ferguson, C. (1975). Towards a characterization of English foreigner talk. Anthropological Linguistics, 17: 1–14.
Freed, B. (1978). From the Community to the Classroom: Gathering second language speech samples. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Garcia, P. (2004). Pragmatic comprehension of high and low level language. TESL-EJ, 8(2). Retrieved September 4, 2008, from http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej30/toc.html
Grabowski, K. (2009). Investigating the construct validity of a test designed to measure grammatical and pragmatic knowledge in the context of speaking. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York.
Grice, P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press.
Grice, P. (1978). Further notes on logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics (pp. 113–127). New York: Academic Press.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1973). Explorations in the Functions of Language. New York: Elsevier North-Holland.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as Social Semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1994). An Introduction to Functional Grammar (2nd edn). London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1989). Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of language in a socio-semiotic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hudson, T., Detmer, E. & Brown, J. D. (1992). A Framework for Testing Cross-cultural Pragmatics. Honolulu, HI: Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
Hudson, T., Detmer, E. & Brown, J. D. (1995). Developing Prototypic Measures of Crosscultural Pragmatics. Technical Report #7. Honolulu, HI: Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
Kasper, G., & Rose, K. (2002). Pragmatic Development in a Second Language. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Lado, R. (1961). Language Testing. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Linacre, J. (1989). Many-faceted Rasch Measurement. Chicago, IL: MESA Press.
Liu, J. (2006). Measuring Interlanguage Pragmatic Knowledge of EFL Learners. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
McNamara, T. (1996). Measuring Second Language Performance: A new era in language testing. New York: Longman.
Pollitt, A., & Hutchinson, C. (1987). Calibrating graded assessments: Rasch partial credit analysis of performance in writing. Language Testing, 4: 72–92.
Purpura, J. (2004). Assessing Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Roever, C. (2006). Validation of a web-based test of ESL pragmalinguistics. Language Testing, 23: 229–256.
Roever, C. (2008). Rater, item, and candidate effects in discourse completion tests: A FACETS approach. In E. Alcón & A. Martínez-Flor (eds.), Investigating Pragmatics in Foreign Language Learning, Teaching, and Testing (pp. 249–266). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Rose, K. (2000). An exploratory cross-sectional study of interlanguage pragmatic development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22: 27–67.
Ross, S., & Berwick, R. (1992). The discourse of accommodation in oral proficiency interviews. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 14: 159–176.
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taguchi, N. (2005). Comprehending implied meaning in English as a foreign language. The Modern Language Journal, 89: 543–562.
Wright, B., & Masters, G. (1982). Rating Scale Analysis. Chicago, IL: MESA Press.
Yamashita, S. (1996). Six Measures of JSL Pragmatics. Technical Report #14. Honolulu, HI: Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center, University of Hawai’i at Manoa.
Yamashita, S. (2001). Using pictures for research in pragmatics. Eliciting pragmatic strategies by picture response tasks. In T. Hudson & J. D. Brown (eds.), A Focus on Language Test Development (pp. 35–56). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, National Foreign Language Resource Center.
Yoshitake-Strain, S. (1997). Measuring interlanguage pragmatic competence of Japanese students of English as a foreign language: A multi-test framework evaluation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia Pacific University, Novata, CA.
Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 Kirby Grabowski
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Grabowski, K. (2013). Investigating the construct validity of a role-play test designed to measure grammatical and pragmatic knowledge at multiple proficiency levels. In: Ross, S.J., Kasper, G. (eds) Assessing Second Language Pragmatics. Palgrave Advances in Language and Linguistics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137003522_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137003522_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-35213-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-00352-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Language & Linguistics CollectionEducation (R0)