Search

Pragmatic ability is crucial for second language learners to communicate appropriately and effectively; however, pragmatics is underemphasized in language teaching and testing. This book remedies that situation by connecting theory, empirical research, and practical curricular suggestions on pragmatics for learners of different proficiency levels: It surveys the field comprehensively and, with useful tasks and activities, offers rich guidance for teaching and testing L2 pragmatics. Mainly referring to pragmatics of English and with relevant examples from multiple languages, it is an invaluable resource for practicing teachers, graduate students, and researchers in language pedagogy and assessment.

This article presents a review of research that has investigated ways of measuring implicit and explicit knowledge of a second language (L2), focusing on grammar. It begins by defining implicit and...

In the assessment of speaking, a psycholinguistically based speaking construct has predominated. In this paper, we argue for the integration of the construct of interactional competence (IC) in speaking assessments to broaden the range of defensible inferences from speaking tests. IC emphasizes the co-constructed nature of interaction and enables the rating of L2 users’ ability to deploy interactional tools that lead to shared understandings. Recent work on IC shows that levels of development can be distinguished, for example, in the sequential organization of social actions such as requests and refusals. This can in turn inform interactionally specific ratings. Furthermore, an IC perspective allows a fine-grained analysis of interactions between examiners and test takers to detect effects of examiner talk. Apparent misunderstandings or disfluencies by test takers can be examiner-induced with the test taker’s response actually demonstrating interactional ability rather than lack of proficiency. We argue that inclusion of IC as a construct in testing speaking opens new perspectives on oral proficiency and enhances the validity of speaking assessments.

This study examined the development of requests made by second language (L2) learners of Modern Standard Arabic at four levels of L2 ability. The study used longitudinal and cross-sectional data collection to investigate how learners' performance of requests developed over a five-month period and differed as a function of ability level. The results indicated U-shaped development, with learners initially decreasing their use of direct requests and increasing their use of indirect requests as their overall language ability increased. However, at higher ability levels, learners approximated native speaker norms by reverting to direct requests. This developmental pattern demonstrated the constraining effect of learners' sociopragmatic competence on their pragmalinguistic performance. In addition, the findings highlighted the nonuniversality of developmental stages proposed by Kasper and Rose (2002), showing that developmental trajectories differ between languages with a preference for indirect requests (such as English and Greek) and those with a preference for direct requests (such as Arabic).

L2 requests in developmental pragmatics research are commonly investigated using non-interactive data collection techniques or sidelining the larger discourse sequence in which the request proper is embedded. This study takes a different approach to the study of L2 requests. In a cross-sectional design, we collected role play data from learners at four proficiency levels, and focused on the sequential organization of the interactions and the impact of participants’ proficiency level. Findings indicate that lower level learners were less likely to project the upcoming request and lay the groundwork for it through ascertaining interlocutor availability and providing accounts. They used fewer first-pair parts and uttered the request early relying on the interlocutor to elicit further information. The interlocutor also adjusted to learners’ proficiency level in keeping complications to a minimum. Effects of the social context variable Power were very limited but discernible at high-proficiency levels. We argue for a more discursive approach to developmental data in interlanguage pragmatics that allows the identification of interactional correlates of proficiency.

Routine formulae are highly frequent, situationally bound chunks that are beneficial to L2 learners? pragmatic performance. These formulae are usually more easily acquired in the target language setting but they are to some extent also learnable in foreign language classrooms. This study investigates the effect of different lengths of residence abroad on the recognition of situational routine formulae. A total of 262 ESL and EFL learners completed a test battery which included assessment of receptive knowledge of routines. Learners with even short-term residence of two months had increased knowledge of routines, and further residence led to further improvement in knowledge in this area. Even EFL learners without residence knew some routine formulae but knowledge of routines was independent of general proficiency. Learners in the L2 setting get routines �for free� through exposure to contextualized L2 discourse, but which specific routines are acquired depends on the interactional settings in which learners communicate.

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.

This study investigates differential item functioning (DIF) in a 36-item test of English as a Second Language pragmalinguistics, assessing 254 learners' knowledge of implicature, routines, and speech acts. Two common DIF techniques, the Mantel-Haenszel method and the standardization method, detected nine items functioning differentially for test takers of Asian and European language background. More detailed analyses of these items showed that DIF was mostly statistical, but some substantive DIF was also present.

In this book, the authors foreground an aspect of language testing that is usually not much discussed and is frequently considered an “advanced” topic: the social dimension of language testing. They see various social dimensions in language testing. There are socially oriented language tests, i.e., tests which assess learners’ ability to use language in social settings. These are primarily oral proficiency interviews and tests of second language pragmatics. But the authors also understand “social” as “societal” and look at the larger-scale impact of tests on individual learners or groups of learners by discussing fairness and bias in language testing. They also broaden their view and discuss the role of language testing in a macro-social context, e.g. as accountability measures in education systems, as gatekeeping instruments for migration, and as tools for constructing and defining social groups. Their discussion is anchored in traditional and more recent views of validity theory.

