Testing ESL Pragmatics Development and Validation of a Web-Based

Although second language learners’ pragmatic competence (their ability to use language in context) is an essential part of their general communicative competence, it has not been a part of second language tests. This book helps fill this gap by describing the development and validation of a web-based test of ESL pragmalinguistics. The instrument assesses learners’ knowledge of routine formulae, speech acts, and implicature in 36 multiple-choice and brief-response items. The test’s quantitative and qualitative validation with 300 learners showed high reliability and provided strong evidence of the instrument’s construct validity. Its web-based format makes it easy to administer and score. The book ends with a discussion of future research directions in assessing second language pragmatics.

The Author: Carsten Röver is a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, School of Languages, at the University of Melbourne. He did his Erstes Staatsexamen in TESOL and Psychology at the University of Duisburg, and earned his Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. He has worked in test validation at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ, and served as a consultant at the Center for the Advanced Study of Language at the University of Maryland.