ELT PHD Tests 1391 1398 Final 1

‫مجموعه سؤاالت و پاسخ تشریحی‬
‫آزمون تخصصی‬
‫دکتری آموزش زبان انگلیسی‬
‫سالهای ‪ 91‬تا ‪98‬‬
‫فواد بهزادپور‬
‫کریم وفائی سرشت‬
‫قلم مؤلف‬
‫نگاهی تحلیلی‪ ،‬دقیق و موشکافانه به آزمونهای ورودی دکتری رشته آموزش زبان انگلیسی‬
‫در سالهای اخیر که به صورت متمرکز و توسط سازمان سنجش آموزش کشور برگزار‬
‫گردیده است بهخوبی نشان میدهد که دروس آزمون و سرفصلهای مربوطه از روند و‬
‫ساختار ثابت و مشخصی برخوردار نبوده که البته پرداختن به این موضوع‪ ،‬ریشهیابی دالیل‪،‬‬
‫و آسیبشناسی آن در این مقال نمیگنجد‪ .‬این مسأله تا حد قابلمالحظهای موجب سردرگمی‬
‫داوطلبان در مورد منابع احتمالی و سرفصلهای مربوطه شده است‪.‬‬
‫کتاب حاضر‪ ،‬تالشی در راستای حل این مشکل در حد امکان میباشد‪ .‬در این اثر‪،‬‬
‫جواب تشریحی سؤاالت تخصصی کنکور دکتری رشته آموزش زبان انگلیسی در فاصله‬
‫سالهای ‪ 1391‬تا ‪ 1398‬بهصورت درسنامه و با ارائه منابع طرح سؤاالت بهطور دقیق‬
‫و تفصیلی در اختیار داوطلبین و عالقهمندان عزیز قرار داده شده است‪ .‬علیرغم تالش بسیار‬
‫نویسندگان کتاب در ارائه اثری کامل و بینقص‪ ،‬بدون شک اشتباهات احتمالی و سهوی‬
‫غیرقابلاجتناب میباشد‪ .‬امید است که خوانندگان گرامی با ارائه نقطه نظرات خود ما را در‬
‫اصالح و بهبود این کار در چاپهای بعدی یاری بفرمایند‪.‬‬
‫در اینجا بر خود الزم میدانیم که از دکتر پروانه شایستهفر بابت نظرات ارزشمندشان‬
‫جهت ارتقای کیفیت اثر حاضر تقدیر و تشکر نماییم‪.‬‬
‫زمستان ‪98‬‬
‫فواد بهزاد پور‬
‫کریم وفائی سرشت‬
‫‪Emails: fouad.behzadpour@gmail.com‬‬
‫‪kvafaee@gmail.com‬‬
Table of Contents
Year 1391 Page
Methodology (Questions 1 – 15) 2

Linguistics (Questions 16 – 30) 14
Testing (Questions 31 – 45) 36
Research (Questions 46 – 60) 56
Second Language Acquisition (Questions 61 – 80) 85
Teaching Language Skills (Questions 81 – 100) 115
Year 1392

Discourse Analysis & Sociolinguistics (91 – 100) 249
Year 1393

Year 1394

Year 1395

Issues of Language Teaching (Questions 11 – 30) 454
Year 1396
Linguistics (Questions 1-20) 470

Testing (Questions 21-40) 486
Research (Questions 41-60) 501
Issues of Language Teaching (Questions 61-90) 519
Year 1397

Year 1398

Distributions of the Questions 749
References 756
‫سواالت و پاسخ تشریحی‬
‫آزمون تخصصی دکتری‬

‫آموزش زبان انگلیسی‬
‫سال ‪1391‬‬
91 ‫سواالت و پاسخ تشریحی آزمون تخصصی دکتری آموزش زبان انگلیسی – سال‬
Methodology (Questions 1 – 15)
Methodology
1. The Grammar Translation views language learning as ------------.
1) a process facilitated when language is used to replicate the genres contained in literary
works of significance
2) consisting of little more than memorizing rules and facts in order to understand and
manipulate the morphology and syntax of the foreign language
3) a product-oriented process in which the translation of literary texts can indubitably lead
to the acquisition of linguistic rules required for the exchange of ideas in formal settings
4) the natural assimilation of language rules through using language for translation of texts
imbued with literary themes conveyed via formal vocabulary
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
The principal characteristics of the Grammar-Translation Method were these:
1. The goal of foreign language study is to learn a language in order to read its literature or in order
to benefit from the mental discipline and intellectual development that result from foreign
language study. Grammar Translation is a way of studying a language that approaches the
language first through detailed analysis of its grammar rules, followed by application of this
knowledge to the task of translating sentences and texts into and out of the target language. It
hence views language learning as consisting of little more than memorizing rules and facts in
order to understand and manipulate the morphology and syntax of the foreign language. “The
first language is maintained as the reference system in the acquisition of the second language”
(Stern 1983, p. 455).
2. Reading and writing are the major focus; little or no systematic attention is paid to speaking or
listening.
3. Vocabulary selection is based solely on the reading texts used, and words are taught through
bilingual word lists, dictionary study, and memorization. In a typical Grammar-Translation text,
the grammar rules are presented and illustrated, a list of vocabulary items is presented with their
translation equivalents, and translation exercises are prescribed.
4. The sentence is the basic unit of teaching and language practice. Much of the lesson is devoted
to translating sentences into and out of the target language, and it is this focus on the sentence
that is a distinctive feature of the method. Earlier approaches to foreign language study used
grammar as an aid to the study of texts in a foreign language. But this was thought to be too
difficult for students in secondary schools, and the focus on the sentence was an attempt to make
language learning easier (see Howatt, 1984, p. 131).
5. Accuracy is emphasized. Students are expected to attain high standards in translation, because
of “the high priority attached to meticulous standards of accuracy which, as well as having an
intrinsic moral value, was a prerequisite for passing the increasing number of formal written
examinations that grew up during the century” (Howatt, 1984, p. 132).
6. Grammar is taught deductively – that is, by presentation and study of grammar rules, which are
then practiced through translation exercises. In most Grammar-Translation texts, a syllabus was
followed for the sequencing of grammar points throughout a text, and there was an attempt to
teach grammar in an organized and systematic way.
7. The student’s native language is the medium of instruction. It is used to explain new items and
to enable comparisons to be made between the foreign language and the student’s native
language.
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 See also: Richards and Rodgers (2014, p. 6)
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2
2. According to Anthony’s model, the level at which theory is put into practice and at
Methodology
which choices are made about the particular skills to be taught is known as ------------.
1) method
2) design
3) procedure
4) approach
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
The American applied linguist Edward Anthony in 1963 identified three levels of
conceptualization and organization, which he termed approach, method, and technique:
The arrangement is hierarchical. The organizational key is that techniques carry out a
method which is consistent with an approach. . . .
. . . An approach is a set of correlative assumptions dealing with the nature of language
teaching and learning. An approach is axiomatic. It describes the nature of the subject
matter to be taught. . . .
. . . Method is an overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material, no part of
which contradicts, and all of which is based upon, the selected approach. An approach is
axiomatic, a method is procedural.
Within one approach, there can be many methods . . .
. . . A technique is implementational – that which actually takes place in a classroom. It is
a particular trick, stratagem, or contrivance used to accomplish an immediate objective.
Techniques must be consistent with a method, and therefore in harmony with an approach
as well. (Anthony, 1963, pp. 63–67)
According to Anthony’s model, approach is the level at which assumptions and beliefs about
language and language learning are specified; method is the level at which theory is put into
practice and at which choices are made about the particular skills to be taught, the content to be
taught, and the order in which the content will be presented; technique is the level at which
classroom procedures are described.
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3. What distinguishes British Structuralism from its American counterpart is that the
former accentuates the ------------.
1) function of lexis
2) notion of situation
3) centrality of speech as the basis of language
4) role of structure in the speaking ability
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
The theory of language underlying Situational Language Teaching can be characterized as a
type of British “structuralism.” Speech was regarded as the basis of language, and structure was
viewed as being at the heart of speaking ability. Palmer, Hornby, and other British applied
linguists had prepared pedagogical descriptions of the basic grammatical structures of English,
and these were to be followed in developing methodology. “Word order, Structural Words, the
3
few inflexions of English, and Content Words, will form the material of our teaching” (Frisby,
Methodology
1957, p. 134). In terms of language theory, there was little to distinguish such a view from that
proposed by American linguists, such as Charles Fries. Indeed, Pittman drew heavily on Fries’s
theories of language in the 1960s, but American theory was largely unknown by British applied
linguists in the 1950s. The British theoreticians, however, had a different focus to their version
of structuralism – the notion of “situation.” “Our principal classroom activity in the teaching
of English structure will be the oral practice of structures. This oral practice of controlled
sentence patterns should be given in situations designed to give the greatest amount of practice
in English speech to the pupil” (Pittman, 1963, p. 179).
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 See also: Richards and Rodgers (2014, pp. 47-48)
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4. A learner who adds to the number of hours he studies in the belief that the addition is
required to prepare him to meet his social demands is using a strategy known as ------.
1) social
2) cognitive
3) metacognitive
4) compensation
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Based on H. D. Brown (2000), this refers to the self-management strategy as a sub-strategy of
metacognitive strategies.
Learning Strategies (O’Malley et al., 1985)

Learning Strategy Description
Metacognitive strategies
Advance organizers Making a general but comprehensive preview of the organizing
concept or principle in an anticipated learning activity
Directed attention Deciding in advance to attend in general to a learning task and
to ignore irrelevant detractors
Selective attention Deciding in advance to attend to specific aspects of language
input or situational details that will cue the retention of
language input
Self-management Understanding the conditions that help one learn and arranging
for the presence of those conditions
Functional planning Planning for and rehearsing linguistic components necessary to
carry out an upcoming language task
Self-monitoring Correcting one's speech for accuracy in pronunciation,
grammar, vocabulary, or for appropriateness related to the
setting or to the people who are present
Delayed production Consciously deciding to postpone speaking in order to learn
initially through listening comprehension
Self-evaluation Checking the outcomes of one's own language learning against
an internal measure of completeness and accuracy
4
Cognitive Strategies
Methodology
Repetition Imitating a language model, including overt practice and silent
rehearsal
Resourcing Using target language reference materials
Translation Using the first language as a base for understanding and/or
producing the second language
Grouping Reordering or reclassifying, and perhaps labeling, the material
to be learned based on common attributes
Note taking Writing down the main idea, important points, outline, or
summary of information presented orally or in writing
Deduction Consciously applying rules to produce or understand the second
language
Recombination Constructing a meaningful sentence or larger language
sequence by combining known elements in a new way
Imagery Relating new information to visual concepts in memory via
familiar, easily retrievable visualizations, phrases, or locations
Auditory representation Retention of the sound or a similar sound for a word, phrase, or
longer language sequence
Keyword Remembering a new word in the second language by (1)
identifying a familiar word in the first language that sounds like
or otherwise resembles the new word and (2) generating easily
recalled images of some relationship between the new word
and the familiar word
Contextualization Placing a word or phrase in a meaningful language sequence
Elaboration Relating new information to other concepts in memory
Transfer Using previously acquired linguistic and/or conceptual
knowledge lo facilitate a new language learning task
Inferencing Using available information to guess meanings of new items,
predict outcomes, or fill in missing information
Socioaffective Strategies
Cooperation Working wilt one or more peers to obtain feedback, pool
information, or model a language activity
Question for clarification Asking a teacher or other native speaker for repetition,
paraphrasing, explanation, and/or examples
Also refer to Year 93, Item 1, for Oxford’s (1990) classification of learning strategies.
For similar items, refer to Year 92, Item 6.
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 See also: H. D. Brown (2000, pp. 125-126); Oxford (1990)
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5. In the ------------the brain begins with externally received stimuli and analyzes that
information to arrive at its final destination.
1) parallel processing
2) top-down processing
3) conceptually-driven approach
4) data-driven approach
5
Answer: 4
Methodology
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Explanation:
Data Driven and Conceptually Driven Processing
The brain can approach a subject from two different directions. In a data-driven approach the
brain begins with externally received stimuli and analyzes that information to arrive at its final
interpretation. In a conceptually driven approach the brain initiates processing with a general
knowledge of the subject and proceeds to relate the information it already has to the new data
it receives (Madden and Nebes, 1980). Data-driven processing is often referred to as bottom-
up processing and conceptually-driven as top-down processing to reflect the direction of
thought (Hunt, 1982). In the first instance thought moves from specific pieces of information
to more general knowledge, and in the second, it operate from a knowledge based to work on
specific pieces of information.
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 See also: Chastain (1988, p. 36)
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6. All of the following are TRUE about “scripts” EXCEPT that they ------------.
1) complement the notion of schemata
2) comprise typical sequences of actions
3) account for individuals’ ability to prognosticate what happens in similar situations
4) can help individuals behave with propriety
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Current learning theory holds that the brain organizes its information into related units called
schemata (plural for schema). Anderson (1980, p. 129) defines schema as “large, complex units
of knowledge that organize much of what we know about general categories of objects, classes
of events, and types of people”. The brain not only receives and/or generates information, it
assembles it into organized and interrelated units. It not only stores information, it also arranges
it so that it will be available for retrieval.
Schemata that reflect typical sequences of actions are often referred to as scripts. For
example, getting up in the morning, attending a church service, or going to a restaurant for
dinner would normally involve a routine and expected sequence of actions that one normally
associates with each of those activities. Scripts account for the ability of individuals to predict
what may happen in familiar situations, and they are an asset in the comprehension process in
such situations as reading a story or understanding a listening passage (Anderson, 1980).
Also, Goffman (1959, p. 228; 1961, p. 36, 1974, p. 185; cited in Smith-Lovin & Heise,
1988, pp. 75-76) stats that “… scripted activity can be only one of several general forms of
propriety”.
Choice (1) is false about scripts since scripts are a type of schemata, not a complement.
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 See also: Chastain (1988, p. 42); Smith-Lovin and Heise (1988, pp. 75-76); Yule (1996,
pp. 85-87)
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6
7. Who are more likely to subscribe to the proposition that learning, like the medicine of
Methodology
the day, could only be beneficial if it were bitter and difficult to swallow?
1) Behaviorist psychologists
2) Cognitive psychologists
3) Faculty psychologists
4) Humanistic psychologists
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
During the days of faculty psychology, theorists thought of the mind in much the same way a
body builder thinks of a muscle. The more it was exercised, the greater its capabilities and the
larger its assets. The path to increased mental strength was to exercise the mind with difficult
and complicated tasks. Problem solving in mathematics, translation in foreign language classes,
memorization, and so on were recommended learning activities. Learning, like the medicine of
the day could only be beneficial if it were bitter and difficult to swallow.
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8. Asher’s Total Physical Response resonates with all of the following EXCEPT that -----.
1) the lower the stress is, the greater the amount of learning will be
2) first and second language learning have very little in common
3) brain-lateralization defines different learning functions in the left- and right-brain
hemisphere
4) there exists a specific innate bio-program for language learning
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Theory of language and learning
TPR reflects a grammar-based view of language. Asher states that “most of the grammatical
structure of the target language and hundreds of vocabulary items can be learned from the
skillful use of the imperative by the instructor” (1977, p. 4). He views the verb, and particularly
the verb in the imperative, as the central linguistic motif around which language use and
learning are organized.
Asher sees a stimulus-response view as providing the learning theory underlying language
teaching pedagogy. TPR can also be linked to the “trace theory” of memory in psychology (e.g.,
Katona, 940), which holds that the more often or the more intensively a memory connection is
traced, the stronger the memory association will be and the more likely it will be recalled.
Retracing can be done verbally (e.g., by rote repetition) and/or in association with motor
activity. Combined tracing activities, such as verbal rehearsal accompanied by motor activity,
hence increase the possibility of successful recall.
In addition, Asher has elaborated an account of what he feels facilitates or inhibits foreign
language learning. For this dimension of his learning theory he draws on three rather influential
learning hypotheses:
1. There exists a specific innate bio-program for language learning, which defines an
optimal path for first and second language development.
7
2. Brain lateralization defines different learning functions in the left- and right-brain
Methodology
hemispheres.
3. Stress (an affective filter) intervenes between the act of learning and what is to be
learned; the lower the stress, the greater the learning.
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9. All of the following are in step with the tenets of the Silent Way EXCEPT that --------.
1) vocabulary is a central dimension of language learning and the choice of vocabulary is
crucial
2) the key to success is inner criteria that allow learners to monitor and self-correct their own
production
3) the equation of the processes of learning a second language with those of learning a first
language is a fallacy
4) the focus is on the communicative value of utterances rather than the propositional
meaning of individual sentences
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Gattegno takes an openly skeptical view of the role of linguistic theory in language teaching
methodology. He feels that linguistic studies “may be a specialization, [that] carry with them a
narrow opening of one’s sensitivity and perhaps serve very little towards the broad end in mind”
(Gattegno 1972, p. 84). Considerable discussion is devoted to the importance of grasping the
“spirit” of the language, and not just its component forms. By the “spirit” of the language
Gattegno is referring to the way each language is composed of phonological and
suprasegmental elements that combine to give the language its unique sound system and
melody. The learner must gain a “feel” for this aspect of the target language as soon as possible.
By looking at the material chosen and the sequence in which it is presented in a Silent Way
classroom, it is clear that the Silent Way takes a structural approach to the organization of
language to be taught. The sentence is the basic unit of teaching, and the teacher focuses on
propositional meaning, rather than communicative value. Students are presented with the
structural patterns of the target language and learn the grammar rules of the language through
largely inductive processes.
Gattegno sees vocabulary as a central dimension of language learning and the choice of
vocabulary as crucial. The most important vocabulary for the learner deals with the most
functional and versatile words of the language, many of which may not have direct equivalents
in the learner’s native language. This “functional vocabulary” provides a key, says Gattegno,
to comprehending the “spirit” of the language.
In elaborating a learning theory to support the principles of Silent Way, like many other
method proponents Gattegno makes extensive use of his understanding of first language
learning. He recommends, for example, that the learner needs to “return to the state of mind
that characterizes a baby’s learning – surrender” (Scott & Page, 1982, p. 273).
Having referred to these processes, however, Gattegno states that the processes of learning
a second language are “radically different” from those involved in learning a first language.
The second language learner is unlike the first language learner and “cannot learn another
language in the same way because of what he now knows” (Gattegno, 1972, p. 11). The
“natural” or “direct” approaches to acquiring a second language are thus misguided, says
8
Gattegno, and a successful second language approach will “replace a ‘natural’ approach by one
Methodology
that is very ‘artificial’ and, for some purposes, strictly controlled” (1972, p. 12).
The “artificial approach” that Gattegno proposes is based on the principle that successful
learning involves commitment of the self to language acquisition through the use of silent
awareness and then active trial. Gattegno’s repeated emphasis on the primacy of learning over
teaching places a focus on the self of the learner, on the learner’s priorities and commitments.
The self, we are told, consists of two systems – a learning system and a retaining system. The
learning system is activated only by way of intelligent awareness. “The learner must constantly
test his powers to abstract, analyze, synthesize and integrate” (Scott & Page, 1982, p. 273).
Silence is considered the best vehicle for learning, because in silence students concentrate on
the task to be accomplished and the potential means to its accomplishment. Repetition (as
opposed to silence) “consumes time and encourages the scattered mind to remain scattered”
(Gattegno, 1976, p. 80). Silence, as avoidance of repetition, is thus an aid to alertness,
concentration, and mental organization.
Awareness is educable. As one learns “in awareness,” one’s powers of awareness and one’s
capacity to learn become greater. The Silent Way thus claims to facilitate what psychologists
call “learning to learn.” Again, the process chain that develops awareness proceeds from
attention, production, self-correction, and absorption. Silent Way learners acquire “inner
criteria,” which play a central role “in one’s education throughout all of one’s life” (Gattegno,
1976, p. 29). These inner criteria allow learners to monitor and self-correct their own
production. It is in the activity of self-correction through self-awareness that the Silent Way
claims to differ most notably from other ways of language learning. It is this capacity for self-
awareness that the Silent Way calls upon, a capacity said to be little appreciated or exercised
by first language learners.
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10. Language alternation and language viewed as a social process mark ------------.
1) Suggestopedia
2) Whole Language
3) Situational Language Teaching
4) Community Language Learning
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
A language teaching tradition with which Community Language Learning is linked is a set of
practices used in certain kinds of bilingual education programs and referred to by Mackey
(1972) as “language alternation.” In language alternation, a message/lesson/class is presented
first in the native language and then again in the second language. Students know the meaning
and flow of an L2 message from their recall of the parallel meaning and flow of an L1 message.
They begin to holistically piece together a view of the language out of these message sets. In
CLL, a learner presents a message in L1 to the knower. The message is translated into L2 by
the knower. The learner then repeats the message in L2, addressing it to another learner with
whom he or she wishes to communicate. CLL learners are encouraged to attend to the
“overhears” they experience between other learners and their knowers. The result of the
“overhear” is that every member of the group can understand what any given learner is trying
to communicate (La Forge 1983, p. 45).
9
Methodology
Curran himself wrote little about his theory of language. His student La Forge (1983) has
attempted to be more explicit about this dimension of Community Language Learning theory.
La Forge accepts that language theory must start, though not end, with criteria for sound
features, the sentence, and abstract models of language (La Forge, 1983, p. 4). The foreign
language learners’ tasks are “to apprehend the sound system, assign fundamental meanings, and
to construct a basic grammar of the foreign language.” La Forge goes beyond this structuralist
view of language, however, and elaborates an alternative theory of language, which is referred
to as Language as Social Process:
communication is more than just a message being transmitted from a speaker to a listener.
The speaker is at the same time both subject and object of his own message....
communication involves not just the unidirectional transfer of information to the other, but
the very constitution of the speaking subject in relation to its other.... Communication is an
exchange which is incomplete without a feedback reaction from the destinee of the
message. (La Forge, 1983, p. 3)
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11. Which of the following is NOT among the social functions which children use language
for -----------.
1) informative
2) heuristic
3) regulatory
4) reciprocal
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Halliday (1975) delineated the following functions that children learn to perform as they learn
their native language:
1. Instrumental – the “I want” function.
2. Regulatory – the “Do as I tell you” function.
3. Interactional – the “Me and you” function.
4. Personal – the “Here I come” function.
5. Heuristic – the “Tell me why” function.
6. Imaginative – the “Let’s pretend” function.
7. Informative – the “I’ve got something to tell you” function.
For more information and similar items, refer to Year 93, Item 6; Year 92, Item 9.
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 See also: Chastain (1988, pp. 285-286)
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12. Which of the following has much more to do with the sense of discourse (i.e. a feature
of the mind’s organization of reality)?
1) Gambits
2) Cohesion
3) Coherence
4) Discourse markers
10
Answer: 3
Methodology
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Explanation:
Chastain (1988, p. 69) states that gambits are fixed phrases to open, maintain, and close
conversations. Richards and Schmidt (2010, p. 239) provide the following explanation for
gambits: Gambits are sometimes used to describe a word or phrase in conversation which
signals the function of the speaker’s next turn in the conversation (see turn-taking). Gambits
may be used to show whether the speaker’s contribution adds new information, develops
something said by a previous speaker, expresses an opinion, agreement, etc. For example,
gambits which signal that the speaker is going to express an opinion include:
The way I look at it . . .
To my mind . . .
In my opinion . . .
Yorio (1980, p. 437) mentions two major types of gambits: conversational gambits and
organizational gambits. The former are used as strategies for conversational interactions.
They are of many subtypes:
a) Opening gambits: Pardon me, I think that …, Speaking of …, Surprise! Guess what?,
etc.
b) Maintaining gambits: ‘well, let’s see now...’, ‘I haven’t quite finished now’, etc.
c) Closing gambits: I've got to go now, I won't take any more of your time, etc.
Organizational Gambits, on the other hand, are formulaic strategies that create or organize
activities in a conversation: for example: let's call it a day; take five; we'll now take questions
from the floor; etc. Other organizational gambits include:
a) Game gambits: I pass, my turn, ready, set, go, etc.
b) Text gambits (formulas that organize written or oral texts): First of all, to summarize,
finally, not only . . . but also, etc.
Cohesion refers to the use of selected linguistic elements to hold discourse together and to
maintain comprehensibility. For more information, refer to Year 96, Item 13.
Coherence refers to the sense of discourse. An extended discourse may be cohesive and
its connectors may blend it into one unit, but if it lacks coherence, the listener will have
difficulty interpreting the speaker’s meaning. It is the listener who has the task of recreating the
speaker’s meaning, and he or his must rely heavily on his or her knowledge of relationship in
the real world to communicate. Coherence is not a product of grammar of the language; it is a
product of the planning and logical organization of the speaker and the listener’s ability to
understand the speaker’s logic. Coherence is not a feature of language; it is a characteristic of
the mind’s organization of reality. For more information, see Year 96, Item 13.
Discourse markers: Richards and Schmidt (2010, p. 175) state that a discourse marker is
a class of expressions consisting of words (however, still), phrases (as a matter of fact) or
clauses (to make myself clear) that serve to monitor and organize ongoing discourse. Discourse
markers serve a variety of functions in spoken discourse, including indicating topic boundaries
(so, right), openings (well then), closure or pre-closure (so) as well as reflecting the ongoing
interaction between speaker and hearer (you know, you see, I mean).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Chastain (1988, pp. 68-69); Richards and Schmidt (2010, pp. 175, 239)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
11
13. In Schumann’s taxonomy of factors influencing second-language acquisition,
Methodology
acculturation is subsumed under which of the following factors?
1) Input
2) Social
3) Personal
4) Affective
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Acculturation Model
The acculturation model proposed by Schumann (1976b, 1978) contains several important
concepts for second-language learning and teaching. Schumann defines acculturation as the
second-language learner's social and psychological integration with speakers of the second
language. He states that second-language learners acquire language only to the degree that they
acculturate and their willingness to acculturate, and thereby to develop communicative
competence in the second language, depends on the social and psychological distance they
receive between themselves and the speakers of the other language.
The acculturation model is not an approach but rather a model for explaining why some
learners acquire a higher level of second-language skills than others. It is the result of
Schumann's study of the pidginization process among immigrant groups. Schumann (1984) lists
nine groups in a taxonomy of factors influencing second-language acquisition: instructional,
input, personal, aptitude, biological, cognitive, personality, affective, and social factors.
(Acculturation is one of the social factors.)
For more information, see Year 91, Item 78; Year 93, Item 4; and Year 96, Item 88.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
14. A T-unit is ------------.

