Constructing an Acquisition-Based Procedure for Second Language Assessment

Abstract

This article reports on a first attempt to develop and test run an observation procedure for assessing the syntactic and morphological development of adult learners of English as a second language (ESL) as evidenced in spontaneous speech production. The procedure is based on the profile analysis approach, which was first developed by Crystal, Fletcher, and Gorman (1976) for the assessment of impaired speech (English) and later adapted to the assessment of second language development (German) by Clahsen (1985). The theoretical basis of the procedure is the multidimensional model of second language acquisition (SLA) developed by Meisel, Clahsen, and Pienemann (1981) and extended to ESL acquisition by Pienemann and Johnston (1987a). According to the model, invariant developmental stages in the acquisition of certain syntactic and morphological elements in German and English can be predicted and explained in terms of hierarchically ordered speech processing constraints.In order to assess the developmental stage of ESL learners, an observation form was drawn up, incorporating a selection of morphosyntactic features whose presence or absence in a taped sample of natural speech was monitored by assessors. The ratings made by the assessors were then compared to those assigned through a detailed linguistic analysis to test the feasibility of using a “shorthand” version of a profile analysis.Analysis of the outcomes of the test run revealed significant correlations between the assessments and the linguistic analysis. But some variation was found in the assessors' ability to apply the assessment criteria, and the extent of agreement between the assessors' observations and the linguistic analysis was less than would be acceptable in the given theoretical framework. However, the source of these problems was identified through the first test run and suggestions were made for further refining the procedure to improve its accuracy.

The importance of task variability in the design of learner corpora for SLA research

“…excluding very common fixed routines used in classrooms such as me llamo 'I'm called' which learners produce as a single unit, without being able to productively use the verb llamar in other contexts -see Pienemann et al 1988). This decision was made to avoid counting a learner as having acquired the forms on the basis of just one example which might have been rote-learned with a common verb prior to the productive use of that structure.…”

Three Approaches to Task-Based Syllabus Design

“…Learner production, both grammatical and ungrammatical, is one source of cues for teachers as to when this will be (un)productive; interlanguage-sensitive diagnostic testing (e.g. Pienemann, Johnston and Brindley, 1988) is another. Which aspects of the language, when, how, and for which learners, all need to be precisely specified (for details, see Long, to appear).…”

Evaluación de la actuación lingüística comunicativa en niveles iniciales de L.E. mediante un instrumento sintético

“…En realidad, la aplicación de un tipo u otro de «test» presupone diferentes conceptos de lo que se entiende por capacidad lingüística comunicativa', y éste es uno de los puntos más controvertidos con respecto a la evaluación. De hecho, casi toda la investigación desarrollada en los últimos años sobre evaluación de lenguas extranjeras se deriva muy directamente de las investigaciones sobre adquisición y aprendizaje de éstas (Ingram 1985;Clahsen 1985;Brindley 1986;Pienemann et al 1988;Bachman 1990), así como también de la visión «comu-nicativa» que sobre la enseñanza de lenguas han adoptado «lingüistas aplicados» tales como Widdowson, Johnson, Brumfit, Candlin, Wilkins y Savignon.…”