A Psycholinguistic Approach to Oral Language Assessment

Autor/in	Van Moere, Alistair
Titel	A Psycholinguistic Approach to Oral Language Assessment
Quelle	In: Language Testing, 29 (2012) 3, S.325-344 (20 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0265-5322
DOI	10.1177/0265532211424478
Schlagwörter	Sentences; Repetition; Speech; Reaction Time; Psycholinguistics; Oral Language; Testing; Language Tests; Language Processing; Language Proficiency; Language Acquisition; Language Fluency; Memorization; Articulation (Speech); Foreign Countries; College Students; Native Speakers; Item Response Theory; Hong Kong + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Sentence analysis; Satzanalyse; Wiederholung; Speaking; Sprechen; Reaktionsvermögen; Psycholinguistik; Oral interpretation; Mündlicher Sprachgebrauch; Testdurchführung; Testen; Language test; Sprachtest; Sprachverarbeitung; Language skill; Language skills; Sprachkompetenz; Sprachaneignung; Spracherwerb; Gedächtnistraining; Ausland; Collegestudent; Muttersprachler; Item-Response-Theorie; Hongkong
Abstract	This paper presents a framework for incorporating the assessment of psycholinguistic constructs into spoken language proficiency testing. Although response time and automaticity of language processing are vital factors in language acquisition, as constructs they are rarely explicitly assessed in language tests. It is proposed that efficiency of processing, although it does not appear in most models of communicative language competence, might be viewed as a language competence in its own right. In contrast to communicative approaches to testing which evaluate mastery of complex language structures or domain-specific vocabulary, an approach which emphasizes efficiency of processing evaluates the speed and accuracy with which a learner processes familiar language, as this provides equally useful information about their L2 proficiency. In a study to demonstrate this, the speech of 147 test takers was evaluated as they performed on conceptually simple and straightforward performance tasks such as elicited imitation. It was found that sentence repetition and sentence building tasks reliably separated test takers according to proficiency in a way that accounts for the trade-off between fluency, accuracy and complexity. While these tasks would not be considered communicative, they are psycholinguistically valid and also link to good practice in classroom language learning activities. (Contains 1 note, 1 figure and 2 tables.) (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10