1) a main clause plus everything that can be embedded in it or attached to it
2) the sum of every single clause within a piece of discourse
3) part of an utterance carrying the most important part of the propositional meaning
4) every unit of discourse (e.g. lexis, phrases, clauses, etc.) the component parts of which
cannot be separated linguistically
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
A T-Unit (also called Minimal Terminable Unit) is a measure of the syntactic complexity of
sentences. A T-unit is defined as “a main clause plus all subordinate clauses and non-clausal
structures attached to or embedded in it” (Hunt, 1970, p. 189). A T-Unit can be a simple or a
complex sentence. For example, the sentence “The fire burned” is one T-Unit; so is “The fire
burned until the fuel ran out.” A compound sentence is more than one T-Unit. For example,
“The fire burned and the fuel supply dwindles.” is two T-Units.
Chastain (1988, p, 261) also elaborates as follows: The search for objectivity has led to
various measures for evaluating students' writing. Primarily, the goal of these procedures is to
quantify selected aspects of the writing. Teachers may choose from among rive objective
12
measures that can be used to evaluate compositions: (1) length, (2) subordination and
Methodology
relativization, (3) sentence connectors, (4) number and types of errors, and (5) T-unit, which is
a main clause plus everything that can be embedded in it or attached to it. Teachers can quantify
the number of words in the composition, the number of T-units, the number of sentences, and
so on. They can focus on subordination and relativization to determine the number of dependent
clauses per composition or the ratio of dependent clauses to independent clauses. Also, they
can count the number of subordinate conjunctions, transitional adverbs, coordinate
conjunctions, connectors in the composition, or (connectors per T-unit. The significate factors
in objective measurement of students' writing are (1) the number of second-degree errors per
T-unit, (2) the number of dependent clauses per composition, (3) the number of words per
sentence, (4) the number of coordinating conjunctions per composition, and (5) the number of
errorless T-units. Using these approaches to the selected features, teachers can arrive at a
reliable rating of assigned compositions (Homburg, 1984).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Chastain (1988, p. 261); Hunt (1970, p. 189); Mousavi (2012, p. 854)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
15. Resourcing as a cognitive strategy is ------------.

1) using target language reference materials
2) relating new information to prior knowledge
3) using previous linguistic knowledge or prior skills to assist comprehension or production
4) eliciting from a teacher or peer additional explanation, rephrasing, examples, or
verification
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Based on H. D. Brown (2000), Resourcing as a cognitive strategy refers to “using target
language reference materials”. For explanation, please refer to Year 91, Item 4.
See also Year 91, Item 4; Year 92, Item 6; Year 93, Item 15.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: H. D. Brown (2000, pp. 125-126)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
13
Linguistics (Questions 16 – 30)
16. Chomskyan linguistics does NOT support ------------.

1) explanatory adequacy
2) poverty of the stimulus
3) input functioning as a trigger for L1 acquisition
4) variation of UG principles across languages
Answer: 4
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Linguistics
Explanation:
Observational, Descriptive and Explanatory Adequacy
Chomsky has stated that there are three levels of “adequacy” upon which grammatical
descriptions and linguistic theories can be evaluated: observational adequacy, descriptive
adequacy, and explanatory adequacy.
(1) Observational Adequacy: If a theory or description achieves observational adequacy, it
is able to describe which sentences in a language are grammatically well formed. Such a
description would note that in English while a sentence such as He studied for the exam
is grammatical, a sentence such as *studied for the exam is not.
(2) Descriptive Adequacy: To achieve descriptive adequacy (a higher level of adequacy),
the description or theory must not only describe whether individual sentences are well
formed but in addition specify the abstract grammatical properties making the sentences
well formed. Applied to the previous sentences, a description at this level would note that
sentences in English require an explicit subject. Hence, *studied for the exam is
ungrammatical and He studied for the exam is grammatical.
(3) Explanatory Adequacy: The highest level of adequacy is explanatory adequacy, which
is achieved when the description or theory not only reaches descriptive adequacy but does
so using abstract principles which can be applied beyond the language being considered
and become a part of “Universal Grammar.” At this level of adequacy, one would describe
the inability of English to omit subject pronouns as a consequence of the fact that, unlike
Spanish or Japanese, English is not a language which permits “pro-drop,” i.e. the omission
of a subject pronoun that is recoverable from the context or deducible from inflections on
the verb marking the case, gender, or number of the subject.
In brief, observational adequacy just informs us whether a sentence is grammatical or

ungrammatical, descriptive adequacy tells us “why” a sentence is grammatical or
ungrammatical, and explanatory adequacy tires to develop a theory which accounts for all
human languages: to explain what language really is and how it is acquired.
While observational adequacy is at the level of actual performance of language, descriptive
adequacy goes into the level of competence, and explanatory adequacy is at the level of theory
or a theoretical framework which explains “language” – not “a language”.
Universal Grammar: Principles and Parameters

Chomsky believes that all human beings are born with an innate ability to learn language, and
he calls this innate ability for language learning Language Acquisition Device (LAD). UG is
part of this innate language faculty.
UG is a theory relevant to the issue of linguistic competence (or language knowledge), i.e.,
a theory as to the nature of grammatical representation. Although UG provides constraints on
14
possible grammars in the course of acquisition, it is not, of itself, a theory of acquisition. This
point is often misunderstood, perhaps because of terms like Language Acquisition Device
(LAD), which many people in the past equated with UG. But it would be more accurate to think
of UG as just part of an LAD (Hilles, 1991) or part of a language faculty (Radford, 1997). The
LAD will also have to contain learning principles, processing principles, triggering algorithms,
etc.
UG is a theory of language knowledge (i.e. mental grammar); its concern is with the
internal structure of the human mind. Chomsky believes that ‘language is a mirror of the mind’
and to study the mind and what happens there, we should examine and describe language.
UG is defined as ‘the system of principles, conditions, and rules that are elements of
Linguistics
properties of all human languages … it is the essence of human language.’ All human beings
share part of their knowledge of language and this common possession is UG.
UG includes invariant principles, as well as parameters. Principles are universal
properties which are common in all languages. Parameters are linguistic properties that vary
from one language to another. Because the central claim of UG is that language knowledge
consists of principles and parameters, it is also known as Principles and Parameters Theory.
UG holds that the speaker knows a set of principles that apply to all languages, and
parameters vary within clearly defined limits from one language to another. Acquiring language
means learning how these principles apply to a particular language and which value is
appropriate for each parameter.
The Innateness Hypothesis

Chomsky believes that the language faculty is innate. The innateness hypothesis receives its
strongest support from the observation that the grammars people ultimately end up with contain
many abstract rules and structures that are not directly represented in the linguistic input they
receive. In this sense the input to the child is said to be impoverished and this argument for the
innateness of UG is called the poverty of the stimulus (Fromkin et al., 2014, p. 396).
The Critical Period Hypothesis (The Strong Version)

Under ordinary circumstances a child is introduced to language virtually at the moment of birth.
Adults talk to him and to each other in his presence. Children do not require explicit language
instruction, but they do need exposure to language to develop normally. Children who do not
receive linguistic input during their formative years do not achieve native-like grammatical
competence. Moreover, behavioral tests and brain imaging studies show that late exposure to
language alters the fundamental organization of the brain for language.
The critical-age hypothesis asserts that language is biologically based and that the ability
to learn a native language develops within a fixed period, from birth to middle childhood.
During this critical period, language acquisition proceeds easily, swiftly, and without external
intervention. After this period, the acquisition of grammar is difficult and, for most individuals,
never fully achieved. Children deprived of language during this critical period show atypical
patterns of brain lateralization.
Instances of children reared in environments of extreme social isolation constitute
“experiments in nature” for testing the critical-age hypothesis. The most dramatic cases are
those described as “wild” or “feral” children. A celebrated case, documented in François
Truffaut’s film The Wild Child, is that of Victor, “the wild boy of Aveyron,” who was found in
1798. It was ascertained that he had been left in the woods when very young and had somehow
survived. In 1920 two children, Amala and Kamala, were found in India, supposedly having
been reared by wolves.
15
Other children have been deliberately isolated from normal social interaction and language.
In 1970, a child called Genie in the scientific reports was discovered. She had been confined to
a small room under conditions of physical restraint and had received only minimal human
contact from the age of eighteen months until nearly fourteen years.
Regardless of the cause of the isolation, none of these children was able to speak or knew
any language at the time they were reintroduced into society. This linguistic inability could be
simply explained by the fact that these children received no linguistic input, showing that
language acquisition, though an innate, neurologically based ability, must be triggered by
input from the environment. In the documented cases of Victor and Genie, however, these
children were unable to acquire grammar even after years of exposure, and despite the ability
Linguistics
to learn many words (Fromkin et al., 2014, pp. 476, 477).
Critical Period Hypothesis under Criticism

Loewen and Reinders (2011) state that the debate about the effects of age on L2 development
has resulted in the formation of the critical period hypothesis which states there is a specific
age beyond which it is very difficult, if not impossible, for a person to achieve native-speaker-
like status in a second language. Simply put, the argument is that if someone begins to learn an
L2 before this critical age, they can achieve native speaker proficiency, but if they begin after
the critical period, they cannot. It is suggested that the onset of puberty coincides with the
critical age. Thus by the age of around 13, an individual's ability for L2 learning changes.
However, some argue that the age of 13 may be a cut off point for grammar learning, but that a
cut off point for native-like pronunciation may be as early as six or seven.
Some researchers suggest that 'critical period' is too narrow, implying a specific cut off
point. They argue instead that a 'sensitive period' may be a better description, allowing for a
wider range of ages. Finally, some researchers reject a critical period at all.
Some argue that L2 learners can never acquire native proficiency, while others argue that
the age of starting to learn a language is not the critical factor. Rather it is the amount of time
and the intensity of the learning that is important.
Sensitive Period Hypothesis (The Weak Version)

A weaker version of the critical period hypothesis, the sensitive period hypothesis, suggests that
the age at which a person begins learning a second language is not as crucial for achieving
native-like proficiency. In addition, the cut-off age of the sensitive period is less precise and
more fluid, and the effects of reaching that period may be less drastic. Thus, learners may have
a harder time achieving native-like proficiency after reaching adolescence; however, they still
may be able to do so. In addition, the age at which this transition happens may be wider in range
than that suggested by the critical period hypothesis.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Cook and Newson (2007, pp. 20-25); Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 396, 476, 477);
Loewen and Reinders, H. (2011, pp. 46, 155)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
17. Mean length of utterance -----------.

1) is the same as the chronological age
2) fails to account for strings more than two words
3) can be a criterion for stages of L1 development
4) is the strongest support for the innateness hypothesis
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
16
Explanation:
The Acquisition of Syntax
Because children mature at different rates and the age at which children start to produce words
and put words together varies, chronological age is not a good measure of a child’s language
development. Instead, researchers use the child’s mean length of utterances (MLU) to
measure progress. MLU is the average length of the utterances the child is producing at a
particular point. MLU is usually measured in terms of morphemes, so words like boys, danced,
and crying each have a value of two (morphemes). To compare children acquiring languages
with different morphological systems measures such as counting the number of verbs per 100
utterances (VPU) may be more revealing. Children with the same MLU or VPU are likely to
Linguistics
have similar grammars even though they are different ages.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 412)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
18. Hemispheric lateralization -----------.

1) is compatible with the critical age hypothesis
2) is incompatible with contralateral control of functions
3) goes against dichotic listening and ERP experiments
4) is an argument against the monogenetic theory of language origin
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Dichotic Listening
Dichotic listening is an experimental technique that uses auditory signals to observe the
behavior of the individual hemispheres of the human brain. Subjects hear two different sound
signals simultaneously through earphones. They may hear curl in one ear and girl in the other,
or a cough in one ear and a laugh in the other. When asked to state what they heard in each ear,
subjects are more frequently correct in reporting linguistic stimuli (words, nonsense syllables,
and so on) delivered directly to the right ear, but are more frequently correct in reporting
nonverbal stimuli (musical chords, environmental sounds, and so on) delivered to the left ear.
Such experiments provide strong evidence of lateralization.
Both hemispheres receive signals from both ears, but the contralateral stimuli prevail over
the ipsilateral (same-side) stimuli because they are processed more robustly. The contralateral
pathways are anatomically thicker (think of a four-lane highway versus a two-lane road) and
are not delayed by the need to cross the corpus callosum. The accuracy with which subjects
report what they hear is evidence that the left hemisphere is superior for linguistic processing,
and the right hemisphere is superior for nonverbal information.
These experiments also show that the left hemisphere is not superior for processing all
sounds, but only for sounds that are linguistic. The left side of the brain is specialized for
language, not sound, as we also noted in connection with sign language research discussed
earlier.
The Critical-Age Hypothesis

The critical-age hypothesis asserts that language is biologically based and that the ability to
learn a native language develops within a fixed period, from birth to middle childhood. During
this critical period, language acquisition proceeds easily, swiftly, and without external
intervention. After this period, the acquisition of grammar is difficult and, for most individuals,
17
never fully achieved. Children deprived of language during this critical period show atypical
patterns of brain lateralization.
Monogenetic Theory of Language Origin

Monogenetic theory of language origin is the belief that all languages originated from a single
language.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 471, 474-479, 572); Yule (2014, pp. 2-7)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Linguistics
19. The words “I hereby” function to examine whether -----------.
1) a speech act is used
2) a sentence contains a performative verb
3) a conversation includes an implicature
4) a maxim of conversation is violated
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Speech Acts
You can use language to do things. You can use language to make promises, lay bets, issue
warnings, christen boats, place names in nomination, offer congratulations, or swear testimony.
The theory of speech acts describes how this is done.
By saying I warn you that there is a sheepdog in the closet, you not only say something,
you warn someone. Verbs like bet, promise, warn, and so on are performative verbs. Using
them in a sentence (in the first person, present tense) adds something extra over and above the
statement.
There are hundreds of performative verbs in every language. The following sentences
illustrate their usage:
I bet you five dollars the Yankees win.
I challenge you to a match.
I dare you to step over this line.
I fine you $100 for possession of oregano.
I move that we adjourn.
I nominate Batman for mayor of Gotham City.
I promise to improve.
I resign!
I pronounce you husband and wife.
In all of these sentences, the speaker is the subject (i.e., the sentences are in first person), who
by uttering the sentence is accomplishing some additional action, such as daring, nominating,
or resigning. In addition, all of these sentences are affirmative, declarative, and in the present
tense. They are typical performative sentences.
An informal test to see whether a sentence contains a performative verb is to begin it with
the words I hereby. . . . Only performative sentences sound right when begun this way. Compare
I hereby apologize to you with the somewhat strange I hereby know you. The first is generally
taken as an act of apologizing. In all of the examples given, insertion of hereby would be
acceptable.
For more information, see Year 96, Item 5. See also, Year 94, Items 16 and 19.
18
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 174-175); Yule (1996, pp. 51-52)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
20. Lexical gaps refer to -----------.

1) nonsense words
2) the omission of content words
3) the abbreviated forms of words
4) the distance between a verb and its complement
Linguistics
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Lexical Gaps
The vast majority of letter (sound) sequences that could be words of English – clunt, spleek,
flig – are not. Similar comments apply to morphological derivations like disobvious or
inobvious. “Words” that conform to the rules of word formation but are not truly part of the
vocabulary are called accidental gaps or lexical gaps. Accidental gaps are well-formed but
nonexisting words.
The actual words in a language constitute a mere subset of the possible words. There are
always gaps in the lexicon—words not present but that could be added. Some of the gaps are
due to the fact that a permissible sound sequence has no meaning attached to it (like blick, or
slarm, or krobe). The sequence of sounds must be in keeping with the constraints of the
language, however; *bnick is not a “gap” because no word in English can begin with bn.
Other gaps result when possible combinations of morphemes never come into use.
Speakers can distinguish between impossible words such as *unsystem and *needlessity and
possible but nonexisting words such as magnificenter or disobvious (cf. distrustful). The latter
are blocked, as noted earlier, owing to the presence of more magnificent and nonobvious. The
ability to make this distinction is further evidence that the morphological component of our
mental grammar consists of not just a lexicon—a list of existing words—but also of rules that
enable us to create and understand new words, and to recognize possible and impossible words.
Accidental gap is contrasted with ‘systematic gap’. Systematic gap refers to the absence
of a form because it violates some phonological constraint. For example, in English the non-
occurring form *[sbin] is a systematic gap, because in word-initial clusters [sC] the C must be
a voiceless stop, i.e. [sp], [st], [sk].
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 55-56)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
21. Phonological rules -----------.

