Current Situation on Interlanguage Pragmatics Tests

Abstract：Pragmatic competence refers to the ability to appropriately use a target language in actual contexts. The assessment of pragmatic competence has attracted much attention among scholars. Nowadays there are only six types of pragmatics tests. The incomplete testing system and unsolved problems are the contents of future research.

Key words：Pragmatic Competence； Interlanguage Pragmatics Tests； Main Problems

1. Introduction

Ever since its emergence， the field of interlanguage pragmatics has been concerned with the documentation of second and foreign language learners pragmatic competence. Chomsky （1980） defines the notion of pragmatic competence as the ‘knowledge of conditions and manner of appropriate use （of the language）， in conformity with various purposes. Canale （1988） pointed out that pragmatic competence includes ‘illocutionary competence， or the knowledge of the pragmatic conventions for performing acceptable functions， and sociolinguistic competence， or the knowledge of sociolinguistic conventions for performing language functions appropriately in a given context.

2. Interlanguage Pragmatics Tests

There are at least six types of pragmatics tests：

（1）A written discourse completion task （WDCT） is any pragmatics instrument. that requires the students to read a written description of a situation （including such factors as setting， participant roles， and degree of imposition） and asks them to write what they would say in that situation.

（2） A multiple-choice discourse completion task （MDCT） is also a pragmatics instrument that requires students to read a written description of a situation， an MDCT requires the students to select what would be best to say in that situation.

（3） An oral discourse completion task （ODCT） is a pragmatics instrument that requires students to listen to a description of a situation （usually on a tape recorder） and to say aloud what they would say in that situation （typically into another tape recorder）.

（4） A discourse role-play task （DRPT） is any pragmatics instrument that provides a description of a situation and asks students to play a particular role with another person in that situation.

（5） A discourse self-assessment task （DSAT） is any pragmatics instrument that provides a written description of a situation and asks the students to rate their own ability to perform the pragmatics necessary in that situation.

（6） A role-play self-assessment （RPSA） is any pragmatics instrument that combines the DRPT with the DSAT by requiring students to rate their own pragmatics performance in a previously performed role-play that was recorded on a video recorder.

3. Main Problems and Future Research on Interlanguage Pragmatics Tests

The primary thing of devising a pragmatic test is the design of communication situations. Situation sampling is the best way to ensure the appropriateness of situations. To do situation sampling， questionnaires are distributed to participants. The participants are required to write down the situations concerning with pragmatic behaviors， such as apology， request， refusal and praise. With a little modification， the collected situations can be used into tests. In addition， there are no research on students sociopragmatics. Whats more， tests can not be separated from scoring. Objective questions can be machine scoring while subjective questions must be hand scoring. The main problem is what is the standard and how to formulate the standard. Nowadays， the commonly used standard is the native speakers intuition assessment. However， native speaker standard has problems too.

Form the foregoing， future research should focus more on the relationship between foreign language competence and pragmatic competence. In addition， native speakers， especially English speakers come from different countries should take into account. And in the future， more research should commit to the influence of holistic rating rubrics and analytic rating rubrics on the testing results.Whats more， culture is an indispensable part of pragmatics tests. Thus it is necessary to study the difficulty of various speech acts.

4. Conclusion

Interlanguage pragmatics is a young field， a hybrid of second language acquisition and pragmatics. Pragmatic competence is one of the centers of studies on interlanguage pragmatics， but how to measure pragmatic competence is a tough subject. Thus in the future， more research should focus on the unsolved problems and devote more testing tools to studying students pragmatic competence.

【References】

[1] Carsten Roever. Testing of second language pragmatics： past and future. Language Testing， 2011，28 （4）， 463-481.

[2] James Dean Brown&Russell Changseob Ahn. Variables that affect the dependability of L2 pragmatics tests. Journal of Pragmatics， 2011 ，（43）， 198-217.

[3] Kenneth R. Rose & Gabriele Kasper. Pragmatics in Language Teaching. Beijing： World Book Inc. 2006：301-325.

[4] Liu Jianda . Developing a pragmatics test for Chinese EFL learners. Language Testing， 2007，24 （3）， 391-415.

【作者簡介】

严珺（1992—），女，江西省吉安市人，兰州交通大学外国语学院在读硕士研究生，主要研究方向：外国语言学及应用语言学。