:: Volume 21, Issue 2 (9-2018) ::
2018, 21(2): 133-162 Back to browse issues page
The Assessment of Pragmatic Knowledge in the Online General IELTS-Practice Resources: A Corpus Analysis of Writing Tasks
Sara Mansouri , Bahram Hadian , Omid Tabatabaei , Ehsan Rezvani
Abstract:   (8187 Views)
Motivated by the concept of Communicative Language Ability and the eminence of the IELTS exam, this study intended to scrutinize the representation of functional knowledge (FK) and socio-linguistic knowledge (SK) as sub-components of pragmatic knowledge in the writing performances of both tasks of the online General IELTS-practice resources across three band scores. This quantitative inter-scores/intra-tasks and inter-tasks investigation aimed to reveal firstly whether the writers of three band scores 7, 8, and 9 differed from each other in their FK and SK level, and secondly whether the tasks differed in activating them. This study adopted a taxonomy of five illocutionary acts and 20 register features to investigate representation of FK and SK in a well-established corpus of 180 writing performances through both manual analysis and Multidimensional Analysis Tagger software. While the results of statistical analyses revealed no FK differences between the bands in task one (T1), T2’s higher bands involved more functional features because of the expression of a diverse range of psychological states, no speaker’s involvement, and less commitment to a future course of actions. Furthermore, socio-linguistically, band 9 scripts encompassed more logical relations, but conversational and spoken style in T1 and more integration, less simplified structures and ego-involvement in T2. The inter-task analyses uncovered T1’s greater activation of FK through self-mentions, others involvement, emotion, and intention expression. Nevertheless, when it came to SK register features, T2 overdid in both spoken and written genre elements except in persuasion, writers’ involvement, mental acts expression, and interactive discourse creation.
Keywords: Band score, Functional knowledge, General IELTS, Pragmatic knowledge, Register, Sociolinguistic knowledge, Task one, Task two, Writing
Full-Text [PDF 682 kb]   (2123 Downloads)    
Type of Study: Research | Subject: Special
Received: 2018/06/28 | Accepted: 2018/08/26 | Published: 2018/08/29
References
1. Bachman, L. F. (1990). Fundamental considerations in language testing. Oxford University Press.
2. Bachman, L. F., & Palmer, A. (2010). Language assessment in practice: Developing language assessments and justifying their use in the real world. Oxford University Press.
3. Banerjee, J., Franceschina, F., & Smith, A. M. (2007). Documenting features of written language production typical at different IELTS band score levels. IELTS Research Reports, 7, 1-69.
4. Barkaoui, K. (2016). What changes and what doesn't? An examination of changes in the linguistic characteristics of IELTS repeaters' Writing Task 2 scripts. IELTS Research Reports, 3, 1-55. Retrieved from https://www.ielts.org/-/media/research-reports/ielts_online_rr_2016-3.ashx
5. Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman.
6. Biber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [DOI:10.1017/CBO9780511621024]
7. Canale, M. (1983). From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy. In R. W. Richards, J. C., & Schmidt (Ed.), Language and Communication (pp. 2-27). London: Longman.
8. Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 1-47. [DOI:10.1093/applin/1.1.1]
9. Chang, Y., & Swales, J. (1999). Informal elements in English academic writing: Threats or opportunities for advanced non-native speakers? In Writing: Texts, processes and practices (pp. 145-167). New York: Routledge.
10. Connor, U. & Mbaye, A. (2002). Discourse approaches to writing assessment. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 22, 263-278. [DOI:10.1017/S0267190502000144]
11. Cumming, A., Kantor, R., Baba, K., Erdosy, U., & Eouanzoui, K. and James, M. (2005). Differences in written discourse in independent and integrated prototype tasks for next generation TOEFL. Assessing Writing, 10, 5-43. [DOI:10.1016/j.asw.2005.02.001]
12. Grant, L., & Ginther, A. (2000). Using computer-tagged linguistic features to describe L2 writing differences. Journal of Second Language Writing, 9(2), 123-145. [DOI:10.1016/S1060-3743(00)00019-9]
13. Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London, England: Longman.