1) result in surface phonemic derivations
2) function to produce neutralization
3) operate on phonemic representation
4) apply to output to make it easy to pronounce
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
19
Explanation:
Phonemes are the basic form of a sound as sensed mentally rather than spoken or heard. Each
phoneme – a mental abstraction in itself – is manifested aurally by one or more sounds, called
allophones, which are the perceivable sounds corresponding to the phoneme in various
environments. For example, the phoneme /p/ is pronounced with the aspiration allophone [p h]
in pit but without aspiration [p] in spit. Phonological rules operate on phonemes to make explicit
which allophones are pronounced in which environments.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Linguistics
22. In the English language, “duration” -----------.
1) contrast meanings in vowels and consonants
2) is a segmental non-prosodic feature
3) stands for length when it leads to distinctions in meaning
4) is referred to as the fundamental frequency of the sound signal
Answer: No Answer
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Prosodic Features
Length, pitch, and stress (or “accent”) are prosodic or suprasegmental features. They are
features over and above the segmental values such as place or manner of articulation, thus the
supra- in suprasegmental. The term prosodic comes from poetry, where it refers to the metrical
structure of verse. One of the essential characteristics of poetry is the placement of stress on
particular syllables, which defines the versification of the poem.
Speech sounds that are identical in their place or manner features may differ in length
(duration). Tense vowels are slightly longer than lax vowels, but only by a few milliseconds.
However, in some languages when a vowel is prolonged to around twice its normal length, it
can make a difference between words. In Japanese the word biru [biru] with a regular i means
‘building,’ but with the i doubled in length as in biiru, spelled phonetically as [biːru], the
meaning is ‘beer.’ (The colon-like ː is the IPA symbol for segment length or doubling.) In
Japanese, vowel length can make the difference between two words.
Japanese, and many other languages such as Finnish and Italian, have long consonants that
may contrast words. When a consonant is long, or doubled, either the closure or obstruction is
prolonged. Pronounced with a short k, the word saki [saki] means ‘ahead’ in Japanese;
pronounced with a long k—prolonging the velar closure—the word sakki [sakːi] means
‘before.’ In effect, the extended silence of the prolonged closure is meaningful in these
languages.
English is not a language in which vowel or consonant length can change a word –
lengthening a sound does not change the meaning of a word. You might say “puleeeeeze”
to emphasize your request, but the word is still please. You may also say in English “Whatttttt
a dump!” to express your dismay at a hotel room, prolonging the t-closure, but the word what
is not changed.
Therefore, in English, vowel length and consonant length are nonphonemic. Prolonging
a sound in English will not produce a different word. In other languages, long and short vowels
that are identical except for length are phonemic. In such languages, length is a nonpredictable
distinctive feature. For example, vowel length is phonemic in some dialects of Korean, as
shown by the following minimal pairs (recall that the colon-like symbol ː indicates length):
20
il “day” iːl “work”

seda “to count” seːda “strong”
kul “oyster” kuːl “tunnel”
In Italian the word for ‘grandfather’ is nonno /nonːo/, which contrasts with the word for ‘ninth,’
which is nono /nono/, so consonant length is phonemic in Italian. In Luganda, an African
language, consonant length is also phonemic: /kula/ with a short /k/ means ‘grow up,’ whereas
/kːula/ with a long /kː/ means ‘treasure.’ Thus consonant length is unpredictable in Luganda,
just as whether a word begins with a /b/ or a /p/ is unpredictable in English.
Linguistics
To conclude:
In languages in which length (or duration) is phonemic (i.e. distinctive – making meaning
different), length is a segmental feature. But in languages, like English, in which length is not
phonemic, length is a suprasegmental feature.
In English, length (or duration) is non-distinctive (i.e. does not change meaning), and is a
suprasegmental feature. Hence, Choices (1), (2), and (3) are incorrect.
Also Choice (4) has nothing to do with articulatory phonetics. The fundamental frequency
of the sound signal is studied in acoustic phonetics.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 210-211, 238-239)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
23. Bottom-to-top language death -----------.

1) describes a language that survives only in specific contexts
2) refers to the death of non- standard dialects
3) occurs when the speakers of the language suddenly die
4) occurs when the language is used only for daily communication
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
A language dies and becomes extinct when no children learn it. Linguists have identified four
primary types of language death:
1. Sudden language death occurs when all of the speakers of the language die or are killed.
Such was the case with Tasmanian languages, once spoken on the island of Tasmania,
and Nicoleño, a Native American Indian language once spoken in California.
2. Radical language death is similar to sudden language death in its abruptness. Rather
than the speakers dying, however, they all stop speaking the language, Often, the reason
for this abrupt change is survival under the threat of political repression or even genocide.
Indigenous languages embedded in other cultures suffer death this way. In order to avoid
being identified as "natives," speakers simply stop speaking their native language.
Children are unable to learn a language that is not spoken in their environment, and when
the last speaker dies, the language dies.
3. Gradual language death is the most common way for a language to become extinct. It
happens to minority languages that are in contact with a dominant language, such as
American Indian languages are in contact with English. In each generation, fewer and
fewer children learn the language until there are no new learners. The language is said to
be dead when the last generation of speakers dies out. Cornish suffered this fate in Britain
21
in the eighteenth century, as have many Native American languages in both North and
South America.
4. Bottom-to-top language death describes a language survives only in specific contexts,
such as a liturgical language. Latin and, at one time, Hebrew are such languages. It
contrasts with gradual language death, which in its dying throes is spoken casually and
informally in homes and villages. People stopped speaking Latin in daily situations
centuries ago, and its usage is confined to scholarly and religious contexts.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Linguistics
24. The principle of Late Closure -------------.
1) is exemplified in the sentence “the man said yesterday he will die”
2) is used to process garden path sentences
3) is used for syntactic processing and known as Minimal Attachment
4) says the syntactic processing requires building the simplest structure consistent with the
grammar of the language
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Syntactic Processing
Understanding a sentence involves more than merely recognizing its individual words. The
listener must also determine the syntactic relations among the words and phrases. This mental
process, referred to as parsing, is largely governed by the rules of the grammar and strongly
influenced by the sequential nature of language.
Listeners actively build a structural representation of a sentence as they hear it. They must
therefore decide for each incoming word what its grammatical category is and how it fits into
the structure that is being built. Often sentences present “temporary ambiguities” such as a word
or words that belong to more than one syntactic category. For example, the string The
warehouse fires . . . could continue in one of two ways:
1. . . . were set by an arsonist.
2. . . . employees over sixty.
Fires is a noun in sentence (1) and a verb in sentence (2). Experimental studies of such sentences
show that both meanings and categories are activated when a subject encounters the ambiguous
word. The ambiguity is quickly resolved based on syntactic and semantic context.
Disambiguation is usually so fast and seamless that unintentionally ambiguous newspaper
headlines such as those at the head of this section are scarcely noticeable except to the linguists
who collect them.
Another important type of temporary ambiguity arises in cases in which the grammar
permits a constituent to fit into a sentence in two different ways, as illustrated by the following
example:
After the child visited the doctor prescribed a course of injections.
When readers encounter the phrase the doctor they immediately perceive it as the direct
object of the verb visit. When they later come to the verb prescribed, they must “change their
minds” or backtrack, and reanalyze the doctor as subject of a main clause instead. Sophisticated
laboratory procedures that track the reader’s eye movements while he reads can pinpoint
22
difficult regions of the sentence and can see when the reader regresses to an earlier part of the
sentence. Sentences that induce this backtracking effect are called garden path sentences. The
sentence, The horse raced past the barn fell, is also a garden path sentence. People naturally
interpret raced as the main verb, when in fact the main verb is fell.
The initial structural choices that lead people astray may reflect general principles that are
used by the mental parser to deal with syntactic ambiguity. Two such principles are known as
minimal attachment and late closure.
Minimal attachment says, “Build the simplest structure consistent with the grammar of
the language.” In the string The horse raced . . . , the simpler structure is the one in which the
horse is the subject and raced the main verb; the less simple structure is similar to The horse
Linguistics
that was raced . . . with fell as the main verb.
Late closure says “Attach incoming material to the phrase that is currently being
processed,” as the following sentence illustrates:
The doctor said the patient will die yesterday.
Readers often experience a garden path effect at the end of this sentence. The reader
encounters yesterday nearest to the embedded clause the patient will die, which is closest to
yesterday, and immediately tries to work it into the meaning. This fails because yesterday
conflicts with the future marker will so the reader backtracks to attach yesterday to the main
clause containing said.
The syntactic parsing of sentences depends on different sources of information. The parser
depends on the grammar to inform it as to how the incoming words can be grouped together
into well-formed constituents. In cases of ambiguity there are various structural possibilities to
choose from. Principles such as minimal attachment and late closure guide the parser to choose
the computationally simplest structure among the different grammatical possibilities. Garden
path effects arise when listeners make a strong commitment to the simpler structure and are
then “jarred” out of it by some kind of incongruity.
In some cases frequency factors cause the reader to garden path, as illustrated by the
following sentence:
The faithful people our church every Sunday.
People occurs much more frequently as a noun than a verb, leading the reader to initially
analyze the faithful people as an NP, but this does not jibe with the following words, which lack
a verb. The reader must backtrack and reanalyze people as the main verb meaning “to populate.”
Other factors such as prosody, lexical biases, and even visual context can also influence
the parser in its structural choices, and may even weaken the effects of the parsing principles.
For example, the following sentence is ambiguous: either the actress or the maid can be
understood as the one on the balcony:
Someone photographed the maid of the actress who was on the balcony.
Late closure would make the actress on the balcony the preferred interpretation. Studies
show that placing an intonation pause after the maid greatly increases the chances of the listener
assigning this meaning. On the other hand a pause after the actress increases the likelihood of
the interpretation where the maid is on the balcony.
Concluding remarks
Regarding Choice (1), if the sentence “the man said yesterday he will die” were written as “the
man said he will die yesterday”, it would be an example of the Late Closure Principle. Thus,
23
Choice (2) is the correct option because when readers read garden path sentences, they should
apply the principle of Late Closure for an appropriate interpretation.
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25. The statement that “The grammar the child finally builds is greatly underdetermined by
linguistic experience” is a strong argument for -----------.
1) child-directed speech
2) structure dependency
3) parametric resetting
Linguistics
4) the poverty of the stimulus
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
The Role of Structured Input in Language Acquisition
A suggestion is that children are able to learn language because adults speak to them in a special
“simplified” language sometimes called motherese, or child-directed speech (CDS) (or more
informally, baby talk) (Fromkin et al., 2014, pp. 424-425).
What’s Learned, What’s Not?

The innateness hypothesis receives its strongest support from the observation that the
grammars people ultimately end up with contain many abstract rules and structures that are not
directly represented in the linguistic input they receive. In this sense the input to the child is
said to be impoverished and this argument for the innateness of UG is called the poverty of
the stimulus.
The principle of structure dependency illustrates one way in which the linguistic input
is impoverished. Structure dependency, refers to the fact that grammatical rules are dependent
on hierarchical structure and not on serial order. For example, the rule that moves the auxiliary
in English questions, illustrated in (1), must refer to the main auxiliary of the sentence and not
merely to the first auxiliary.
(1) The boy is sleeping. → Is the boy sleeping?
This is clearly shown by introducing a more complex sentence containing a relative clause. We
see that moving the main auxiliary, as in (2), produces a grammatical output, while moving the
first auxiliary, as in (3), leads to ungrammaticality:
The boy who is sleeping was dreaming.
(2) Was the boy who is sleeping ____ dreaming?
(3) *Is the boy who ____ sleeping was dreaming?
Naturalistic and experimental studies show that young children do not produce sentences
such as (3). Presented with simple declarative-question pairs such as (1), children infer the
structure-dependent rule, and when tested on the more complex cases, they correctly invert the
main auxiliary. The fact that children come up with rules that move the auxiliary of the main
clause rather than the first auxiliary means that they know something about the hierarchical
organization of sentences, something they were not provided with directly in the input.
24
Many grammatical rules rely on the structural difference between main and subordinate
clauses. For example, a pronoun can sometimes refer to a following NP as in (1) where he can
refer to Billie. But sometimes pronouns cannot co-refer in this way, as in (2).
(1) When he lost the race Billie was sad.
(2) *He was sad when Billie lost the race. (ungrammatical as he = Billie)
The linear relationship between the pronoun and the NP is the same in both sentences, so this
cannot be the reason for the difference in grammaticality. Rather, the rule that permits co-
reference in (1) but not (2) is structure-dependent (and it is also universal): it states (roughly)
that a preceding pronoun in a main clause cannot refer to a NP in a following subordinate clause.
Linguistics
As in the case of the question formation rule, when young children are tested on sentences such
as (1) and (2) they do not make mistakes. They allow co-reference in (1), but not in (2), showing
that they are sensitive to the structural difference between the two sentences and to the structure-
dependent pronoun rule.
Children are not given information about structure dependency. Indeed, they are not
explicitly informed about constituent structure or any other abstract property of grammar. The
input children receive is a sequence of sounds (or signs), not a set of phrase structure trees. Yet
children formulate rules that are sensitive to this structure. According to the innateness
hypothesis, the child does not need to learn structure dependency or the pronoun rule or any
other universal principles of sentence formation such as the rule that heads of categories can
take complements. These aspects of grammar are part of the innate blueprint for language.
At the same time, it is clear that some aspects of language are learned. Children acquire the
language(s) they hear spoken in their community, not any random language. The child must
learn the particular sounds and words of his language as well as those grammatical rules specific
to his language as exemplified in the linguistic input, such as word order and movement rules.
For example, English-speaking children hear that the subject comes first and that the verb
precedes the object inside the VP: that is, they learn that English is an SVO language. Japanese
children acquire an SOV language. They learn that the object precedes the verb from hearing
mature speakers of Japanese.
English-speaking children must also learn that yes-no questions are formed by moving the
auxiliary, while Japanese children learn that to form a yes-no question, the morpheme -ka is
suffixed to a verb stem.
Tanaka ga sushi o tabete iru. ‘Tanaka is eating sushi.’
Tanaka ga sushi o tabete iruka? ‘Is Tanaka eating sushi?’
The process of acquiring language is rooted in human biology and supported by linguistic input
from the environment. One of the central goals of linguistic theory is to solve the logical
problem of language acquisition:
What accounts for the ease, rapidity, and uniformity of language acquisition in the
face of impoverished data?
A partial answer is that children are able to acquire a complex grammar quickly and easily
without any particular help beyond exposure to the language because they do not start from
scratch. Innate principles of UG such as structure dependency and X-bar theory among many
others provide them with a significant head start. UG constrains the kinds of grammatical
rules children will formulate. It predisposes them to follow a restricted course of development
that avoids many grammatical errors and gives rise to uniform developmental stages, as we will
discuss in the next section.
25
The innateness hypothesis also predicts that all languages will conform to UG principles.
While we are still far from understanding the full structure of UG, research on different
languages provides a way to test any principles that linguists propose. Hypotheses may be
revised based on new evidence, as is the case in any science. But there is little doubt that human
languages conform to abstract universal principles and that the human brain is specially
equipped for acquisition of human language grammars.
See also Year 91, Items 16 and 67.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 395-397, 424-425)
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Linguistics
26. The effect called semantic priming refers to the ability to -----------.
1) recognize a word rapidly after hearing a related word
2) process lexically ambiguous sentences
3) derive meaning from the components of words
4) determine the meaning of larger units from that of smaller units
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Lexical Access and Word Recognition
Psycholinguists have conducted a great deal of research on lexical access or word recognition,
the process by which listeners obtain information about the meaning and syntactic properties
of a word from their mental lexicon. Several different experimental techniques have been used
in studies of lexical access.
One technique is to ask whether a string of letters or sounds is or is not a word. Subjects
must respond by pressing one button if the stimulus is an actual word, and a different button if
it is not, so they are making a lexical decision. During these and similar experiments,
measurements of response time (RT) is taken. The assumption is that the longer it takes to
respond to a particular task, the more processing is involved. RT measurements show that
lexical access depends to some extent on the word’s frequency of usage: more commonly used
words such as car are responded to more quickly than words that we rarely encounter such as
cad.
Lexical decision tasks can also provide information about how we use our phonological
knowledge in lexical access. Studies show that listeners respond more slowly to “possible” non-
words such as floop and plim than to “impossible” non-words such as tlat and mrock. The
listener can quickly reject the impossible words based on phonotactic knowledge so that a
lexical search is unnecessary. That possible and impossible non-words are processed differently
is supported by brain imaging studies showing that the same areas of the brain are involved in
accessing real words and possible non-words, while different areas respond to impossible non-
words.
The speed with which a listener can retrieve a particular word also depends on the size of
the word’s phonological “neighborhood.” A neighborhood is comprised of all the words that
are phonologically similar to the target word. A word like pat has a dense neighborhood because
there are many similar words—bat, pad, pot, pit, and so on, while a word like crib has far fewer
neighbors. Words with larger neighborhoods take longer to retrieve than words from smaller
ones because more phonological information is required to single out a word in a denser
neighborhood.
26
Psycholinguists believe that each word in the mental lexicon is associated with a “resting
level of activation” which is increased each time the listener accesses the word. Because more
frequent words have a higher resting level of activation, listeners show faster RTs to these words
in decision tasks.
Words can also be activated by hearing semantically related words. This effect is
known as semantic priming. A listener will be faster at making a lexical decision on the word
doctor if he has just heard nurse than if he just heard a semantically unrelated word such as
flower. The word nurse is said to prime the word doctor. When we hear a priming word, related
words are “awakened” and become more readily accessible for a few moments. This priming
effect might arise because semantically related words are near each other or linked to each other
Linguistics
in the mental lexicon.
Morphological priming is kind of semantic priming in which a morpheme of a
multimorphemic word primes a related word. For example sheepdog primes wool as a result of
sheep. Even when one morpheme is free and the other bound as in runner, the free morpheme
run primes words like race. Stranger yet, even in pseudo-multimorphemic words such as
summer, which does not mean “one who sums,” the word “sum” is primed much as paint is
primed by the word painter. These examples suggest that morphological decomposition is
taking place automatically based on the phonetics of the word irrespective of the semantics.
For similar items, refer to Year 92, Item 24; and Year 93, Item 63.
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27. The sentence “the rat the cat ate” -----------.
1) exemplifies the movement called postposing
2) is an unmarked sentence in English
3) is ungrammatical from a functional perspective
4) shows the split between grammatical and psychological subjects
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Postposing
Postposing is to place a constituent after other constituents in a sentence as in the following
example:
a. I met a man from Paris yesterday.
b. I met yesterday # a man from Paris.
In the sentence b above, the constituent a man from Paris is postposed.
Subject, Actor, Theme

One of the concepts that are basic to the Western tradition of grammatical analysis is that of
Subject. Since this is a familiar term, let us take it as the starting point for investigating the
functions in an English clause.
Consider the clause:
the duke gave my aunt this teapot
In accordance with the syntactic principles established by medieval grammarians, which were
themselves based on the grammarians of ancient Greece and Rome, each clause contains one
27
element which can be identified as its Subject (see e.g. Covington, 1984; Seuren, 1998: 34–37);
and in this instance, the Subject would be the duke.
Yet, various interpretations have grown up around the Subject notion, ascribing to it a number
of rather different functions. These resolve themselves into three broad definitions, which can
be summarized as follows:
i. that which is the concern of the message
ii. that of which something is being predicated (i.e. on which rests the truth of the
argument)
iii. the doer of the action.
Linguistics
These three definitions are obviously not synonymous; they are defining different concepts.
So the question that arises is, is it possible for the category of ‘Subject’ to embrace all these
different meanings at one and the same time?
In the duke gave my aunt this teapot, it is reasonable to claim that the nominal group the
duke is, in fact, the Subject in all these three senses. It represents the person with whom the
message is concerned; the truth or falsehood of the statement is vested in him; and he is
represented as having performed the action of giving.
If all clauses were like this one in having one element serving all three functions, there would
be no problem in identifying and explaining the Subject. We could use the term to refer to the
sum of these three definitions, and assign the label to whichever element fulfilled all the
functions in question. But this assumes that in every clause there is just one element in which
all three functions are combined; and this is not the case. Many clauses contain no such element
that embodies all three. For example, suppose we say
this teapot my aunt was given by the duke
— which constituent is now to be identified as the Subject?
There is no longer any one obvious answer. What has happened in this instance is that the
different functions making up the traditional concept of Subject have been split up among three
different constituents of the clause. The duke is still represented as the doer of the deed; but the
message is now a message concerning the teapot, and its claim for truth is represented as being
vested in my aunt.
When these different functions came to be recognized by grammarians as distinct, they
were first labelled as if they were three different kinds of Subject. It was still implied that there
was some sort of a superordinate concept covering all three, a general notion of Subject of
which they were specific varieties.
The terms that came to be used in the second half of the nineteenth century, when there
was a renewal of interest in grammatical theory (see Seuren, 1998, pp. 120–133, on the subject–
predicate debate that lasted from the nineteenth century until the 1930s), were ‘psychological
Subject’, ‘grammatical Subject’, and ‘logical Subject’.
(i). Psychological Subject meant ‘that which is the concern of the message’. It was called
‘psychological’ because it was what the speaker had in his mind to start with, when
embarking on the production of the clause.
(ii). Grammatical Subject meant ‘that of which something is predicated’. It was called
‘grammatical’ because at the time the construction of Subject and Predicate was
thought of as a purely formal grammatical relationship; it was seen to determine
various other grammatical features, such as the case of the noun or pronoun that was
functioning as Subject, and its concord of person and number with the verb, but it was
not thought to express any particular meaning.
28
(iii). Logical Subject meant ‘doer of the action’. It was called ‘logical’ in the sense this
term had had from the seventeenth century, that of ‘having to do with relations between
things’, as opposed to ‘grammatical’ relations, which were relations between symbols.
In the first example below, all these three functions are conflated, or ‘mapped’ on to one
another, as shown in Figure 1.
the duke gave my aunt this teapot
psychological Subject: Theme
grammatical Subject: Subject
logical Subject: Actor
Linguistics
Figure 1: Same item functioning as psychological, grammatical and logical Subject
In the second example, on the other hand, all three are separated (Figure 2). In this teapot my
aunt was given by the duke, the psychological Subject is this teapot. That is to say, it is ‘this
teapot’ that is the concern of the message – that the speaker has taken as the point of
embarkation of the clause. But the grammatical Subject is my aunt: ‘my aunt’ is the one of
whom the statement is predicated – in respect of whom the clause is claimed to be valid, and
therefore can be argued about as true or false. Only the logical Subject is still the duke: ‘the
duke’ is the doer of the deed – the one who is said to have carried out the process that the clause
represents.
psychological Subject grammatical Subject logical Subject
Figure 2: Psychological, grammatical and logical Subject realized by different items
As long as we concern ourselves only with idealized clause patterns like John runs or the
boy threw the ball, we can operate with the label Subject as if it referred to a single
undifferentiated concept. In clauses of this type, the functions of psychological, grammatical
and logical Subject all coincide. In the boy threw the ball, the boy would still be Subject no
matter which of the three definitions we were using, like the duke in the first of our examples
above.
But as soon as we take account of natural living language, and of the kinds of variation that
occur in it, in which the order of elements can vary, passives can occur as well as actives, and
so on, it is no longer possible to base an analysis on the assumption that these three concepts
are merely different aspects of one and the same general notion. They have to be interpreted as
what they really are – three separate and distinct functions. There is no such thing as a general
concept of ‘Subject’ of which these are different varieties. They are not three kinds of anything;
they are three quite different things. In order to take account of this, we will replace the earlier
labels by separate ones that relate more specifically to the functions concerned:
Psychological Subject: Theme

Grammatical Subject: Subject
Logical Subject: Actor
We can now relabel Figure 2 as in Figure 3.