Despite increasing interest in interlanguage pragmatics research, research on assessment of this crucial area of second language competence still lags behind assessment of other aspects of learners’ developing second language (L2) competence. This study describes the development and validation of a 36-item web-based test of ESL pragmalinguistics, measuring learners’ offline knowledge of implicatures and routines with multiple-choice questions, and their knowledge of speech acts with discourse completion tests. The test was delivered online to 267 ESL and EFL learners, ranging in proficiency from beginner to advanced. Evidence for construct validity was collected through correlational analyses and comparisons between groups. The effect of browser familiarity was found to be negligible, and learners generally performed as previous research would suggest: their knowledge of speech acts increased with proficiency, as did their knowledge of implicature. Their knowledge of routines, however, was strongly dependent on L2 exposure. Correlations between the sections and factor analysis confirmed that the routines, implicatures, and speech act sections are related but that each has some unique variance. The test was sufficiently reliable and practical, taking an hour to administer and little time to score. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.

Research in second language pragmatics is increasingly investigating the sequential organization of interaction and how it might be affected by second language learners’ developing proficiency. In this paper, we are focusing on a specific aspect of request organization, namely multiple requests. Through data from natural interaction and role plays, we found that multiple requests occurred in a single turn, either as an original request and its same-format reiteration bracketing accounts and explanations or as repetitions with a more complex and polite format. Multiple requests across turns served a repair function. We argue that same-turn multiple requests are recipient designed to increase the likelihood of acceptance. Higher-level learners of Arabic were more likely to produce multiple requests in the same turn than low-level learners whereas the latter exhibited more multiple requests across turns. The data collection method did not have a discernible effect on findings.

In this book, the authors describe the development and validation of a web-based test of second language pragmatics for learners of English.

Learner background factors have been shown to affect learning of L2 pragmatics, which has been demonstrated especially for proficiency and length of residence. However, these factors have generally been investigated individually, not allowing conclusions as to their relative contributions. In this study, we use Poisson regression to investigate the effect of proficiency, length of residence, gender and multilingualism on learners' comprehension of implicature, recognition of routine formulae and production of speech acts in English. 229 ESL and EFL learners completed a web-based pragmatics test with 12 items per section. We found that only proficiency significantly affected implicature comprehension, length of residence and proficiency were significant factors in the recognition of routine formulae, and proficiency and gender significantly impacted speech act production. Although the effect of proficiency in our study is far greater than for any other background factor, we caution against overemphasizing its importance to learning of pragmatics overall.

Pragmatics as an overall construct is concerned with the influence of situational and social context on language use (Austin, 1962; Crystal, 1997; Mey, 2001), be it through the representation of objects and concepts by means of reference and deixis, the indexing of social relationships by means of politeness or honorifics, or the creation of implicature through the flouting of conversational maxims. While pragmatic knowledge and ability for use is an uncontroversial part of general L2 communicative cornpetence (Bachman, 1990; Bachrnan & Palmer, 1996), testing instruments for L2 pragmatics had been underrepresented in language test development until the mid-90s. Since then, several projects have been undertaken to develop tests of second language pragmatics (for overviews and critiques, see McNamara & Roever, 2006; Roever, 2011). The instruments developed so far have focused on the sociopragmatic appropriateness of speech acts (Ahn, 2005; Hudson, Detmer & Brown, 1995; Tada, 2005; Yamashita, 1996; Yoshitake, 1997; Liu, 2006), pragmalinguistic knowledge of implicature, routines and speech acts (Bouton, 1988, 1994, 1999; Roever, 1996, 2005, 2006), speech styles (Cook, 2001), and compliments (Walters, 2004, 2007). Some further testing instruments have been developed for acquisitional and psycholinguistic research studies in the area of speech acts (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig & Dornyei, 1998; Matsumura, 2001, 2003) and implicature (Taguchi, 2005, 2007, 2008).

The assessment of second language pragmatics is a relatively recent enterprise. This entry will briefly review the construct of pragmatics, discuss some major approaches to testing pragmatics, and highlight some of the challenges for pragmatics assessment. Keywords: pragmatics; second language acquisition; assessment

It may seem contradictory to talk about “testing” in the context of “research”: after all, testing in a narrow sense is usually done to collect evidence for real-world decisions and involves stakes for all parties involved in the process, and tests therefore need to be based on a carefully designed interpretive validity argument (Messick, 1989; Kane, 2006; Bachman & Palmer, 2010), which in itself requires a fairly extensive research program. However, testing in a simpler sense is the measurement of the strength of an attribute, which does not necessarily have to be the basis for a high-stakes decision. Rather, it might be undertaken to answer a research question; for example, to evaluate the effectiveness of an instructional intervention intended to improve learners’ knowledge or skills, trace learners’ development in language abilities over time, or compare participants with each other who differ in theoretically interesting background variables, such as proficiency level, gender, native language, or study-abroad experience. Keywords: assessment methods in applied linguistics; pragmatics; research methods in applied linguistics; second language acquisition

Pragmatics, the ability to act and interact by means of language, is a necessary and sometimes daunting learning task for second and foreign language learners. This chapter will review central issues and findings in second language (L2) developmental pragmatics, examine the effects of instruction, and provide an overview of data collection methods.