Pragmatics tests: Different purposes, different tests

Abstract

Introduction Although the assessment of pragmatic proficiency has only recently begun to be explored, so far researchers have tested pragmatics using at least six types of instruments: the written discourse completion tasks, multiple-choice discourse completion tasks, oral discourse completion tasks, discourse role-play tasks, discourse self-assessment tasks, and roleplay self-assessments. This paper will begin by defining each of the six types of pragmatics tests and listing pertinent references to the literature in each case. Readers interested in more details about the literature on all six of these measures are referred to Yoshitake (1997) and Yamashita (1996a, 1996b), each of which offers a more comprehensive review of that literature than would be appropriate for this chapter. 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. (For research on WDCT, readers are referred to Blum-Kulka, 1982, 1983; Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1986; Cohen, Olshtain, & Rosenstein, 1986; House & Kasper, 1987; Olshtain & Weinbach, 1987; Takahashi & Beebe, 1987, 1993; Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989; Faerch & Kasper, 1989; House, 1989; Kasper, 1989b; Rintell & Mitchell, 1989; Wolfson, Marmor, & Jones, 1989; Beebe, Takahashi, & Uliss-Weltz, 1990; Edmondson & House, 1991; Hudson, Detmer, & Brown, 1992, 1995; Rose, 1992, 1994a; Bergman & Kasper, 1993; Ikoma, 1993; Takahashi & Beebe, 1993; Rose & Ono, 1995; Johnston, Kasper, & Ross, 1998)