Theme Subject Actor
Figure 3: Theme, Subject and Actor
29
In the duke gave my aunt this teapot, the roles of Theme, Subject and Actor are all combined
in the one element the duke. In this teapot my aunt was given by the duke, all three are separated.
All the additional combinations are also possible: any two roles may be conflated, with the third
kept separate. For example, if we keep the duke as Actor, we can have Theme = Subject with
Actor separate, as in Figure 4.
(a)
my aunt was given this teapot by the duke
Theme Actor
Subject
Linguistics
(b)
this teapot the duke gave to my aunt
Theme Subject
Actor
(c)
by the duke my aunt was given this teapot
Theme Subject
Actor
Figure 4: Different conflations of Subject, Actor and Theme
In any interpretation of the grammar of English we need to take note of all these possible forms,
explaining how and why they differ. They are all, subtly but significantly, different in meaning;
at the same time they are all related, and related in a systematic way. Any comparable set of
clauses in English would make up a similar paradigm. Often, of course, there are not three
distinct elements that could carry the functions of Theme, Subject and Actor, but only two, as
in Figure 5.
(a)
I caught the first ball
Theme
Subject
Actor
(b)
I was beaten by the second
Theme Actor
Subject
(c)
the third I stopped
Theme Subject Actor
Actor
(d)
by the fourth I was knocked out
Theme Subject Actor
Actor
Figure 5: Narrative embodying different conflations of Subject, Actor and Theme
30
Note how the series of clauses in (a)–(d) forms an entirely natural sequence such as a speaker
might use in a personal narrative of this kind.
And often no variation at all is possible, if there is only one element that can have these
functions; for example I ran away, where I is inevitably Theme, Subject and Actor. (Even here
there is a possibility of thematic variation, as in run away I did or the one who ran away was me.)
On the other hand, while explaining all these variants, we also have to explain the fact that the
typical, unmarked form, in an English declarative (statement-type) clause, is the one in which
Theme, Subject and Actor are conflated into a single element. That is the form we tend to use if
there is no prior context leading up to it, and no positive reason for choosing anything else.
Linguistics
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 See also: Halliday and Matthiessen (2013, pp. 76-82)
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28. Words like “brother” and “sister” -----------.

1) are the result of back-formation
2) must be monomorphemic
3) consist of inflections and open class words
4) must function as agents rather than themes
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Backformation
A very specialized type of reduction process is known as backformation. Typically, a word of
one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form a word of another type (usually a verb). A good
example of backformation is the process whereby the noun television first came into use and
then the verb televise was created from it. Other examples of words created by this process are:
donate (from “donation”), emote (from “emotion”), enthuse (from “enthusiasm”), liaise (from
“liaison”) and babysit (from “babysitter”). Indeed, when we use the verb backform (Did you
know that “opt” was backformed from “option”?), we are using a backformation.
Monomorphemic Words
English speakers know that finger is a single morpheme, or a monomorphemic word. The
final -er syllable in finger is not a separate morpheme because a finger is not “something that
fings.” Similarly butter when not referring to goat-like behavior is monomorphemic food stuff.
The meaning of a morpheme must be constant. The agentive morpheme –er means ‘one
who does’ in words like singer, painter, lover, and worker, but the same sounds represent the
comparative morpheme, meaning ‘more,’ in nicer, prettier, and taller. Thus, two different
morphemes may be pronounced identically. The identical form represents two morphemes
because of the different meanings. The same sounds may occur in another word and not
represent a separate morpheme at all, as in finger, mother, father, brother, sister.
Thus, the words brother and sister are monomorphemic and they do not consist any
inflections.
31
Inflections
In grammar, inflection or inflexion – sometimes called accidence – is the modification of a
word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person,
number, gender, and mood. Hudson (2000, p. 64) identifies eight inflectional affixes.
With nouns
1. -s, the plural suffix of nouns, as in pigs, and cows.
2. -’s, the possessive suffix, ordinarily of nouns, as in Jackson’s and New York’s, but in fact
suffixable to whatever word ends the possessor phrase, as in the person we visited’s house
Linguistics
and the person I thought of’s picture.
With verbs
3. -s, the present tense 3rd-person singular suffix of verbs, as in walks, and runs
4. -ed, the past tense of verbs, as in arrived and waited
5. -n, the past participle suffix of some verbs, as in broken and eaten.
6. -ing, the present participle suffix of verbs, as in walking and running
With adjectives
7. -er, the comparative suffix of adjectives, as in quicker and earlier (This -er should not be
equated with the -er which forms ‘agents’ of verbs, such as finder and doer; the latter is
a deviational suffix)
8. -est, the superlative suffix of adjectives, as in quickest and earliest
Content Words vs. Function Words

Words are of two types:
1. Content Words: (also called contetives or Open Class Words): These words denote
obvious concepts and have clear lexical meanings. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs
are the content words. Content words are sometimes called the open class words because
we can and regularly do add new words to these classes.
2. Function Words: (also called functors or Closed Class Words): Other classes of words
do not have clear lexical meanings or obvious concepts associated with them, including
conjunctions such as and, or, and but; prepositions such as in and of; the articles the and
a/an, and pronouns such as it. These kinds of words are called function words because
they specify grammatical relations and have little or no semantic content.
Content words bear the brunt or burden of the meaning, whereas function words connect the
content words to the larger grammatical context.
For choice (4), and more information on thematic roles, refer to Year 93, Item 24.
For similar items, refer to Year 93, Item 24; Year 94, Item 27; Year 95, Item 7; Year 97, Item
11.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 38-39); Yule (2014, p. 54)
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32
29. In the sentence “whose did Mary borrow pen?” -----------.

1) the non-pro-drop parameter is violated
2) no s-selection is observed
3) an illicit wh movement is made
4) a prepositional phrase is topicalized
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Linguistics
Wh movement
In all languages with wh movement (i.e., movement of the question phrase), the question
element moves into the CP (complementizer phrase). The “landing site” of the moved phrase
is determined by UG.
Among the wh movement languages, there is some variation. In the Romance languages,
such as Italian, the wh phrase moves as in English, but when the wh phrase questions the object
of a preposition, the preposition must move together with the wh phrase. In English, by contrast,
the preposition can be “stranded” (i.e., left behind in its original position):
A chi hai dato il libro?
To whom (did) you give the book?
*Chi hai dato il libro a?
Who(m) did you give the book to?
Despite these variations, wh movement adheres to certain constraints. Although wh phrases

such as what, who, and which boy can be inserted into any NP position, and are then free in
principle to move into the CP, there are specific instances in which wh movement is blocked. For
example, a wh phrase cannot move out of a relative clause like the senator that wanted to hire
who, as in (1b). It also cannot move out of a clause beginning with whether or if, as in (2c) and
(2d). (Remember that the position from which the wh phrases have moved is indicated with ___.)
1. (a) Emily paid a visit to the senator that wants to hire who?
(b) *Who did Emily pay a visit to the senator that wants to hire ___?
2. (a) Miss Marple asked Sherlock whether Poirot had solved the crime.
(b) Who did Miss Marple ask ___ whether Poirot had solved the crime?
(c) *Who did Miss Marple ask Sherlock whether ___ had solved the crime?
(d) *What did Miss Marple ask Sherlock whether Poirot had solved ___?
The only difference between the grammatical (2b) and the ungrammatical (2c) and (2d) is
that in (2b) the wh phrase originates in the higher clause, whereas in (2c) and (2d) the wh phrase
comes from inside the whether clause. This illustrates that the constraint against movement
depends on structure and not on the length of the sentence.
Some sentences can be very short and still not allow wh movement:
3. (a) Sam Spade insulted the fat man’s henchman.
(b) Who did Sam Spade insult?
(c) Whose henchman did Sam Spade insult?
(d) *Whose did Sam Spade insult henchman?
33
4. (a) John ate bologna and cheese.

(b) John ate bologna with cheese.
(c) *What did John eat bologna and?
(d) What did John eat bologna with?
The sentences in (3) show that a wh phrase cannot be extracted from inside a possessive
NP. In (3b) it is okay to question the whole direct object. In (3c) it is even okay to question a
piece of the possessive NP, providing the entire wh phrase is moved, but (3d) shows that
moving the wh word alone out of the possessive NP is illicit.
Sentence (4a) is a coordinate structure and has approximately the same meaning as (4b),
Linguistics
which is not a coordinate structure. In (4c) moving a wh phrase out of the coordinate structure
results in ungrammaticality, whereas in (4d), moving the wh phrase out of the PP is fine. The
ungrammaticality of (4c), then, is related to its structure and not to its meaning.
Constraints on wh movement are not specific to English. All languages that have wh
movement show some kind of constraint on its operation. Like the principle of structure
dependency and the principles governing the organization of phrases, constraints on wh
movement are part of UG. These aspects of grammar need not be learned. They are part of the
innate blueprint for language that the child brings to the task of acquiring a language. What
children must learn are the language-specific aspects of grammar. Where there are parameters
of variation, children must determine the correct choices for their language.
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30. In lexical semantics, “argument” refers to -----------.

1) the NPs that a verb can take
2) the agents of an action
3) lexical relations between deictic words
4) the reason for the violation of a conversation maxim
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Argument Structure
Verbs differ in terms of the number and type of phrases they can take as complements and/or
adjuncts. Transitive verbs such as find, hit, chase, and so on take, or c-select, a direct object
complement, whereas intransitive verbs like arrive or sleep do not. Ditransitive verbs such as
give or throw take two objects, as in John threw Mary a ball. In addition, most verbs take a
subject. The various NPs that occur with a verb are its arguments. Thus intransitive verbs have
one argument: the subject; transitive verbs have two arguments: the subject and direct object;
ditransitive verbs have three arguments: the subject, direct object, and indirect object. The
argument structure of a verb is part of its meaning and is included in its lexical entry.
Trask and Stockwell (2007, pp. 23-24) define argument as any one of the noun phrases
required by a particular verb. Each verb requires some number of noun phrases to accompany
it in a sentence, if the result is to be grammatical; these NPs are its arguments, and the number
of NPs required by a verb is the valency of that verb. For example, the simple intransitive verbs
smile and arrive are monovalent, requiring only one argument, the subject, as in Susie smiled.
(Note that *Susie smiled Natalie is ungrammatical; the asterisk marks this.) In contrast, a simple
34
transitive verb like kiss or slap is divalent, requiring a subject and one object, as in Susie kissed
Natalie. (Note that *Susie kissed is ungrammatical.) But a ditransitive verb like give or show is
trivalent, requiring a subject and two objects, as in Susie gave Mike a present. A given English
verb usually requires between one and three arguments, but note the unusual behaviour of the
verb rain, which neither requires nor permits any arguments at all, except for the ‘dummy’
subject it, as in It’s raining. This verb arguably has a valency of zero.
In addition to its arguments, a verb very often permits some further phrases which are
optional. These optional phrases are adjuncts, and adjuncts in English are most often expressed
as prepositional phrases or as adverbial phrases. For example, the minimal sentence Susie
kissed Natalie can be expanded with some optional adjuncts to yield Susie kissed Natalie on the
Linguistics
neck in the kitchen this morning (there are three adjuncts here).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 162-163); Trask and Stockwell (2007, pp. 23-24)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
35
Testing (Questions 31 – 45)
31. Which of the following statements is FALSE?

1) Measurement-driven instruction (MDI) is defined by Popham (1987) as when a low-
stakes test influences the instructional program that prepares students for the test, thus
becoming wholly integrated with the instruction.
2) Campbell and Fiske maintain that reliability is the agreement between similar measures
of the same trait and validity is represented in the agreement between different measures
of the same trait.
3) Messick believes that the adverse impact of a test does not itself render the test invalid if
construct validity has been demonstrated, while Cronbach argues that adverse social
consequences call the validity of a test use into question.
4) In Bachman and Palmer (1996), Bachman presents test usefulness as an overarching
notion which subsumes construct validity, whereas Bachman (2004) returns to the
metanarrative of validity and adopts a Kanean approach in accepting that test use is part
of the validation argument.
Answer: 1
Testing
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
As for Choice (1), Gipps (1994, p. 32) asserts that measurement-driven instruction is
defined as when a high-stakes test, because of the important contingencies associated with
students’ performance, influences the instructional program that prepares students for the test
(Popham, 1987a). Whether concerned about their own self-esteem, or their students’ well-being
and prospects, teachers clearly aim for their students to perform well on high-stakes tests. Stakes
can be high, either for the students or for the teachers, and in some cases they are high for both.
Teachers tend to spend a significant amount of their teaching time on the knowledge and skills
assessed by such a test; a high-stakes test therefore serves as a powerful ‘curricular magnet’
(p.680).
With regard to Choice (2), Bachman (1990, pp. 239-240) states that a classic statement of
the relationship between reliability and validity is given by Campbell and Fiske (1959):
Reliability is the agreement between two efforts to measure the same trait through
maximally similar methods. Validity is represented in the agreement between, two
attempts to measure the same trait through maximally different methods.
(Campbell & Fiske 1959, p. 83)
This distinction between reliability and validity is illustrated in Figure 1.
Reliability Validity
Agreement between similar Agreement between different

measures of the same trait (for measures of the same trait (for
example, correlation between example, correlation between
scores on parallel tests) scores on a multiple choice
test of grammar and ratings of
grammar on an oral interview)
Figure 1. Relationship between reliability and validity
36
Regarding Choice (3), Gipps (1994, p. 63) asserts that with this expansion of the concept
of validity to include consideration of social consequences the focus of validity evaluation
becomes “personal, institutional and societal goals” (Cronbach, 1980, p. 101). Messick and
Cronbach, however, appear to hold different views about the relationship between
consequences and test validity. Messick takes the view that adverse impact does not itself render
the test invalid, if construct validity has been demonstrated, while Cronbach argues that adverse
social consequences of themselves call the validity of a test use into question.
As for Choice (4), McNamara and Roever (2006, pp. 33-35) indicate that one influential
attempt to make language test development and validation work more manageable has been
proposed by Bachman (Bachman & Palmer, 1996, pp. 17-18) via an overarching notion of test
usefulness, which requires a trade-off among six aspects: reliability, construct validity,
authenticity, interactiveness, impact, and practicality. Note here that a metanarrative of
“usefulness” has replaced Messick’s construct validity, a fact that the authors acknowledge:
“Authenticity, interactiveness and impact are three qualities that many measurement specialists
consider to be part of validity” (p. 41); among such “specialists,” we must include the earlier
Bachman. The price of manageability is a certain loss of theoretical coherence, although that
might not be of primary relevance to practitioners.
The desire to make test validation a manageable process is reflected again in a series of
Testing
recent publications from Bachman in which he turns to the work of Mislevy and Kane. For
example:
In this chapter I will describe the process of investigating the validity of test use,
which we call validation, in terms of building an interpretive argument and
collecting evidence in support of that argument. This perspective draws on the work
of Michael Kane (Kane, 1992; Kane, 2002; Kane, Crooks, & Cohen, 1999), who
describes validation in terms of an interpretative argument, and Robert Mislevy
(Mislevy, 1996; Mislevy, Steinberg, & Almond, 2002, 2003) who describes
assessment as reasoning from evidence. In this perspective, the process of
validation includes two interrelated activities:
1. articulating an interpretive argument (also referred to as a validation argument),
which provides the logical framework linking test performance to an intended
interpretation and use, and
2. collecting relevant evidence in support of the intended interpretations and uses.
The advantage of this perspective, I believe, is that it provides a transparent means

for linking the dominant theoretical view of validity as a unitary concept, as
described by Messick (1989) and Bachman (1990), with a plan and set of practical
procedures for investigating the validity of the uses we make of scores from a
particular language test. That is, this perspective enables us to link an abstract,
theoretical and general conceptualization of validity with the concrete, specific and
localized procedures that are required in the validation of a particular test use.
(Bachman, 2004, p. 258)
Note that this position reflects a return to the metanarrative of validity and follows Kane in
accepting that test use is part of the validation argument. The concern for manageability no
longer involves a loss of theoretical coherence. Bachman goes on to describe in detail
procedures for validation of test use decisions, following Mislevy et al. (2003) in suggesting
that they follow the structure of a Toulmin argument (i.e., a procedure for practical reasoning
involving articulating claims and providing arguments and evidence both in their favor
[warrants or backing] and against [rebuttals]).
37
For items related to “construct validity” and “Multitrait-multimethod Matrix”, refer to Year 91,
Items 31, 33, 44, 45, and 48; Year 92, Items 55, and 56; Year 93, Item 50; Year 94, Item 35;
Year 96, Items 30, 31, and 60; and Year 97, Item 37.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Gipps (1994, p. 32, 63); McNamara and Roever (2006, pp. 33-35)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
32. Which of the following concepts is irrelevant when calculating DIF using an IRT
model?
1) Compact model
2) Odds ratio
3) Augmented model
4) Purification procedure
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Methods for Detecting Differential Item Functioning (DIF)
Testing
Methods used for detecting DIF fall into four broad categories:
1. Analyses based on item difficulty. These approaches compare item difficulty estimates.
2. Nonparametric approaches. These procedures use contingency tables, chi-square, and
odds ratios.
3. Item-response-theory-based approaches. These analyses frequently (but not always)
compare the fit of statistical models that ignore possible DIF in the first step and are
then recalculated to allow for it in the second step. If both models fit the data equally
well, no DIF is present, but if the model that allows for DIF fits better, DIF is likely.
These approaches include 1, 2, and 3-parameter IRT analyses.
4. Other approaches. These include logistic regression, which also employs a model
comparison method, as well as generalizability theory and multifaceted measurement,
which are less commonly used in classic DIF studies.
Calculating DIF in IRT Models

