229 / 2018-08-28 16:39:07

Exploring the Validity of CSE Pragmatic Competence Scales: Expressing Speaker Meaning

pragmatic competence, speech acts, language proficiency scales, scale validation

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Pragmatic competence has been recognized as an indispensable part of communicative competence. However, little attention has been paid to pragmatic competence in scales of language proficiency. China’s Standards of English (CSE) has been developed with innovative attempts to construct scales of pragmatic competence which aims to describe ascending scales of language learners’ pragmatic competence. This study explores the content validity of the pragmatic scale focusing on expressing speaker meaning, taking tertiary level China EFL learners as an example. The likelihood of the speech acts included in the scale is investigated by a survey, and oral discourse completion tasks are employed to gather evidence of learners’ pragmatic performance. Result of the survey confirmed the representativeness of the speech acts described in the scale. Learners’ performance of the eight speech acts verifies the scaling of the speech acts and provides empirical evidence for descriptor writing. This study has implications for validation studies of language proficiency scales.
语用能力是交际语言能力重要组成部分，然而现有语言能力量表对语用能力少有涉及，对学习者的语用能力进行分级描述，编制英语语用能力量表是中国英语能力等级量表的创新尝试。本研究以大学英语学习者为样本，汇报中国英语能力等级量表语用能力量表中的表达说话意图子量表在量表研制过程的内容效度研究。本研究通过对言语行为使用的可能性调查，确保量表中所涵盖的言语行为的典型性；另外，通过口语填充任务考察学习者实施8种典型言语行为情况，为各言语行为的等级划分及描述语撰写提供实证依据。本研究对语言能力量表的研制及效度验证有重要参考价值。