Testing ESL Sociopragmatics : Development and Validation of a Web-based Test Battery

Testing of second language pragmatics has grown as a research area but still suffers from a tension between construct coverage and practicality.

In this book, the authors describe the development and validation of a web-based test of second language pragmatics for learners of English.

The test has a sociopragmatic orientation and strives for a broad coverage of the construct by assessing learners’ metapragmatic judgments as well as their ability to co-construct discourse.

To ensure practicality, the test is delivered online and is scored partially automatically and partially by human raters.

We used the argument-based approach to validation, which showed that the test can support low-stakes decisions about learners’ knowledge of sociopragmatics in English.