Although IRT models of DIF are conceptually appealing, the steepest challenge is the
calculation of the actual amount of DIF and its significance. Camilli and Shepard (1994) discuss
a range of formulas and approaches for calculating the amount of DIF. They consider the most
promising approach to be the SPD-θ index. To calculate this index, the likelihood of a correct
response for focal-group members at each ability level is subtracted from the reference-group
members’ likelihood. These differences are then summed and divided by the number of focal-
group members. Of course, a possible concern with this index is that instances that advantage
the focal group cancel out other instances that advantage the reference group, so there is also a
version (UPD-θ) that simply computes all DIF, regardless of whether the focal group or the
reference group are advantaged.
The most widely accepted IRT approach for detecting whether DIF is significant is model
comparison (Thissen, Steinberg, & Wainer, 1993). In model comparison, the first IRT model
to be created is named the “compact model” and it calculates item parameters (difficulty and
possibly discrimination and guessing) for each item using the entire sample; that is, there is no
distinction between reference and focal groups. Because IRT parameters try to model the data
as precisely as possible, there is a goodness-of-fit statistic, which assesses how well the
parameters represent the actual dataset.
38
The next step is done separately for each item. In this step, one item is chosen as the item
of interest and, for this item alone, item parameters are calculated separately for the reference
group and the focal group. For all other items, item parameters are calculated together for both
groups, just as for the compact model. In other words, the parameters for one item are allowed
to vary between reference group and focal group, but for all of the other items, they are kept
constant. This model is named the “augmented model” because it should give a better fit to
the data if there is DIF. The reason for the better fit of the augmented model is that the reference
and focus groups would behave quite differently if, indeed, there was DIF. So in the compact
model, where parameters are computed for both together, these parameters would be fairly
imprecise: They would not model this item very well because people are not quite behaving as
IRT would expect. For example, members of the advantaged group might do better than their
ability suggests, whereas members of the disadvantaged group might do worse. Once the
parameters of this item are computed separately for the two groups, the estimates become much
more precise, which leads to the augmented model showing better fit than the compact model.
The goodness-of-fit statistics for the two models are compared and if the augmented model
fits much better than the compact model, DIF is present.
In contrast, in a case where there is no DIF, it does not make a difference whether the
parameters of an item are computed together or separately for the reference and focal groups
Testing
because the groups are not behaving differently. In that case, the compact model fits just as
well as the augmented model.
These model comparisons have to be done separately for every item in the test: One
compact model is computed, but there are as many augmented models as there are items. A
concern is, of course, that items containing DIF might be used in the calculation of the
parameters, so there might be DIF contamination in all of those models. To avoid this, a
“purification procedure” is often used where items containing sizable DIF are removed after
a first detection run and then the whole process is repeated without those contaminated items.
Dorans and Holland (1993) point out that this principle is useful for any matching approach to
obtain precise scores on the criterion measure (either the total score or an external criterion).
Although the model comparison approach has strong theoretical foundations, it has some
theoretical and practical problems. A major concern is its circularity because ability is
determined by the total score on the test. Not only is there possible DIF contamination, but there
is also the problem that the test is assumed to be a valid measure of the construct. A completely
biased test, one where the majority of items is biased against the focal group, would not be
detected by this procedure because it would appear that the focal and the reference groups differ
in their overall ability. In fact, this procedure would probably identify those items that actually
do not have DIF as being biased in favor of the focal group.
It would also not help very much to use an external criterion, such as another test, because
there would be two implicit assumptions: namely that the other test measures without bias and
that it measures the same construct as the test under investigation. An additional statistical
assumption is that the two instruments should correlate perfectly, and this never happens, if
only because of measurement error.
For similar items on “bias”, refer to Year 91, Item 42; Year 92, Item 53, Year 93, Items 51 and
52; Year 97, Item 21.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: McNamara and Roever (2006, pp. 93, 108-111)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
39
33. Who is known for proposing a unified framework of validity in a progressive matrix,
with construct validity as an essential component in each cell?
1) Cronbach
2) Mislevy
3) Messick
4) Campbell and Fiske
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Cronbach is well known for his contributions to measurement theory, particularly the
development of Cronbach’s alpha as a reliability indicator, as well as improved understanding
of validity (Shavelson, 2002).
Messick is well known for his validity as a unitary concept. Bachman (1990, pp. 242-
244) states that although validity has traditionally been discussed in terms of different types,
as pointed out above, psychometricians have increasingly come to view it as a single, unitary
concept. Messick (1980, 1988b) has argued that even viewing different approaches to
validation (content, criterion-related, construct) as separate lines of evidence for supporting
Testing
given score interpretations is inadequate, and that the consideration of values and consequences
of score use has an essential role in validity considerations. He proposes a unified framework
of validity that
forestalls undue reliance on selected forms of evidence, that highlights the important
though subsidiary role of specific content and criterion-related evidence in support
of construct validity in testing applications, and that formally brings consideration of
value implications and social consequences into the validity framework.
(Messick 1988, p. 20)
The framework he proposes consists of a four-way classification, described by two facets: (1) the
‘source of justification of the testing’, which includes the consideration of either evidence or
consequence, or both, and (2) the ‘function or outcome of the testing’, which includes either test
interpretation or use, or both (Messick 1988b: 20). This framework is illustrated in Table 1:
Table 1: Facets of Validity (after Messick 1980, 1988b)
Functions or Outcomes of Testing

Test Interpretation Test Use
Construct validity Construct validity +
Evidential Basis
Relevance/ Utility
Sources of Construct validity + Construct validity +
Justification Consequential Value implications Relevance/ Utility +
Basis Social
consequences
Messick sees this as a progressive matrix, with construct validity an essential component in
each cell. Thus, for justifying a particular interpretation of a test score, we must gather evidence
for construct validity and consider the value implications of this interpretation.
40
Mislevy is well known for Evidence-Centered Design, evidentiary reasoning, and

assessment argument (see McNamara & Roever, 2006, pp. 19-24; Fulcher & Davidson, 2007,
pp. 62-68, 167).
Campbell and Fiske are famous for the Multitrait-multimethod Matrix as correlational
evidence for validity (See Bachman, 1990, p. 263).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Bachman (1990, pp. 242-244, 263); Fulcher and Davidson (2007, pp. 62-68, 167);
McNamara and Roever (2006, pp. 19-24)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
34. Which scholar is widely known for her/his work on “critical language testing”?
1) Carol Chapelle
2) Dan Douglas
3) James Purpura
Testing
4) Elana Shohamy
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Carol Chapelle is famous for the validity cline (see Fulcher & Davidson, 2007, pp.16-17)
Dan Douglas is known for Assessing Languages for Specific Purposes (see Douglas, 2000).
James Purpura is famous for his book on Assessing Grammar (see Purpura, 2004).
Elana Shohamy is well-known for critical language testing (see Fulcher & Davidson, 2007,
pp. 21, 61, 138, 142, 150-151, 157).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Douglas (2000); Fulcher and Davidson (2007, pp.16-17, 21, 61, 138, 142, 150-
151, 157); Purpura (2004)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
35. All the following statements are true of washback EXCEPT -----------.
1) it is called impact at the macro level
2) a trichotomy of test washback effects includes process, product, and validity
3) Messick viewed washback as the consequential aspect of construct validity
4) curriculum alignment is one aspect of test washback
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Elana Shohamy (2001, pp. 46-48) elaborates on the effects of testing as follows.
Effects
While there is very little knowledge about intentions behind the introduction of tests, there is a
fast growing body of knowledge and a large number of studies that have examined effects. A
distinction is often made between educational and societal effects. The first refers to the changes
as a result of tests in areas such as curriculum, teaching methods, learning strategies, materials,
41
assessment practices and knowledge tested, while societal effects are concerned with the effects
of tests on aspects such as gate-keeping, ideology, ethicality, morality and fairness.
Messick (1981, 1989, 1996) was the first to draw attention to the topic of impact, claiming
that the consequences of tests should be incorporated into a broader perspective of a unified
concept of validity. He argued that because the social values played a part in the intended and
unintended outcomes of test interpretation and use which derive from the meaning of the test
scores, appraisal of the social consequences of the testing should be subsumed as an aspect of
construct validity (1996, p. 251).
There are a number of issues of concern with regard to the effects of tests. One relates to
the terminology while the other refers to research that examines the types of effect and the
factors that affect it.
Terminology
At least four terms refer to the effect of tests: washback, impact, consequences and effect. All
of these terms are used to refer to phenomena associated with changes in behavior as a result
of a test, and they are often used interchangeably. Effect is used to encompass washback, impact
and consequences. Distinction between washback and impact is made by Hamp-Lyons (1997)
who claims that washback refers to the effect and influence that the introduction of tests has on
Testing
the educational context, while impact is a broader term referring to effects on education and
society. Alderson and Wall (1993) define washback (or 'backwash") as the phenomenon where,
because of the test, teachers and learners do things they would not normally do, hence
encompassing the notion of influence.
Messick (1996, p. 251) further claims that "in the context of unified validity, evidence of
washback is an instance of the consequential aspect of construct validity. Thus, Messick's
concept of unified validity seems to be the bridge between the narrow range of effects included
in washback, and the broader one encompassed by 'impact which includes "... evidence and
rationales for evaluating the intended and unintended consequences of tests ... interpretation
and use ... unfairness in test use, and positive or negative washback effects on teaching and
learning'.
The term “consequences” is generally used by Messick to encompass all three but with a
stronger focus on ideological values. Messick notes that washback is the only form of testing
consequence that needs to be weighed when evaluating validity, and testing consequences is
only one aspect of construct validity leading to the term consequential validity. This includes
evidence and rationales for evaluating the intended and unintended consequences of score
interpretation and use in both the short and the long term "... [and] unfairness in test use, and
positive or negative washback effects on teaching and learning (Messick, 1996, p. 251). An
additional term often used to refer to the connection between learning and instruction is
“systemic validity” (Fredriksen & Collins, 1989) relating to the introduction of tests into the
educational system, along with additional variables which are part of the learning and
instructional system. In such a situation a test becomes part of a dynamic process in which
changes in the educational system take place according to feedback obtained from the test.
Similar terms associated with the impact of tests on learning are measurement driven
instruction, referring to the notion that tests drive learning, and curriculum alignment, implying
that the curriculum is modified according to test results.
In brief, Washback is more frequently used to refer to the effects of tests on teaching and
learning at the classroom level. Impact refers to the effects that a test may have on
individuals, policies, or practices, within the classroom, the school, the educational system,
or the society as a whole. Thus, impact is at a macro level. Many language testers these days
consider washback as a dimension of impact. The effects of testing on teaching and learning
42
have been traditionally associated with test validity (consequential validity) where washback is
considered as only one form of testing consequences that need to be weighted in evaluating
validity.
The Trichotomy Backwash Model

Cheng and Curtis (2004, pp. 12-13) assert that in exploring the mechanism of such an
assessment function, Bailey (1996, pp. 262–264) cited Hughes’ trichotomy (1993) to illustrate
the complex mechanisms through which washback occurs in actual teaching and learning
environments (see Table 1). Hughes (1993) explained his model as follows:
The trichotomy . . . allows us to construct a basic model of backwash. The nature
of a test may first affect the perceptions and attitudes of the participants towards
their teaching and learning tasks. These perceptions and attitudes in turn may affect
what the participants do in carrying out their work (process), including practicing
the kind of items that are to be found in the test, which will affect the learning
outcomes, the product of the work. (p. 2)
Table 1: The Trichotomy Backwash Model
Testing
(a) Participants—students, classroom teachers, administrators, materials developers and
publishers, whose perceptions and attitudes toward their work may be affected by a test
(b) Processes—any actions taken by the participants which may contribute to the process of
learning
(c) Products—what is learned (facts, skills, etc.) and the quality of the learning
Note. Adapted from Hughes, 1993, p. 2; cited in Bailey (1996).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Bachman and Palmer (1996, pp. 29-31); Cheng and Curtis (2004, pp. 12-13);
Shohamy (2001, pp. 46-48)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
36. Which of the following statements is true about the figure below, taken from a G-
Study?
1) It shows a three-facet nested design.
2) It shows a two-facet nested design.
3) It shows a two-facet fully crossed design.
4) It shows a three-facet fully crossed design.
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
A design, which is typical of tests that consist of reading or listening passages followed by
questions, illustrates how some measurement facets can be nested within others. In a reading
test the questions that are associated with a particular passage, or text, can only be used with
that text and no other. That is, specific sets of questions are associated only with particular texts.
43
In this case, we would say that the questions, or items, are nested within texts, which we would
symbolize as ‘i:t’. The sources of variation in a two-facet nested design, symbolized as px(i:t),
are illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Sources of variation in a two-facet nested design, p x (i:t)
In this design, we would need to estimate variance components for (1) persons, (2) texts, (3)
items within texts (i:t), (4) the person-by-text interaction (pt), and (5) the residual – the persons-
by-items within texts interaction (pi:t) and error (e). The total score variance in this design can
be accounted for by these variance components, as shown in Equation 5.17 below:
Equation: σ2x = σ2p + σ2t + σ2i:t + σ2pt + σ2pi:t,e
Testing
In this design, we would also obtain means for each text, which can be interpreted as indicators
of the difficulty of the text as measured by the items.
Two other designs which are elaborated on by Bachman (2004) are given below:
A single-facet crossed design A two-facet fully crossed design

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Bachman (2004, pp. 179-183)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
37. Which of the following statements is true about following ICC (i.e., item characteristic
curve)?
1.0
.9
.8
.7
P(θ) .6
.5
.4
.3
.2
.1
0
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
ABILITY
44
1) It is too difficult for learners with ability levels slightly above and below 1.5.
2) It is too easy for learners with ability levels slightly above and below 1.5.
3) It discriminates ideally between learners with ability levels slightly above and below 1.5.
4) It cannot discriminate at all between learners with ability levels slightly above and below
1.5.
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Baker (2002, p. 11) asserts that one special case of interest is that of an item with perfect
discrimination. The item characteristic curve of such an item is a vertical line at some point
along the ability scale. The Figure above shows such an item. To the left of the vertical line at
θ = 1.5, the probability of correct response is zero; to the right of the line, the probability of
correct response is 1. Thus, the item discriminates perfectly between examinees whose
abilities are above and below an ability score of 1.5. Such items would be ideal for
distinguishing between examinees with abilities just above and below 1.5. However, such an
item makes no distinction among those examinees with abilities above 1.5 nor among those
Testing
examinees with abilities below 1.5.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Baker (2001, p. 11)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
38. Which of the following are generally considered potential problems of performance
assessment?
1) Face validity and construct underrepresentation
2) Face validity and construct-irrelevant variance
3) Reliability and construct-irrelevant variance
4) Reliability and construct underrepresentation
Answer: 3 and 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Norris et al. (1998, pp. 19-21) states the following problems with performance assessment:
1. Considerable increased costs in:
a. Developing the tests
b. Administering the tests
c. Training teachers and raters
d. Transporting tests (for large-scale assessments)
e. Conducting extensive rating sessions
f. Reporting scores
g. Educating the public education about the procedures
h. Many other factors not be immediately evident
2. Increased logistical problems of:

a. Dealing with large amounts of collected material
b. Providing special equipment
c. Storing and transporting the tests
d. Increasing time commitments
e. Providing test security
45
3. Reliability may be problematic because it depends on:

a. Rater consistency
b. Task-specific variance
c. A limited number of observations
d. Subjectivity in the scoring process
4. Validity of performance tests is subject to the following threats:

a. Construct underrepresentation – In language testing terms, this means the problem of
generalizing from one or a few observations of language behavior to other real-life
instances
b. Construct-irrelevant variance (i.e., performance attributes that have little to do with
language ability per se)
c. Inadequate content coverage
d. Lack of construct generalizability
e. Sensitivity of performance tests to test method, task type, and scoring criteria
considerations especially in terms of their validity for measuring higher-order thinking
skills
f. Differing views on what constitutes evidence for validity (including the perspectives of
Testing
and interactions between teachers, teacher trainers, psychometricians, students, the
general public, and any other stakeholders in the assessment process)
5. Test security may be problematic because of:

a. The small number of test items which endangers test security and leads to the need for
ongoing item development
b. The difficulty of creating new items year after year
c. Potential effects of "teaching to the test"
6. Political considerations that must be taken into account include the facts that:
a. It may prove difficult to marshal support for implementation of new alternative
procedures when they are compared to traditional, inexpensive, easy-to-administer,
norm-referenced tests
b. Increased costs will negatively affect public acceptance
c. Decisions may have to be defended to multiple stake holders
d. Safety, ethics, and legal defensibility of performance tests could become problematic
e. The equivalence of the various testing formats and tasks may be difficult to create and
defend
f. Fairness may be an issue because tasks lack relevancy or because of offensiveness or
bias for certain populations
7. Language performance testing, in particular, may prove problematic because:

a. In trying to create reliable procedures, it may be difficult to:
i. Create the descriptors of language behaviors which must serve as the criteria for
assessment
ii. Judge real-time language performance because it moves quickly
iii. Deal with differences between level descriptors and actual rater decisions
iv. Deal with discrepancies between level descriptors and actual second language
performance
v. Deal with excessive influence of accuracy on ratings
vi. Decide who is an expert and who should rate
46
b. In trying to create valid procedures, it may be difficult to:

i. Account for the role of non-linguistic factors
ii. Deal with the fact that native-speaker norms cannot be taken to be representative
of the highest levels of language performance
iii. Implement language performance tests in light of the general lack of necessary
theoretical background
iv. Determine what constitutes authentic measurement, and for whom? (contextual
bias)
v. Assess receptive skills because they can only be observed indirectly
vi. Decide whether to use live testing or other methods
vii. Understand the test situation effect and interviewer effect
viii. Use native speakers as models or as experts
For items on “performance assessment, refer to Year 94, Item 40; and Year 97, item 26.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Norris et al. (1998, pp. 19-21)
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Testing
39. Which of the following statements about Dynamic Assessment (DA) is FALSE?
1) Interactionist DA uses standardized administration procedures and forms of assistance.
2) In the cake format of DA, mediation is usually offered whenever problems arise.
3) Interventionist DA remains closer to certain forms of static assessment than interactionist
DA.
4) The sandwich format of DA is more in line with traditional experimental research designs
than the cake format.
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Lantolf and Poehner (2004) elaborate on Dynamic Assessment and its types. The following is
a summary of their article:
Dynamic assessment integrates assessment and instruction into a seamless, unified activity
aimed at promoting learner development through appropriate forms of mediation that are
sensitive to the individual’s (or in some cases a group’s) current abilities. In essence, DA is a
procedure for simultaneously assessing and promoting development that takes account of the
individual’s (or group’s) zone of proximal development (ZPD). DA focuses ‘on modifiability
and on producing suggestions for interventions that appear successful in facilitating improved
learner performance’ (Lidz, 1991, p. 6).
Interventionist vs. Interactionist Approaches to DA

In this section we elaborate on the differences between the two primary approaches to DA –
interventionist and interactionist. In the interactionist approach to DA, assistance emerges
from the interaction between the examiner and the learner, and is therefore highly sensitive to
the learner’s ZPD. In the interventionist approach to DA, forms of assistance are standardized,
therefore emphasizing the psychometric properties of the assessment procedure. Interventionist
DA is concerned with quantifying, as an ‘index of speed of learning’ (Brown & Ferrara, 1985,
p. 300), the amount of help required for a learner to quickly and efficiently reach a pre-specified
end point. Interactionist DA, on the other hand, focuses on the development of an individual
learner or even a group of learners, regardless of the effort required and without concern for a
47
predetermined endpoint. Using the train metaphor proposed by Elkonin (1998, p. 300), we
might argue that those interested in speed and efficiency of learning, (i.e., interventionist DA),
focus on how quickly a train moves toward the final station along a set of tracks. Interactionist
DA, following Vygotsky more closely, is not as interested in the speed of the train along the
already constructed track as with helping the person lay down new track leading toward a
station that is potentially always relocating (see Newman & Holzman, 1993, on development
as creativity and transformation).
Since the interventionist approach to DA uses forms of assistance that are standardized,
and in turn emphasizes the psychometric properties of the assessment procedure, it remains
closer to certain forms of static assessment.
1. Interventionist DA – ‘sandwich’ format

Two formats exist within interventionist DA, referred to by Sternberg and Grigorenko (2002)
as the ‘sandwich’ and the ‘cake’ approaches. The ‘sandwich’ approach, pioneered in large part
by Milton Budoff and associates (Budoff & Friedman, 1964; Budoff, 1968; Corman & Budoff,
1973), primarily relies on a pretest-intervention/training-posttest format administered in
either an individual or group setting, and reminiscent of traditional experimental research
designs. Budoff reports the performance of examinees as a pre-training score, post-training
Testing
score and post-training score adjusted for pretest level. These are then used to group learners as
high scorers (i.e., those with high pre-training scores, and who therefore do not manifest much
improvement as a result of training), gainers (i.e., those whose scores showed marked
improvement as result of training), and non-gainers (i.e., those who performed poorly on the
pretest and did not profit from instruction).
2. Interventionist DA – ‘cake’ format

In the cake format, the examinee is provided with mediation drawn from a standardized menu
of hints, ranging from implicit to explicit, during the administration of the assessment itself.
Thus, the ‘cake’ metaphor alludes to the layering of test items and hints in such a way that a
menu of hints can be accessed, as required, for each question or problem before moving on to
the next item on the test.
34; Year 96, Item 34; and Year 97, Item 40..
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Lantolf and Poehner (2004)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
40. From Widdowson’s perspective, authenticity -----------.