14. Hellermann, J., & Vergun, A. (2007). Language which is not taught: the discourse marker use of beginning adult learners of English. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(2), 157-179. [DOI:10.1016/j.pragma.2006.04.008]
15. Hinkel, E. (2003). Simplicity without elegance: Features of sentences in L1 and L2 academic texts. TESOL Quarterly, 37(2), 275-301. [DOI:10.2307/3588505]
16. Holtgraves, T. (2012). The role of the right hemisphere in speech act comprehension. Brain and Language, 121(1), 58-64. [DOI:10.1016/j.bandl.2012.01.003]
17. Iwashita, N., & Vasquez, C. (2015). An examination of discourse competence at different proficiency levels in IELTS Speaking Part 2 proposals. IELTS Research Report Series, (5), 1-44. Retrieved from www.ielts.org/researchers.
18. Jung, J.-Y. (2002). Issues in acquisitional pragmatics. Working Paper in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, 2(3), 1-13.
19. Karbalaei, A., & Rahmanzade, M. K. (2015). An investigation into pragmatic knowledge in the reading section of TOLIMO, TOEFL, and IELTS examinations. English Language Teaching, 8(5), 208-221. [DOI:10.5539/elt.v8n5p208]
20. Kasper, G., & Rose, K. R. (2000). Pragmatic development in a second language. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Limited.
21. Koo, T. K., & Li, M. Y. (2016). A guideline of selecting and reporting intraclass correlation coefficients for reliability research. Journal of chiropractic medicine, 15(2), 155-163. [DOI:10.1016/j.jcm.2016.02.012]
22. Laughlin, V. T., Wain, J., & Schmidgall, J. (2015). Defining and Operationalizing the Construct of Pragmatic Competence: Review and Recommendations. ETS Research Report Series, 2015(1), 1-43. [DOI:10.1002/ets2.12053]
23. Leech, G., Rayson, P., & Wilson, A. (2001). Word frequencies in written and spoken English: based on the British national corpus. London: Longman.
24. Levin, M. (2014). The Bathroom Formula: A corpus-based study of a speech act in American and British English. Journal of Pragmatics, 64, 1--16. [DOI:10.1016/j.pragma.2014.01.001]
25. Mayor, B., Hewings, A., North, S., Swann, J. and, & Coffin, C. (2007). A linguistic analysis of Chinese and Greek L1 scripts for IELTS academic writing task 2. In L. T. and P. Falvey (Ed.), IELTS collected papers: Research in speaking and writing assessment (pp. 250-313). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
26. Nini, A. (2015). Multidimensional Analysis Tagger 1.0 - Manual. Retrieved from http://sites.google.com/site/multidimensionaltagger
27. Riazi, A. M., & Knox, J. S. (2013). An investigation of the relations between test-takers' first language and the discourse of written performance on the IELTS Academic Writing Test, task 2. IELTS Research Reports, 2, 1-87.
28. Searle, J. R. (1976). A Classification of Illocutionary Acts. Language in Society, 5, 1-23. [DOI:10.1017/S0047404500006837]
29. Shaw, P., & Ting-Kun Liu, E. (1998). What develops in the development of second-language writing? Applied Linguistics, 19(2), 225-254. [DOI:10.1093/applin/19.2.225]
30. Su, H. (2017). Local grammars of speech acts: An exploratory study. Journal of Pragmatics, 111, 72-83. [DOI:10.1016/j.pragma.2017.02.008]
31. van Dijk, T. A. (1977). Text and context: Explorations in the semantics and pragmatics of discourse. London, England: Longman.
32. Witek, M. (2015). Linguistic underdeterminacy: A view from speech act theory. Journal of Pragmatics, 76, 15-29. [DOI:10.1016/j.pragma.2014.11.003]
33. Yule, G. (2000). Pragmatics. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.


XML   Persian Abstract   Print



Rights and permissions
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Volume 21, Issue 2 (9-2018) Back to browse issues page