This document describes and compares different types of linguistic tests used to measure language ability, including naturalistic production tasks, elicited production tasks, comprehension tasks that explicitly or implicitly measure knowledge, and online tasks. It outlines what each task measures, what linguistic areas they study, and pros and cons of each approach.
7. Cons
Time-consuming (create and
analyze transcripts)
No control over production for the
experimenter
Low proficiency L2 learners may be
reluctant to produce anything
Absence of evidence is not
evidence of absence.
9. WHAT THEY MEASURE
Production (oral or written)
Performance (tap into
competence)
More explicit knowledge than
the naturalistic tasks
10. WHAT THEY STUDY
Lexical knowledge
Inflectional morphology (have
to supply the right form of a
verb)
Semantics of closed-class
words (use of the vs. a)
In classroom research
11. Pros
More control over type of
production than with
naturalistic production
Can target specific
words/phrases
12. Cons
Still
a lot of transcribing
May be testing explicit rather
than implicit knowledge (with
word/phrase elicitation)
Not appropriate for use with
children or low literacy adults
(most experimenter controlled
type of elicitation is written)
15. What they study
Complex sentence structure (that
are not often used spontaneously)
Inflectional morphology
Semantic appropriateness (whether
one grammatical sentence is
appropriate in the context of
another)
16. Pros
Cantest just about any kind of
grammatical construction.
Straightforward:
testing exactly
what we want to know.
Easy to analyze the data.
17. Cons
Tests highly explicit knowledge
L2 learners are often unsure
about their judgements
Inappropriate for use with
children and low literacy adults
(written format)
21. Pros
No focus on grammar – test of
implicit knowledge
Appropriate for children and
low literacy adults – use of
pictures na doral stories
22. Cons
Can only be used for linguistic
knowledge at the syntax-
semantics interface –
constrained application
Tests are time consuming and
difficult to construct
Have to control for many
factors
25. What they study
Whether some sentence types
are more difficult to process
then others (active vs.
passive, subject questions vs.
object questions)
How speakers process
ambiguous
27. Cons
More costly and time
consuming than offline tasks
Highly constrained application
The connection from
reaction/reading times to
conclusions about language
relies on certain assumptions