1) can be distinguished from genuineness
2) is either interactional or situational
3) is the same as consequential validity
4) should lead to positive washback
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Douglas (2014, pp. 25-26) states that Widdowson (1979) makes a distinction between
genuineness and authenticity. The notion of genuineness is a property of a spoken or written
text and results from the text having been produced in an actual communicative situation.
48
So, a restaurant menu would be a genuine text, having been produced by the restaurateur for
the use of hungry diners. The diners would no doubt view the menu as genuine (unless they
suspected they were being duped by being given a fake one!) and in their response to it would
also consider it authentic, authenticity being a quality associated with appropriate response to
piece of communication (Widdowson, 1979).
The diners would scan the menu for something that would satisfy their appetites and order
a pleasant meal. Thus, in the restaurant, the menu would be both genuine and authentic. The
contextual features – setting (the restaurant), participants (server, diners), ends (ordering a
meal), act sequence (first order drinks, then an appetizer, a main course, and dessert), key
(transactional, direct), instrumentalities (face-to-face, standard Japanese), norms of interaction
(customer – serving staff norms), and genre (‘menu’) – would all contribute to the authenticity
of the interaction.
We language teachers, however, might take the menu out of the restaurant for use in our
language classroom as a piece of realia for our students to practice ordering food in Japanese.
It would still be a genuine menu, but for our students, would their response to it be authentic?
Probably not, since they would not be in a restaurant, there would be no hungry diners or
servers, no real food to order. From the students’ point of view, the setting is a classroom, the
participants are a teacher and learners, and the ends involve language learning. So, genuineness
Testing
travels well, but authenticity is more difficult to achieve. Simply using genuine texts in teaching
or testing does not guarantee that they will be used in an authentic way by learners or test takers.
For more explanation on Authenticity Debate, please refer to Year 97, Item 36.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Douglas (2014, pp. 25-26)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
41. Which of the following statistical analyses are suitable for criterion referenced testing?
1) Criterion-related validity indices
2) Item facility indices
3) Threshold loss agreement statistics
4) Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Criterion-related Validity (also called external validity, empirical validity, statistical validity
or pragmatic validity)
The criterion-related validity of a test is perhaps the most common form of test validation. This
method is used to compare a test to some criterion. The criterion can be another test or even
some type of outcome. Frequently the criterion is another test measuring close to the same thing
as the test being evaluated is purported to measure. The other test already has accepted
psychometric properties. The correlation between the scores of the two tests in a relevant
sample serves as the validity coefficient. Moreover, the criterion can exist in the past, or the
present, or the future. Depending upon the criterion’s temporal location with respect to the test
under consideration, criterion-related validity comes in three subtypes:
1. Postdictive Criterion-related Validity. For this type of validity, the criterion is in the
past. That is, the criterion (e.g., another test) was administered in the past. Here's an
example: Suppose a new IQ test is developed. Suppose further that the developer gives
the test to subjects who had, one year previously, been tested with the WAIS-III.
Suppose yet further that the developer of the new test calculates the correlation of the
49
scores of the new test with those of the WAIS-III. The correlation coefficient would
represent the postdictive validity coefficient.
2. Concurrent Criterion-related Validity. For this type, the criterion is in the present.
When one assesses the concurrent validity of a test, one is administering the test along
with the criterion -- within the same general time frame. Concurrent validity is the most
frequently used and cited type of validity.
3. Predictive Criterion-related Validity. The criterion for this type is located in the
future. Again, the criterion could be another test. For example, the Baley Scales of Infant
Development have been shown to have poor predictive validity because they cannot
predict with any kind of acceptable accuracy a child's future IQ. Frequently the criterion
for this type of validity is some sort of outcome. An example of this might be giving an
IQ test to a child, then years later enquiring about the now adult's income. A study would
involve a sample of children (who later become adults). The correlation between
childhood IQ and adult income would serve as the predictive validity coefficient.
Predictive validity Administer test
Concurrent validity Measure the criterion Measure the criterion
Testing
Administer test
Postdictive validity Measure the criterion Administer test
Past Present Future
Figure 1: Criterion-related indices
Item facility
Item facility (IF) (also called item difficulty or item easiness) is a statistical index used to
examine the percentage of students who correctly answer a given item. To calculate the IF
index, add up the number of students who correctly answered a particular item, and divide that
sum by the total number of students who took the test. As a formula, it looks like this:
𝑁𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑡
IF =
𝑁𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙
where
Ncorrect= number of students answering correctly
Ntotal= number of students taking the test
Threshold Loss Agreement

J. D. Brown (2005, pp. 200-205) asserts that Threshold loss agreement approaches are statistical
procedures used for the consistency of decisions in Criterion-referenced testing. Two of the
most well-known statistics in this regard are the agreement coefficient (Subkoviak, 1980) and
the kappa coefficient (Cohen, 1960). Both of these coefficients measure the consistency of
master/non-master classifications.
Spearman Rank-Order Correlation Coefficient

The Spearman rank-order correlation or Spearman’s rho (r) is a measure of association between
two ordinal variables.
50
For similar items on “CRT”, “NRT”, “Domain-referenced testing”, refer to Year 91, Item 41;
Year 92, Items 48 and 52; Year 93, Item 54; Year 94, Item 31; Year 96, Items 21, 38, 39, and
40; and Year 97, Items 25, 27, and 33.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: J. D. Brown (2005, pp. 66-68, 200-205); Richards and Schmidt (2010, p. 139);
Mousavi (2012, pp. 183-184, 395-396, 588-589, 826-827)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
42. Which of the following statements about DIF/bias is FALSE?

1) Bias is a factor which makes a unidimensional test multidimensional.
2) Bias indicates DIF, but the reverse is not necessarily true.
3) A completely biased test is more difficult to detect through DIF analyses than one with a
few biased items.
4) Using an external criterion, such as another test, is often considered helpful in identifying
biased items.
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Testing
Explanation:
McNamara and Roever (2006, pp. 80-85) elaborate on bias and DIF as follows.
Bias
The use of the term “bias” in assessment research fundamentally follows its popular usage,
which conveys a skewed and unfair inclination toward one side (group, population) to the
detriment of another. The notion of bias is directly tied to fairness, in popular usage as well as
assessment: A biased judgment unduly takes into account factors other than those that should
be informing it.
For assessment, bias can be seen in traditional validity terms as construct-irrelevant
variance that distorts the test results and therefore makes conclusions based on scores less valid.
Specifically, a test or an item is biased if test takers of equal ability but from different groups
score differently on the item depending on their group membership (Angoff, 1993). In this case,
group membership introduces systematic construct-irrelevant variance, which has a consistent
effect on scores. Another way to look at this is to consider bias a factor that makes a
unidimensional test multidimensional: The test measures something in addition to what it is
intended to measure, and the result is a confound of two measurements.
Whereas any construct-irrelevant variance is harmful to valid interpretations, bias
systematically harms one group (Shepard, Camilli, & Averill, 1981) by inflating one group’s
scores and depressing the other group’s scores. In a broader sense, biased tests harm all
stakeholders because students might get exempted from language programs although they
would benefit from them, others do not get admitted to a program in which they would excel,
universities or employers reject perfectly qualified applicants and accept less qualified ones,
and society is deprived of potentially excellent doctors, lawyers, language teachers, or
electricians and must make do with mediocre ones.
Differential Item Functioning

Bias is a general description of a situation in which construct-irrelevant group characteristics
influence scores, but because of its semantic association with societal issues like discrimination,
another term was coined for more technical analyses of test items: differential item functioning
(DIF). DIF identifies test items that function differently for two groups of test takers, without
51
the discriminatory overtones of the term bias. Angoff (1993) admitted that there is the
temptation to use the term bias because it is shorter and less cumbersome than the somewhat
unwieldy term differential item functioning, but he argued for keeping the two separate and
using DIF for nonjudgmental analyses of score differences between groups and using bias to
discuss the larger social issues caused by DIF.
Differential item functioning is a necessary but not sufficient condition for bias because a
test item that functions differently for two groups might do so because it advantages one group
in a construct-irrelevant way, but there might also be legitimate reasons for differential
functioning. For example, cognates of target language vocabulary in the L1 of some test takers
might make an item easier for that group, but the content tested might still be completely
legitimate and construct-relevant, and their L1 knowledge would confer an advantage on these
test takers in the exact same way in real-world language use situations. Thus, test makers could
well decide to retain such an item, arguing that it measures a necessary part of the construct and
that group differences are real ability differences in terms of the construct.
Another case in which DIF does not constitute bias is where items function differently for
two groups of test takers simply because the two groups differ in their ability (e.g., low
proficiency and high-proficiency English as a second language [ESL] students). These groups
would be expected to score differently on most items of an ESL test. In fact, if they do not,
Testing
something is wrong with the test! Thus, although items will function differently depending on
whether a test taker is in the low proficiency or high-proficiency group, it would not make sense
to say that the test is biased toward the high-proficiency group.
However, the situation is usually more complicated because test-taker ability is not known
in advance. What if the low proficiency test takers are mostly international students from
Europe and the high-proficiency test takers are mostly international students from Asia? A DIF
analysis would then seem to show that the test is biased toward test takers of Asian background.
Indeed, a native-country effect is a nondesirable source of variance in an ESL proficiency test,
but in this case native country is simply confounded with proficiency. This example already
highlights one of the greater challenges of DIF and bias analysis: In practice, it can be very
difficult to determine the source of DIF, and only if that determination is made, can we consider
an item or a whole test biased.
The above examples show how DIF analysis is usually a first step in a larger bias
analysis. An item that does not show DIF is not biased, whereas an item that shows DIF needs
to be investigated further to uncover the reasons for its differential functioning. Most DIF
analyses compute DIF for a potentially disadvantaged group (also known as the focal group)
compared to the potentially advantaged group (also known as the reference group). DIF
analyses outside language testing often investigate DIF for minority groups (Blacks vs. Whites)
or gender (women vs. men), whereas in language testing, group membership tends to be
determined by native language and there is less a priori hypothesizing about likely
disadvantages.
Although it is desirable that illegitimate DIF be minimized to ensure precise measurement,
a single differentially functioning item on a multi-item test is not likely to make the entire test
unfair. Only when the effect of a number of DIF items accumulates can this lead to a biased
test. However, if an individual test taker’s score is right at the cut score level, illegitimate DIF
on a small number of items can unfairly advantage or disadvantage that test taker. It is important
to note that DIF can work in both directions, so, in practice, DIF favoring the reference group
is often balanced out by DIF favoring the focal group, but, of course, there is no guarantee that
this will happen and an individual test form might be strongly biased toward one or the other
group.
52
For Choices (3) and (4), refer to Year 91, Item 32.
For similar items on “bias”, refer to Year 91, Item 32; Year 92, Item 53, Year 93, Items 51 and
52; Year 97, Item 21.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: McNamara and Roever (2006, pp. 80-85, 109)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
43. Which of the following statements about psychometrics is FALSE?

1) Psychometric testing assumes that intelligence is innate and fixed, similar to other
inherited characteristics.
2) Psychometric testing is concerned with measuring best performance as opposed to typical
performance.
3) Psychometric testing is more easily adaptable to accountability and certification purposes
than edumetrics.
4) Psychometric testing assumes unidimensionality, meaning that the items in a test should
be measuring a single underlying attribute.
Testing
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Gipps (1994, p. 5) states that the science of psychometrics developed from work on intelligence
and intelligence testing. The underlying notion was that intelligence was innate and fixed in
the way that other inherited characteristics such as skin color are.
With regard to Choice (2), Gipps (1994, pp. 8-9) asserts that educational assessment looks
for best performance. Looking for best rather than typical performance (the fourth principle
on Wood’s list) relates to Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development. In educational assessment
tester and pupil would collaborate to produce the best performance of which the pupil is
capable, given help from an adult, rather than withholding such help to produce typical
performance. Thus, psychometric testing is not concerned with measuring the best
performance.
Fitness for Purpose

Three main purposes are implied for assessment by Gipps (1994): (1) assessment for
accountability, (2) assessment for certification, and (3) assessment to enhance learning. These
three purposes can be put on a line as below:
Assessment for Assessment for Assessment to

accountability certification enhance learning
Choice (3) has a problem. Although psychometrics is concerned with accountability purposes,
certification is in the middle of the cline.
Thus, the first question to be asked then when considering the form of assessment to be
used is ‘what is the assessment for?’ For example assessment to support learning, offering
detailed feedback to the teacher and pupil, is necessarily different from assessment for
monitoring or accountability purposes (for a start it is much more detailed). We must first ask
the question ‘assessment for what?’ and then design the assessment program to fit.
53
Paradigms
Gipps (1994, pp. 1-17) identifies two major paradigms in testing and assessment: (1) the
psychometric paradigm, and (2) the edumetric paradigm.
With regard to Choice (3), she indicates that a feature of psychometrics is the interpretation
of scores in relation to norms. That is, psychometrics makes use of norm-referenced testing in
the interpretation of scores. In norm-referenced testing all scores all compared with the mean
score (i.e. the typical performance). Edumetrics, by contrast, makes use of criterion-referenced
testing in the interpretation of scores. In this kind of testing, scores are not interpreted in relation
to the typical performance. Rather they are interpreted in relation to a criterion already set.
Thus, edumetrics is concerned with the best performance. Related to edumetrics is Dynamic
Assessment in which best performance is of interest.
Unidimensionality
As for Choice (4), Gipps (1994, p. 6) states that one of the assumptions of psychometric testing
is that of unidimensionality which relates to the conceptualization of constructs and impacts
on the techniques used for analyzing test items. The assumption (within psychometric theory)
is that the items in a test should be measuring a single underlying attribute.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Testing
 See also: Gipps (1994, pp. 1-17)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
44. Which of the following statements about the current popular definitions of validity is
FALSE?
1) Validity is an evaluative judgment.
2) Validity is a matter of degree.
3) Validity is a quality of the test scores.
4) Validity is specific to a particular use/interpretation.
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Ass for Choices (1) and (2), Bachman (1990, p. 236) quotes Messick (1988) and states that
Messick describes validity as ‘an integrated evaluative judgment of the degree to which
empirical evidence and theoretical rationales support the adequacy and appropriateness of
inferences and actions based on test scores’ (p. 13). Hence, validity is an evaluative judgment,
and a matter of degree.
With regard to Choice (3), Bachman (1990, p. 236) asserts that the primary concern in test
development and use is demonstrating not only that test scores are reliable, but that the
interpretations and uses we make of test scores are valid. Thus, he states that validity is a
quality of test interpretations and uses, not test scores.
Regarding Choice (4), Bachman (1990, p. 242) states that Messick sees validity as a
progressive matrix, with construct validity an essential component in each cell. Thus, for
justifying a particular interpretation of a test score, we must gather evidence for construct
validity and consider the value implications of this interpretation. If we wish to use this test
score for a particular purpose, we must justify this by considering not only construct validity
and value implications, but also the relevance or utility of the particular use and the social
consequences of using the test score in this particular way.
54
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Bachman (1990, pp. 236, 242)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
45. In multitrait-multimethod design, -----------.

1) the notion of confirmatory factor analysis is rejected
2) trait refers to content validity of a test
3) variance is regarded as an irrelevant variable
4) patterns of correlational convergence and divergence can be studied
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The Multitrait-Multimethod (MTMM) Design
The classic approach to designing correlational studies for construct validation is the multitrait-
Testing
multimethod (MTMM) matrix, described by Campbell and Fiske (1959). In this approach, each
measure is considered to be a combination of trait and method, and tests are included in the
design so as to combine multiple traits with multiple methods. One advantage of the MTMM
design is that it permits the investigator to examine patterns of both convergence and
discrimination (or divergence) among correlations. Convergence is essentially what has
been referred to above (pp. 248-50) as concurrent criterion relatedness, and is the extent to
which different measures of the same trait tend to agree, or converge. Discrimination (or
divergence) is the extent to which measures of different traits, using either the same or different
test methods, tend to produce different results. Convergence would be indicated by high positive
correlations between the different measures of the same traits (for textual competence, the tests
of cohesion and organization, and for sociolinguistic competence, the tests of register and
naturalness). Discrimination, on the other hand, would be indicated by low or zero correlations
between measures of different traits using different test methods (for example, between a
writing test of organization and a multiple-choice test of naturalness). Discrimination would
also be demonstrated if tests of different traits using the same test method (for example, a
multiple-choice test of cohesion and a multiple-choice test of naturalness) were not correlated
with each other.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Bachman (1990, p. 263)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
55
Research (Questions 46 – 60)
46. In a study, a researcher investigated the university-based immigration counseling to

both native speakers and non-native speakers. She was able to obtain the cooperation
of the immigration counselor and the students to videotape the session. The researcher
found out differences between the language used by the counselor to the native speakers
and to the non-native speakers.
The study was designed as ----------- research.
1) survey
2) pretest-posttest study
3) ex post facto
4) case study
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Survey research (also called descriptive research) uses instruments such as questionnaires
and interviews to gather information from groups of individuals. Surveys permit the researcher
to summarize the characteristics of different groups or to measure their attitudes and opinions
toward some issue (Ary et al., 2014, p. 29).
Experimental Research: Researchers study variables, which are characteristics that take
on different values across people or things. Experimental research involves a study of the effect
of the systematic manipulation of an independent variable on a dependent variable. In such
studies, usually a pretest is administered, then the treatment is provided and finally a post-test
Research
is administered to examine the effect of the treatment/manipulation of the independent variable
(Ary et al., 2014, pp. 28-29).
Ex post facto research is similar to an experiment, except the researcher does not
manipulate the independent variable, which has already occurred in the natural course of
events. The researcher simply compares groups differing on the preexisting independent
variable to determine any relationship to the dependent variable (Ary et al., 2014, p. 29).
Native speakers and non-native speakers are naturally-occurring groups and the
researcher had nothing to do with their categorizing into native and non-native groups. Thus, it
is an ex post facto research.
A case study is a type of ethnographic research study that focuses on a single unit, such as
one individual, one group, one organization, or one program. The goal is to arrive at a detailed
description and understanding of the entity (the “case”) (Ary et al., 2014, p. 32)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 28-29, 32)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
47. In a study on the influence of task structure on fluency, the researcher used a narrative
retelling task with different degrees of task structure with a group of young adults low-
intermediate students. He found out that the more structured task generated more
fluent language.
The study was designed as -----------research.
1) longitudinal study
2) quasi-experimental
3) one-shot case study
4) true experimental
56
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Longitudinal vs. Cross-sectional
A longitudinal study gather information at different points in time in order to study the changes
over extended periods of time. A cross-sectional research studies a cross section (sample) of
a population at a single point in time (Ary et al., 2014, pp. 403-404).
Classifying Experimental Designs

Experimental designs may also be classified according to how well they provide control of the
threats to internal validity: preexperimental, true experimental, and quasi-experimental designs.
Preexperimental designs do not have random assignment of subjects to groups or other
strategies to control extraneous variables.
True experimental designs (also called randomized designs) use randomization and provide
maximum control of extraneous variables.
Quasi-experimental designs lack randomization but employ other strategies to provide some
control over extraneous variables. They are used, for instance, when intact classrooms are used
as the experimental and control groups. Thus, true experimental designs have the greatest
internal validity, quasi-experimental designs have somewhat less internal validity, and the
preexperimental designs have the least internal validity (Ary et al., 2014, p. 325).
Quasi-Experimental Designs
We know that true experimental designs, all of which require random assignment of subjects.
Research
In many situations in educational research, however, it is not possible to randomly assign
subjects to treatment groups. Neither the school system nor the parents would want a researcher
to decide to which classrooms students were assigned. In this case, researchers turn to quasi-
experiments in which random assignment to treatment groups is not used. Quasi-experimental
designs are similar to randomized experimental designs in that they involve manipulation of an
independent variable but differ in that subjects are not randomly assigned to treatment groups.
(Ary et al., 2014, p. 339).
One-Shot Case-Study Design

One-Shot Case-Study Design (also called the one-group posttest-only design, the one-shot case-
study design) has only one group, a treatment, and a posttest. Because there is only one group,
there is no random assignment. Thus, in the one-shot case study, the researcher administers a
treatment and then a posttest to determine the effect of the treatment (Neuman, 2014, p. 293).
Since in the scenario above, the subjects are not randomly assigned into the treatment
groups, and that there is no pre-test to control pre-existing differences, the study is a one-shot
case-study.
Concluding remarks
Since this study involves the use of “one group of students” (i.e. a group of young adults low-
intermediate students), and since the researcher administers only a posttest, the design used is
a “One-Shot Case-Study Design”.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 325, 339, 403-404); Neuman (2014, p. 293); Nunan and
Bailey (2009, p. 90)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
57
48. Chaudron (1986) shows what role measurement systems or observational procedures
can play in ensuring the overall validity of classroom research through what is called
“instrument validity”. What kind of instrument validation is accomplished in the
following study? Frohlich, Spada & Allen (1985) attempted to establish a relationship
between programmatically defined degrees of communicative language teaching and
the combined values from several independent dimensions of classroom events on their
observational scheme, COLT.
1) External validation
2) Criterion-related validation
3) Construct validation
4) Treatment validation
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The process of research inherently involves a dynamic validation, application, and reevaluation
of constructs through empirical testing and theoretical restructuring (Chaudron, 1986a).
Thus, Chaudron (1988) asserts that validity, which has many aspects but refers in essence
to the determination of the "truth" of an analysis or theory, is a fundamental goal in researchers'
efforts to understand and predict language learning and teaching outcomes. Hence, he indicates
that observational analyses of classroom interaction should be validated and that the validation
of claims about instructional variables (such as the effectiveness of programs, teaching
methods, syllabus changes, materials, rule presentations, and so on) depends on the application
of valid observational analyses. Therefore, if we do not have a valid observation, we cannot
Research
make valid claims and theories.
In this regard, Chaudron (1988) identifies three different approaches to validation of
instructional research by means of observation.
Three Approaches to Validation Using Observation

Chaudron (1988) states that several classroom researchers employing observational schemes
have attempted validations of their systems in different ways. In a recent review of L1
classroom observation systems, Hoge (1985) showed that many studies demonstrated low
validity. He defined three types of validity: (1) construct validity, (2) criterion-related validity,
and (3) treatment validity. In the following, the application of each of these in L2 classroom
research will be illustrated.
The most typical method adopted for construct validation is to correlate overall scores
on some classroom behaviors with separate scores of these behaviors obtained with parallel
measures (as in Campbell & Fiske's 1959 classic multitrait-multimethod approach, where
multiple traits are assessed each by multiple methods).
A form of criterion-related validation was performed by Frohlich, Spada, & Allen
(1984) when they attempted to establish a relationship between programmatically defined
degrees of communicative language teaching, and the combined values from several
independent dimensions of classroom events (on their Communicative Orientation of Language
Teaching – COLT – scheme). This commendable efforts is unfortunately rare in the L2 research
literature. Spada (1987), Allen, Carroll, Burtis & Gaudino (1987), and Lightbown and Spada
(1987) have applied this COLT scheme in further efforts to relate observed classroom processes
with learning progress in both English and French as a second language (measured by pre- to
post-test improvements on various measures). The use of the instrument in these studies
resembles that of "treatment" validation (to be described later in this section), with the limitation
being that the researchers did not have control over the supposed implementation of
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programmatic or methodological innovations. Their results have tended more to demonstrate

program-or method-internal variability on the observational categories, so that the investigators
are led to explore only specific relationships between individual category differences among
classrooms and student learning.
While these correlations are a fruitful source of new hypotheses, they constitute neither
further validation of the instruments, nor a direct validation of the independent effects of
instruction. Spada (1987) and Allen, et al. (1987) are careful to demonstrate, in fact, the extent
to which certain of the quantitative analyses derived from the COLT tend to obscure other
critical qualitative features of their observed classes (such as the nature of interactive discourse,
within a category such as "formal" focus), which interact with the categorial observations. Such
findings lead one at first to seek refinement or addition of definitions of certain categories (such
as negotiation and concreteness of feedback) that are theoretically or empirically justified as
significant to instruction. Further, researchers would prefer to control such important variables
more carefully when implementing studies of instructional variables. Both refinement and
increased control are part of the continual process of evolution in classroom research referred
to in Chaudron (1986a).
Treatment validity refers to the determination of whether observational measures are
sensitive to direct intervention on the points being observed. It has too rarely been instituted in
L2 classroom research. This approach fits within formative (process-oriented) evaluation
procedures, as discussed by Long (1984), where continued observation of classroom processes
follows the implementation of new curriculum, teaching approaches, or materials. The lack of
such research has of course limited the (internal) validity of many L2 educational comparisons,
because the demonstration of delivery of the treatment was neglected (see Long, 1984 for
further arguments), and only product outcomes were evaluated. Nevertheless, one recent
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methodology comparison experiment (Bejarano 1987}, and one curriculum innovation project
(Rea, 1987) illustrate the potential as well as some of the difficulties of such a design. In these
studies, the classroom processes intended by the new curriculum or predicted by the
experimental methodology were documented using an observation schedule.
To conclude, since the criterion/criteria are defined by the program, and we compare our
observations with the criteria already defined by the program, the validation type is the
criterion-related validation.
Note: Instrument validity is a form of internal validity in which the instrument of data
collection should be validated. Chaudron identifies measurements systems and observational
procedures as the instruments of data collection. Measurement systems are tools of data
collection such as tests. Observational procedures are also methods/instruments of data
collection by observation.
For items related to “construct validity” and “Multitrait-multimethod Matrix”, refer to Year
91, Items 31, 33, 44, 45, and 48; Year 92, Items 55, and 56; Year 93, Item 50; Year 94, Item
35; Year 96, Items 30, 31, and 60; and Year 97, Item 37.
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 See also: Chaudron (1988)
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49. How is variation across individuals dealt with in quantitative research data collection
and analysis?
1) researcher sensitivity
2) probability sampling and the normal curve
3) random sampling and assignment
4) normality of the data
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Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Random Selection and Random Assignment
It is very important to understand the difference between random selection and random
assignment. In fact, randomization refers to both random selection (also known as random
sampling) of subjects from a population and random assignment of subjects into the treatment
groups. The purpose of random selection is to allow you to make generalizations from a sample
to a population.
The generally understood meaning of the word random is “without purpose or by accident.”
However, random sampling is purposeful and methodical. It is apparent that a sample selected
randomly is not subject to the biases of the researcher. Rather, researchers commit themselves
to selecting a sample in such a way that their biases are not permitted to operate; chance alone
determines which elements in the population will be in the sample. They are pledging to avoid
a deliberate selection of subjects who will confirm the hypothesis. You would expect a random
sample to be representative of the target population sampled. However, a random selection,
especially with small samples, does not absolutely guarantee a sample that will represent the
population well. Random selection does guarantee that any differences between the sample and
the parent population are only a function of chance and not a result of the researcher’s bias.
The differences between random samples and their parent population are not systematic. For
example, the mean reading achievement of a random sample of sixth-graders may be higher
than the mean reading achievement of the target population, but it is equally likely that the mean
for the sample will be lower than the mean for the target population. In other words, with
random sampling the sampling errors are just as likely to be negative as they are to be positive.
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Thus, variation across individuals is dealt with through random selection and random
assignment. Hence, we can claim that the variation is not systematic and is a function of chance
alone, and that the findings from the sample can be generalized to the parent population.
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50. Qualitative researchers should collect data in as many contexts and situations as
possible to make certain that the picture provided in the research is as full and complete
as possible. Fraenkel and Wallen (2003) suggested the above-mentioned technique to
enhance ----------- of research.
1) credibility
2) transferability
3) confirmability
4) dependability
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Credibility, Transferability, Confirmability, and Dependability
In analyzing qualitative data, researchers must pay attention to three concerns that arise as part
of the research: credibility, transferability and dependability.
In terms of credibility, because qualitative research can be based on the assumption of
multiple, constructed realities, it may be more important for qualitative researchers to
demonstrate that their findings are credible to their research population. Fraenkel and Wallen
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(2003) suggested several techniques to enhance credibility, including continuing the data
collection over a long enough period of time to ensure that the participants have become used
to the researcher and are behaving naturally. They also suggested collecting data in as many
contexts and situations as possible to make certain that the picture provided in the research is
as full and complete as it can be.
For transferability in qualitative research, the research context is seen as integral.
Although qualitative research findings are rarely directly transferable from one context to
another, the extent to which findings may be transferred depends on the similarity of the
context. Important for determining similarity of context is the method of reporting known as
"thick description," which refers to the process of using multiple perspectives to explain the
insights gleaned from a study, and taking into account the actors' interpretations of their actions
and the speakers' interpretations of their speech. Davis (1995) distinguished three essential
components of thick description:
• Particular description: Representative examples from the data.
• General description: Information about the patterns in the data.
• Interpretive commentary: Explanation of the phenomena researched and interpretation of
the meaning of the findings with respect to previous research.
The idea behind thick description is that if researchers report their findings with sufficient
detail for readers to understand the characteristics of the research context and participants, the
audience will be able to compare the research situation with their own and thus determine which
findings may be appropriately transferred to their setting. Other steps can be taken to augment
the transferability of research.
For confirmability, researchers are required to make available full details of the data on
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which they are basing their claims or interpretations. This is similar to the concept of
replicability in quantitative research, with the point being that another researcher should be able
to examine the data and confirm, modify, or reject the first researcher's interpretations.
For dependability, researchers aim to fully characterize the research context and the
relationships among the participants. To enhance dependability, researchers may ask the
participants themselves to review the patterns in the data. Electronically recorded data can help
to recreate the data collection context and allow the researcher to make use of all interpretive
cues in order to draw inferences and evaluate the dependability of the inferences that have been
drawn. Recordings can also help research participants and other researchers working in similar
contexts to assess whether dependable inferences have been derived from the data.
Triangulation involves using multiple research techniques and multiple sources of data in
order to explore the issues from all feasible perspectives. Using the technique of triangulation
can aid in credibility, transferability confirmability and dependability.
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 See also: Mackey and Gass (2016, pp. 231-232)
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51. Which of the following measures of inter-rater reliability includes more detail on
agreement and disagreement?
1) Cohen’s Kappa
2) Spearman rank order correlation
3) Percentage agreement
4) Pearson correlation
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Mackey and Gass (2016, pp. 139-140) identify some statistical procedures for calculating inter-
rater reliability: (1) Simple Percentage Agreement, (2) Cohen’s Kappa, (3) Pearson’s Product
Moment, and (4) Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficients.
1. Simple Percentage Agreement

Although there are many ways of calculating inter-rater reliability, one of the easiest ways is
through a simple percentage. This is the ratio of all coding agreements over the total number of
coding decisions made by the coders. For example, in Mackey and Oliver's (2002) study of
children's ESL development, both researchers and one research assistant coded all of the data.
This process yielded an inter-rater reliability percentage of 98.89%, meaning that there was
disagreement over only 1.11% of the data. Simple percentages such as these are easy to
calculate and are appropriate for continuous data (i.e., data for which the units can theoretically
have any value in their possible range, limited in precision only by our ability to measure
them—as opposed to discrete data, whose units might, for example, be limited to integer
values). Their drawback is that they have a tendency to ignore the possibility that some of the
agreement may have occurred by chance. To correct for this, another calculation is commonly
employed—Cohen's kappa (Cohen, 1960).
2. Cohen's Kappa
This statistic represents the average rate of agreement for an entire set of scores, accounting for
the frequency of both agreements and disagreements by category. In a dichotomous coding
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scheme (e.g., coding forms as target-like or nontarget-like), Cohen's kappa requires that the
researcher determine how many forms both raters coded as target-like, how many were coded
as target-like by the first rater and as nontarget-like by the second, how many were coded as
nontarget-like by the first and as target-like by the second, and so on. The final calculation of
kappa therefore involves more detail on agreement and disagreement than simple percentage
systems, and it also accounts for chance.
3. Additional Measures of Reliability

Other measures, such as Pearson's Product Moment or Spearman Rank Correlation
Coefficients, may also be used to calculate inter-rater reliability. These latter two are based on
measures of correlation and reflect the degree of association between the ratings provided by
two raters.
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 See also: Mackey and Gass (2016, pp. 139-140)
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52. In which of the following situations does the probability of Type I error go up?
1) effect size increases
2) the heterogeneity within the samples increases
3) you choose to put alpha level from .01 to .05
4) you increase the number in the samples
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Type I error, also known as a “false positive”: the error of rejecting a null hypothesis
when it is actually true. In other words, this is the error of accepting an alternative hypothesis
(the real hypothesis of interest) when the results can be attributed to chance. Plainly speaking,
it occurs when we are observing a difference when in truth there is none (or more specifically
- no statistically significant difference).
Type II error, also known as a "false negative": the error of not rejecting a null hypothesis
when the alternative hypothesis is the true state of nature. In other words, this is the error of
failing to accept an alternative hypothesis when you don't have adequate power. Plainly
speaking, it occurs when we are failing to observe a difference when in truth there is one.
NOTE: Please study the following figure carefully so that you can answer similar questions on
Type I and Type II errors. Note that Alpha (α) is the 1st letter in Greek alphabet, and thus it
indicates Type I error. Also, Beta (β) is the 2nd letter in Greek alphabet, and thus it indicates
Type II error.
Keywords
Keywords - Alternative Hypothesis area
- Null Hypothesis area - H1 area / H a area
- H0 area - The “effect/relationship” explanation
- Chance explanation - Rejection area/region
- Non-rejection area - Critical region area
- Beta (β) area - Significance level area
- “Status quo” area - Alpha (α) area
- “What is normal/usual” area - “The change” area
- Probability of Type II error - “The unusual” area
- Probability of Beta error - Probability of Type I error
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- Probability of a “false negative” - Probability of Alpha error
- Probability of a “miss” - Probability of a “false positive”
- Probability of an “unwarranted - Probability of a “false alarm”
maintenance” of status quo - Probability of an “unwarranted
change”
Figure 1: Type I and Type II Errors
Figure 2: Alpha is equal to .01 (one-tailed)
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Figure 3: Alpha is equal to .05 (one-tailed)
Concluding remarks
Thus, if we decide to change the alpha level from .01 to .05, in fact, we decide to increase the
probability of Type I error, as can be seen in Figures 1 and 2.
For similar items, please refer to; Year 92, Item 37; Year 94, Item 60; Year 96, Item 54; Year
97, Item 46.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 178-184)
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53. In a study of faculty opinions of ESL errors, a researcher asked 164 faculty members
to rate the relative seriousness of 12 common ESL written errors. Their judgments
generated a hierarchy of errors, with word order errors being the least acceptable and
spelling errors being the most acceptable. The age and academic field of respondents
appeared to be important factors in responses.
Which of the following types of statistical procedures were used in coming to the above
conclusion?
1) ANOVA
2) Chi-square test of independence
3) Factorial analysis of variance
4) Repeated measures ANOVA
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
ANOVA
Tabachnick and Fidell (2013) define ANOVA and its types as follows: An analysis of variance
(ANOVA) is an appropriate statistical analysis when assessing for differences between more
than two groups on a continuous variable. Depending on the goal of the research, there are
several types of ANOVAs that can be utilized.
1. Between-Subjects ANOVA
One of the most common forms of an ANOVA is a between-subjects ANOVA. This type of
analysis is applied when examining for differences between independent groups on a
continuous level variable. Within this “branch” of ANOVA, there are one-way ANOVAs and
factorial ANOVAs.
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1.1. One-Way ANOVA

A one-way ANOVA is used when assessing for differences in one continuous variable between
ONE grouping/independent variable. For example, a one-way ANOVA would be appropriate
if the goal of research is to assess for differences in job satisfaction levels between ethnicities.
In this example, there is only one dependent variable (job satisfaction) and ONE independent
variable (ethnicity).
Note: One-way ANOVA is also known as “One-Way Analysis of Variance”, “one-factor

ANOVA”, and “single-factor ANOVA”.
1.2. A Factorial ANOVA

A factorial ANOVA is a general term applied when examining multiple independent variables.
For example, a factorial ANOVA would be appropriate if the goal of a study was to examine
for differences in job satisfaction levels by ethnicity and education level. In this example, there
is only one dependent variable (job satisfaction) and TWO independent variables (ethnicity and
education level). A factorial ANOVA can be applied when there are two or more independent
variables. When we have two independent variables, we call it a Two-Way ANOVA. When we
have three independent variables, we call it a Three-Way ANOVA, and so on and so forth.
2. Within-Subjects ANOVA
A within-subjects ANOVA is appropriate when examining for differences in a continuous level
variable over time. A within-subjects ANOVA is also called a repeated measures ANOVA.
This type of test is frequently used when using a pretest and posttest design, but is not limited
to only two time periods. The repeated measures ANOVA can be used when examining for
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differences over two or more time periods. For example, this analysis would be appropriate if
the researcher seeks to explore for differences in job satisfaction levels, measured at three points
in time (pretest, posttest, 2-month follow up).
3. Mixed-Model ANOVA
A mixed model ANOVA, sometimes called a within-between ANOVA, is appropriate when
examining for differences in a continuous level variable by group and time. This type of
ANOVA is frequently applied when using a quasi-experimental or true experimental design.
This analysis would be applicable if the purpose of the research is to examine for potential
differences in a continuous level variable between a treatment and control group, and over time
(pretest and posttest).
4. ANCOVA
An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) is appropriate when examining for differences in a
continuous dependent variable between groups, while controlling for the effect of additional
variables. The “C” in ANCOVA denotes that a covariate is being inputted into the model, and
this covariate examination can be applied to a between-subjects design, a within-subjects
design, or a mixed-model design. ANCOVAs are frequently used in experimental studies when
the researcher wants to account for the effects of an antecedent (control) variable.
5. MANOVA
Finally, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) is an extension on the ANOVA, and is
appropriate when examining for differences in multiple continuous level variables (i.e. multiple
dependent variables) between groups. For example, a MANOVA would be applicable if
assessing for differences between ethnicities in job satisfaction AND intrinsic motivation levels
65
of participants. In this example, job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation are the continuous
level dependent variables. The MANOVA can be conducted with multiple independent
variables which will be called Two-Way MANOVA, Three-Way MANOVA, etc. (i.e. we can
have factorial MANOVA), and can also include covariates (i.e., MANCOVA).
Chi-Square Tests
When dealing with categorical data, the most widely used tests of significance are the chi-
square tests. In chi-square tests, both the independent and dependent variables are categorical.
Chi-square tests compare observed frequencies and expected frequencies. Observed
frequencies, as the name implies, are the actual frequencies obtained by observation. Expected
frequencies are theoretical frequencies that would be observed when the null hypothesis is true.
We have two kinds of Chi-square tests:

(1) One-way Chi-square test (or Chi-square Goodness of Fit)
(2) Two-way Chi-square test (or Chi-square test of independence)
1. One-way Chi-square test (or Chi-square Goodness of Fit)

One-way Chi-square test involves only one variable. This test involves one variable as shown
in table 1.
Table 1
f Observed f Expected
Male 140 120
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Female 160 180
Total 300 300
Consider the hypothesis that the proportion of male and female students in advanced placement
(AP) classes is different from that of male and female students in a high school as a whole. If
you know that 40 percent of the total high school enrollment is male and that 300 students are
enrolled in AP courses, the expected frequencies of male and female students enrolled in AP
classes will be 120 males and 180 females. Now suppose that the observed frequencies are
found to be 140 males and 160 females. There is a difference between observed and expected
frequencies. Is it likely that this difference is due to chance alone? The null hypothesis is that
the observed frequencies will not differ from what we expect from chance.
To determine whether the difference between the expected and observed frequencies is
statistically significant, apply the chi-square formula:
(𝑓0 −𝑓𝑒 )2
χ =
2
Σ[ 𝑓𝑒
]
Where
χ2 = value of chi square

f0 = observed frequency
fe = expected frequency
Applying this formula to the data, you obtain
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(140−120)2 (160−180)2
χ =
2
+ = 5.55
120 180
To determine whether this chi-square value is significant, consult the table of χ2 values. The
first column in this table shows the number of degrees of freedom involved in any given chi-
square problem. The remaining columns present the values needed for different levels of
significance. The number of degrees of freedom, as discussed previously, is based on the
number of observations that are free to vary once certain restrictions are placed on the data.
When you have a fixed number of observations divided into only two categories, as soon as the
number falling into one category has been determined, the other is fixed. Thus, when you find
that the number of male students is 140, the number of female students in the total of 300 must
be 160. In this example, there is only 1 degree of freedom. In the one-variable chi square, the
number of degrees of freedom equals K − 1, where K is the number of categories used for
classification. By consulting the table of χ2 values, you find that your observed value of 5.55 is
statistically significant at the .05 (and .02) level. You would reject the null hypothesis that there
is no difference in the proportion of male and female students taking AP classes and the
proportion of male and female students in the entire high school.
Interpreting this result, you can now state that the proportion of males who take AP classes
is significantly greater than the proportion in the entire school at the .05 level of confidence.
The significance level of .05 means that there are less than 5 chances in 100 of observing such
a difference between the proportions of male and female students through chance alone. Thus,
the data lend support to your research hypothesis that the proportion of male and female
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students who take AP classes is significantly different from the proportion of males and females
in the entire high school.
2. Two-way Chi-square test (or Chi-square test of independence)

So far, we have only considered examples in which observations were classified along a single
dimension. Sometimes, however, researchers wish to use more than one dimension for
classification. The two-variable chi-square design uses two independent variables, each with
two or more levels, and a dependent variable in the form of a frequency count. The purpose of
the test is to determine whether or not the two variables in the design are independent of one
another. Suppose, for example, you add another dimension to the previous problem and ask
both graduate and undergraduate students to state their preferences regarding the two proposed
university student health plans. Assume the frequencies shown in Table 2 were the result.
Table 2: Observed Frequencies of Responses of 200 Undergraduate and Graduate Students

on Their Preference for a University Health Plan
Subjects Plan A Plan B No Preference Total
Undergraduate students 40 50 30 120
Graduate students 20 40 20 80
Total 60 90 50 200
In this case, the null hypothesis is that the preference for health plans is the same for graduates
as it is for undergraduates—that is, the variables “student status” and “preference for health
plan” are unrelated, or independent. The null hypothesis in this chi-square test of
independence is always that the variables are independent in the population. Your observations
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show that 30 percent (60/200) of all students prefer Health Plan A, 45 percent (90/200) prefer
Plan B, and 25 percent state no preference. If the null hypothesis is true, you would expect to
find these same proportions among both graduates and undergraduates.
You can compute expected cell frequencies by multiplying the row frequency associated
with a cell by the column frequency associated with that cell and then dividing this product by
the grand total (E= fr fc /N ). For example, the expected frequency of response for undergraduate
students who favor Plan A is 120 × 60 ÷ 200 = 36; for those undergraduate students who prefer
Plan B, it is 120 × 90 ÷ 200 = 54; and for graduate students who prefer Plan A, it is 80 × 60 ÷
200 = 24. Using this approach, you can find the expected frequencies for each cell as shown in
Table 3.
Note that all the row and column totals in Table 3 are exactly the same as those shown in
Table 2. Now you ask if the observed frequencies differ enough from the expected frequencies
to enable you to reject the likelihood that these differences could have occurred merely by
chance. Applying the formula, you obtain
(40−36)2 (50−54)2 (30−30)2 (20−24)2

χ2 = + + +
36 54 30 24
(40−36)2 (20−20)2
+ + = 1.8518
36 20
The number of degrees of freedom for a two-way table is found by applying the formula
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df = (C − 1)(R − 1)
Table 3: Expected Frequencies of Responses of 200 Undergraduate and Graduate Students

Regarding Their Preference for a University Health Plan
Subjects Plan A Plan B No Preference Total
Undergraduate students 36 54 30 120
Graduate students 24 36 20 80
Total 60 90 50 200
where
df = number of degrees of freedom
C = number of columns
R = number of rows
Applying this formula to the problem under consideration, you obtain
df = (3−1) (2−1) = 2
Consulting the table of χ2 values, you can see that with 2 degrees of freedom, a χ2 value of 5.991
is needed for significance at the .05 level. But your obtained χ 2 value of 1.8518 is smaller than
this tabled value and is therefore not significant. This means that the differences between
expected and observed frequencies are not beyond what you would expect by chance. In other
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words, you do not have reliable evidence that there is a relationship between the variables
“student status” and “preference for a health care plan” in the population from which your
sample was drawn. The null hypothesis of independence cannot be rejected.
Assumptions of Chi Square

Chi square is so easy to use that researchers may forget that there are assumptions that must be
met if valid interpretations are to be made.
1. Observations must be independent—that is, the subjects in each sample must be randomly
and independently selected.
2. The categories must be mutually exclusive: Each observation can appear in one and only one
of the categories in the table.
3. The observations are measured as frequencies.
As stated, two-way Chi-square test involves two variables – one listed on the top of the
contingency table and the other listed on the left side of the contingency table. This test involves
two variable as shown in table 4.
Thus, to make our data fit into this kind of chi-square, the rating variable is put on the top
of the table and the variables of academic field of study and age of the faculty members are
grouped together and are put in the left side of the table.
In this example of Chi-square test of independence, we are concerned with knowing if the
rating of the acceptability of errors is independent of the academic field and age of the
respondents. Thus, our null hypothesis is:
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H0: The rating of the acceptability of errors is independent of the academic filed and age
of the faculty members.
Table 4
Rating of Acceptability of Errors
Academic Age Error Error Error Row
Error 1 Error 2 Error 3 Error 4 Error 5 Error 6 Error 7 Error 8 Error 9
Field 10 11 12 Total
ELT 26-45 28 26 30 24 27 19 32 24 27 25 29 22 313
Majors 46-65 24 32 24 24 28 28 37 27 23 29 28 27 331
Literature 26-45 25 28 27 24 28 34 29 19 26 25 27 23 315
Majors 46-65 22 29 31 35 26 22 35 28 24 24 31 34 341
Translation 26-45 29 24 24 28 31 29 32 30 25 29 28 26 335
Majors 46-65 28 29 25 27 28 26 31 27 24 28 26 34 333
Column Grand
Total 156 168 161 162 168 158 196 155 149 160 169 166 Total
= 1968
Concluding remarks
ANOVA is concerned with the effect or relationship among a categorical independent and
continuous dependent variables. Also, ANOVA deals with means. But Chi-square tests are
concerned with the association between or among categorical variables. Thus, there is no group
means to use ANOVA procedures, and ESL errors, academic field and age of the respondents
are all categorical variables and hence the best option is Choice 2.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 204-206); Tabachnick and Fidell (2013)
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54. If different individuals randomly drawn from the same general population are
surveyed at intervals over a period of time, the survey is called -----------.
1) Panel survey study
2) Cross-sectional survey study
3) Cohort survey study
4) Trend survey study
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Longitudinal Surveys
Longitudinal surveys gather information at different points in time in order to study the changes
over extended periods of time. Three different designs are used in longitudinal survey research:
panel studies, trend studies, and cohort research.
1. Panel Studies
In a panel study, the same subjects are surveyed several times over an extended period of time.
For example, a researcher studying the development of quantitative reasoning in elementary
school children would select a sample of first-graders and administer a measure of quantitative
reasoning. This same group would be followed through successive grade levels and tested each
year to assess how quantitative reasoning skills develop over time. Researchers have studied
how age affects IQ by measuring the same individuals as adolescents and when they were
college-aged, middle-aged, and older. Because the same subjects are studied over time,
researchers can see the changes in the individuals’ behavior and investigate the reasons for the
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changes. An example of a panel study is Terman’s (1926) classic study of intelligence in which
he followed exceptionally bright children to maturity.
2. Trend Studies
A trend study differs from a panel study in that different individuals randomly drawn from the
same general population are surveyed at intervals over a period of time. For example,
researchers who have studied national trends in mathematics achievement sample middle
school students at various intervals and measure their math performance. Although the same
individuals are not tested each time, if the samples from the population of middle school
students are selected randomly, the results each time can be considered representative of the
middle school population from which the student samples were drawn. Test scores from year
to year are compared to determine if any trends are evident.
3. Cohort Studies
In a cohort study, a specific population is followed over a length of time with different
random samples studied at various points. Whereas trend studies sample a general population
that changes in membership over time, a cohort study samples a specific population whose
members do not change over the duration of the survey. Typically, a cohort group has age in
common. For example, a school system might follow the high school graduating class(es) of
2004 over time and ask them questions about higher education, work experiences, attitudes, and
so on. From a list of all the graduates, a random sample is drawn at different points in time, and
data are collected from that sample. Thus, the population remains the same during the study,
but the individuals surveyed are different each time.
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Cross-Sectional Surveys
Cross-sectional surveys study a cross section (sample) of a population at a single point in time.
In a longitudinal study of vocabulary development, for example, a researcher would compare a
measure of first-grade students’ vocabulary skills in 2000 with one when they were fourth-grade
students in 2003 and seventh-grade students in 2006. A cross-sectional study would compare the
vocabulary skills of a sample of children from grades 1, 4, and 7 in 2006. The cross-sectional
survey is the method of choice if you want to gather the data at one point in time.
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55. At the beginning of the semester, a language teacher set up an extensive reading station
in her room with supplementary authentic reading materials. At the end of the
semester she reported that the interest of her class in reading was higher than any of
her previous classes. She recommended that all language teachers set up reading
stations.
Which of the following may NOT be a threat to the internal validity of the above
experimental study?
1) Maturity
2) Hawthorne effect
3) Selection
4) History
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Ary et al. (2014, pp. 293-305) state eleven threats to the internal validity of research. These
threats are summarized in the following table:
Threats to Internal Validity
History Unrelated events that occur during the study affect the dependent variable
(i.e. the outcome).
Maturation Changes (biological or psychological) that may occur within the
subjects simply as a function of the passage of time.
Testing effect Exposure to prior test affects posttest.
Instrumentation Unreliability or a change in the measuring instrument affects result.
Regression Extremely high or low scorers on a pretest regress toward mean on a
posttest or second measure.
(Participant/Informant) Because of selection methods, subjects in the comparison groups are not
Selection bias equivalent prior to study.
Mortality A differential loss of participants from the groups affects dependent
variable (i.e. the outcome).
Selection–maturation Subjects with different maturation rates are selected into treatment
interaction groups.
Experimenter effect Unintentional bias or behavior of experimenter affects results.
Subject effect Attitudes developed during the study affect performance on dependent
variable.
Diffusion Participants in experimental group communicate information about
treatment to control group, which may affect the latter’s performance.
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Maturation
The term maturation refers to changes (biological or psychological) that may occur within the
subjects simply as a function of the passage of time. These changes threaten internal validity
because they may produce effects that could mistakenly be attributed to the experimental
treatment. Subjects may perform differently on the dependent variable measure simply because
they are older, wiser, hungrier, more fatigued, or less motivated than they were at the time of
the first measurements. Maturation is especially a threat in research on children because they
are naturally changing so quickly.
Because the period of treatment is just one semester, maturity is NOT a threat.
History
Specific events or conditions, other than the experimental treatment, may occur between the
beginning of the treatment and the posttest measurement and may produce changes in the
dependent variable. Such events are referred to as the history effect.
History can be a threat because there is no control group to assure us that history effect
does not influence the study.
Selection bias
Selection bias is most likely to occur when the researcher cannot assign subjects randomly but
must use intact groups (quasi-experiment). An intact group is a preexisting group such as a class
or a group set up independently of the planned experiment.
Selection bias is also a threat when volunteers are used. People who volunteer for a study
may differ in some important respects from nonvolunteers. If the researcher then compares
volunteers with nonvolunteers following the experimental treatment, the researcher does not
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know if the differences are caused by the treatment or by preexisting differences between the
two groups.
Selection can be a threat because certainly volunteers have joined the study.
Hawthorne effect
The tendency for subjects to change their behavior just because of the attention gained from
participating in an experiment has subsequently been referred to as the Hawthorne effect. This
effect can be a problem in educational research that compares exciting new teaching methods
with conventional methods. Sometimes subjects may react to what they perceive to be the
special demands of an experimental situation. That is, subjects react not as they normally might
but as they think the more “important” researcher wants them to act. Research has shown, for
instance, that subjects who know they are in an experiment tolerate more stress or administer
more stress to others than they normally would.
Hawthorne effect may also be a threat to the internal validity of this study because leaners
know that they are in an experimental group.
For more information and similar items on internal validity and threats to internal validity, please
refer to Year 92, Item 36; Year 96, Items 41, 42, and 43; and Year 97, Items 41, 42, and 55.
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56. Which of the following represents a suitable use of ANCOVA?

1) When you have more than one dependent variable.
2) As the nonparametric equivalent of a repeated-measures ANOVA
3) As the nonparametric equivalent of a between-subjects ANOVA
4) When your groups are not homogeneous on the pretest.
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Multivariate Analysis
When we have more than one dependent variable, we use multivariate statistics. If we have one
independent variable and two or more dependent variable, we use One-Way MANOVA. If we
have two independent variables and two or more dependent variable, we use Two-Way
MANOVA.
More technically, Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) differs from ANOVA in
only one respect: It incorporates two or more dependent variables in the same analysis, thus
permitting a more powerful test of differences among means. It is justified only when the
researcher has reason to believe correlations exist among the dependent variables. Similarly,
multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) extends ANCOVA to include two or more
dependent variables in the same analysis. The specific value that is calculated is Wilk’s lambda,
a number analogous to F in analysis of variance.
Repeated-measures ANOVA
Repeated measures ANOVA is the equivalent of the one-way ANOVA, but for related, not
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independent groups, and is the extension of the dependent t-test. A repeated measures ANOVA
is also referred to as a “within-subjects ANOVA” for correlated samples.
One-Way ANOVA
The One-Way ANOVA ("analysis of variance") compares the means of two or more
independent groups in order to determine whether there is statistical evidence that the associated
population means are significantly different. One-Way ANOVA is a parametric test.
This test is also known as:
 One-Factor ANOVA
 Single-Factor ANOVA
 One-Way Analysis of Variance
The variables used in this test are known as:
 Dependent variable
 Independent variable (also known as the grouping variable, or factor): This variable
divides cases into two or more mutually exclusive levels, or groups
ANCOVA
ANCOVA is a variation of ANOVA used when, for example, groups are given a pretest related
in some way to the dependent variable and their mean scores on this pretest are found to differ.
ANCOVA enables the researcher to adjust the posttest mean scores on the dependent variable
for each group to compensate for the initial differences between the groups on the pretest. The
pretest is called the covariate. How much the posttest mean scores must be adjusted depends on
how large the difference between the pretest means is and the degree of relationship between
the covariate and the dependent variable. Several covariates can be used in an ANCOVA test,
so in addition to (or instead of) adjusting for a pretest, the researcher can adjust for the effect
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of other variables. Like ANOVA, ANCOVA produces an F value, which is then looked up in a
statistical table to determine whether it is statistically significant.
In brief, when we have an independent variable and a control variable, or when there are
pre-existing differences between or among our subjects before the treatment begins, we use
ANCOVA for the analysis of our data.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 330-331); Fraenkel and Wallen (2009, pp. 232-234)
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57. “This is the only squared-error loss agreement index that can be estimated using one
test administration.” This definition refers to -----------.
1) phi dependability index
2) borderline-group method
3) alpha coefficient
4) intraclass reliability
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Squared-error Loss Agreement Approaches
Threshold loss agreement coefficients focus on the degree to which classifications in clear-cut
categories (master or non-master) have been consistent. Squared-error loss agreement strategies
do this too, but they do so with "... sensitivity to the degrees of mastery and nonmastery along
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the score continuum ..." (Berk 1984, p. 246). Thus these approaches attempt to account for the
distances of students' scores from the cut-point, that is, for the degree of mastery or non-mastery
rather than the simple categorization. The phi(lambda) dependability index (Brennan, 1980,
1984) can be estimated using one test administration and because Brennan has provided a
formula that can be based on raw score test statistics (Brown, 1989).
Borderline-group method
One of the most challenging tasks in educational assessments is making Pass/Fail decision for
borderline performance. Making a wrong decision in passing a borderline student could have
negative consequences in perpetuating weaknesses in applied knowledge and performance,
which in high stake context may literally be life-threatening. On the other hand, failing a
competent examinee has adverse consequences for the student and is a loss for the society.
Most standard setting methods determine a Pass/Fail decision for Borderline grades by
identifying a cut-off score within the borderline range, using statistical/mathematical
calculations deemed to be objective. Among the most commonly used methods are the
Nedelsky, Ebel, Angoff, Hofstee, Borderline Group, and Regression methods. Nedelsky, Ebel,
Angoff and Hofstee methods use expert panels to estimate what a cut-off score should be. The
Borderline Groups and Regression methods, however, apply statistical techniques to the test
scores to set up the cut-off score, without any further judgement. Methods based on experts'
judgment are vulnerable to judgment bias and to date no consensus has been reached to
determine an optimal way for achieving high test reliability without employing a large number
of panelists.
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Cronbach’s alpha (also known as alpha coefficient)

Cronbach’s alpha is a measure of internal consistency, that is, how closely related a set of items
are as a group. It is considered to be a measure of scale reliability. Technically speaking,
Cronbach’s alpha is not a statistical test – it is a coefficient of reliability (or consistency).
Intraclass Correlation
Intraclass correlation measures the reliability of ratings or measurements for clusters — data
that has been collected as groups or sorted into groups. A related term is interclass correlation,
which is usually another name for Pearson correlation (other statistics can be used, like Cohen’s
kappa, but this is rare). Pearson’s is usually used for inter-rater reliability when you only have
one or two meaningful pairs from one or two raters.
The intraclass correlation (or the intraclass correlation coefficient, abbreviated ICC) is
an inferential statistic that can be used when quantitative measurements are made on units that
are organized into groups. It describes how strongly units in the same group resemble each
other. While it is viewed as a type of correlation, unlike most other correlation measures it
operates on data structured as groups, rather than data structured as paired observations.
The intraclass correlation is commonly used to quantify the degree to which individuals
with a fixed degree of relatedness (e.g. full siblings) resemble each other in terms of a
quantitative trait. Another prominent application is the assessment of consistency or
reproducibility of quantitative measurements made by different observers measuring the same
quantity.
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A dot plot showing a dataset with high intraclass correlation. Values from the same group tend
to be similar.
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A dot plot showing a dataset with low intraclass correlation. There is no tendency for values
from the same group to be similar.
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 See also: J. D. Brown (1989); Osborne (2008, pp. 16-19, 38-39)
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58. Which of the following statements about the different types of qualitative research is
FALSE?
1) In ethnographic research, you focus on an entire cultural group as both the process and
outcome of research, most often through participant observation.
2) In narrative research, you explore the life of one or more individuals through gathering
their stories and artifacts, collecting information about the context of the stories, and
restorying them into a logical framework.
3) In grounded theory, you start with a hypothesis which you then try to ground in your data,
usually through extensive observation and thick descriptions, yet with the ultimate goal
of going beyond description.
4) In phenomenological research, you attempt to understand several individuals’ common
shared experiences of a phenomenon, usually through in-depth/multiple interviews.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Ethnographic research
Creswell (2013, p. 90; 2007, pp. 68-69) states that an ethnography focuses on an entire cultural
group (i.e. culture-sharing group). Granted, sometimes this cultural group may be small (a few
teachers, a few social workers), but typically it is large, involving many people who interact
over time (teachers in an entire school, a community social work group). Ethnography is a
qualitative design in which the researcher describes and interprets the shared and learned
patterns of values, behaviors, beliefs, and language of a culture-sharing group (Harris, 1968).
As both a process and an outcome of research (Agar, 1980), ethnography is a way of studying
a culture-sharing group as well as the final, written product of that research. As a process,
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'ethnography involves extended observations of the group, most often through participant
observation, in which the researcher is immersed in the day-to-day lives of the people and
observes and interviews the group participants. Ethnographers study the meaning of the
behavior, the language, and the interaction among members of the culture-sharing group.
In other words, an ethnography is a description and interpretation of a cultural or social
group or system. The researcher examines the group's observable and learned patterns of
behavior, customs, and ways of life (Harris, 1968). As both a process and an outcome of
research (Agar, 1980), an ethnography is a product of research, typically found in book-length
form. As a process, ethnography involves prolonged observation of the group, typically through
participant observation in which the researcher is immersed in the day-to-day lives of the people
or through one-on-one interviews with members of the group. The researchers studies the
meanings of behavior, language, and interactions of the culture-sharing group.
Narrative research
Creswell (2013, pp. 71-75; 3007, pp. 53-57) states that narrative research has many forms, uses
a variety of analytic practices, and is rooted in different social and humanities disciplines
(Daiute & Lightfoot, 2004). “Narrative” might be the term assigned to any text or discourse, or,
it might be text used within the context of a mode of inquiry in qualitative research (Chase,
2005), with a specific focus on the stories told
by individuals (Polkinghorne, 1995). As Pinnegar and Daynes (2006) suggest, narrative can be
both a method and the phenomenon of study. As a method, it begins with the experiences as
expressed in lived and told stories of individuals. Writers have provided ways for analyzing and
understanding the stories lived and told. I will define it here as a specific type of qualitative
design in which “narrative is understood as a spoken or written text giving an account of an
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event/action or series of events/actions, chronologically connected” (Czarniawska, 2004, p. 17).
The procedures for implementing this research consist of focusing on studying one or two
individuals, gathering data through the collection of their stories, reporting individual
experiences, and chronologically ordering (or using life course stages) the meaning of those
experiences.
Procedures for Conducting Narrative Research

Using the approach taken by Clandinin and Connelly (2000) as a general procedural guide, the
methods of conducting a narrative study do not follow a lock-step approach, but instead
represent an informal collection of topics.
1. Determine if the research problem or question best fits narrative research. Narrative
research is best for capturing the detailed stories or life experiences of a single life or the
lives of a small number of individuals.
2. Select one or more individuals who have stories or life experiences to tell, and spend
considerable time with them gathering their stories through multiples types of
information. Clandinin and Connelly (2000) refer to the stories as “field texts.” Research
participants may record their stories in a journal or diary, or the researcher might observe
the individuals and record field-notes. Researchers may also collect letters sent by the
individuals; assemble stories about the individuals from family members; gather
documents such as memos or official correspondence about the individual; or obtain
photographs, memory boxes (collection of items that trigger memories), and other
personal-family-social artifacts. After examining these sources, the researcher records
the individuals’ life experiences.
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3. Collect information about the context of these stories. Narrative researchers situate
individual stories within participants’ personal experiences (their jobs, their homes), their
culture (racial or ethnic), and their historical contexts (time and place).
4. Analyze the participants’ stories, and then “restory” them into a framework that makes
sense. Restorying is the process of reorganizing the stories into some general type of
framework. This framework may consist of gathering stories, analyzing them for key
elements of the story (e.g., time, place, plot, and scene), and then rewriting the stories to
place them within a chronological sequence (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2000).
5. Collaborate with participants by actively involving them in the research (Clandinin &
Connelly, 2000). As researchers collect stories, they negotiate relationships, smooth
transitions, and provide ways to be useful to the participants. In narrative research, a key
theme has been the turn toward the relationship between the researcher and the researched
in which both parties will learn and change in the encounter (Pinnegar & Daynes, 2006).
In this process, the parties negotiate the meaning of the stories, adding a validation check
to the analysis (Creswell & Miller, 2000). Within the participant’s story may also be an
interwoven story of the researcher gaining insight into her or his own life (see Huber &
Whelan, 1999). Also, within the story may be epiphanies or turning points in which the
story line changes direction dramatically. In the end, the narrative study tells the story of
individuals unfolding in a chronology of their experiences, set within their personal,
social, and historical context, and including the important themes in those lived
experiences. “Narrative inquiry is stories lived and told,” said Clandinin and Connolly
(2000, p. 20).
Phenomenological Research
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Creswell (2007, pp. 57-62) asserts that whereas a narrative study reports the life of a single
individual, a phenomenological study describes the meaning for several individuals of their
lived experiences of a concept or a phenomenon. Phenomenologists focus on describing what
all participants have in common as they experience a phenomenon (e.g., grief is universally
experienced). The basic purpose of phenomenology is to reduce individual experiences with a
phenomenon to a description of the universal essence (a “grasp of the very nature of the thing,”
van Manen, 1990, p. 177).
Procedures for Conducting Phenomenological Research

I use the psychologist Moustakas’s (1994) approach because it has systematic steps in the data
analysis procedure and guidelines for assembling the textual and structural descriptions. The
conduct of psychological phenomenology has been addressed in a number of writings,
including Dukes (1984), Tesch (1990), Giorgi (1985, 1994), Polkinghorne (1989), and, most
recently, Moustakas (1994). The major procedural steps in the process would be as follows:
1. The researcher determines if the research problem is best examined using a
phenomenological approach. The type of problem best suited for this form of research is
one in which it is important to understand several individuals’ common or shared
experiences of a phenomenon. It would be important to understand these common
experiences in order to develop practices or policies, or to develop a deeper understanding
about the features of the phenomenon.
2. A phenomenon of interest to study, such as anger, professionalism, what it means to be
underweight, or what it means to be a wrestler, is identified. Moustakas (1994) provides
numerous examples of phenomena that have been studied.
3. The researcher recognizes and specifies the broad philosophical assumptions of
phenomenology. For example, one could write about the combination of objective reality
78
and individual experiences. These lived experiences are furthermore “conscious” and
directed toward an object. To fully describe how participants view the phenomenon,
researchers must bracket out, as much as possible, their own experiences.
4. Data are collected from the individuals who have experienced the phenomenon. Often
data collection in phenomenological studies consists of in-depth interviews and multiple
interviews with participants. Polkinghorne (1989) recommends that researchers interview
from 5 to 25 individuals who have all experienced the phenomenon. Other forms of data
may also be collected, such as observations, journals, art, poetry, music, and other forms
of art. Van Manen (1990) mentions taped conversations, formally written responses,
accounts of vicarious experiences of drama, films, poetry, and novels.
5. The participants are asked two broad, general questions (Moustakas, 1994): What have
you experienced in terms of the phenomenon? What contexts or situations have typically
influenced or affected your experiences of the phenomenon? Other open-ended questions
may also be asked, but these two, especially, focus attention on gathering data that will
lead to a textural description and a structural description of the experiences, and
ultimately provide an understanding of the common experiences of the participants.
6. Phenomenological data analysis steps are generally similar for all psychological
phenomenologists who discuss the methods (Moustakas, 1994; Polkinghorne, 1989).
Building on the data from the first and second research questions, data analysts go through
the data (e.g., interview transcriptions) and highlight “significant statements,” sentences,
or quotes that provide an understanding of how the participants experienced the
phenomenon. Moustakas (1994) calls this step horizonalization. Next, the researcher
develops clusters of meaning from these significant statements into themes.
7. These significant statements and themes are then used to write a description of what the
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participants experienced (textural description). They are also used to write a description
of the context or setting that influenced how the participants experienced the
phenomenon, called imaginative variation or structural description. Moustakas (1994)
adds a further step: Researchers also write about their own experiences and the context
and situations that have influenced their experiences. I like to shorten Moustakas’s
procedures, and reflect these personal statements at the beginning of the phenomenology
or include them in a methods discussion of the role of the researcher (Marshall &
Rossman, 2006).
8. From the structural and textural descriptions, the researcher then writes a composite
description that presents the “essence” of the phenomenon, called the essential, invariant
structure (or essence). Primarily this passage focuses on the common experiences of the
participants. For example, it means that all experiences have an underlying structure (grief
is the same whether the loved one is a puppy, a parakeet, or a child). It is a descriptive
passage, a long paragraph or two, and the reader should come away from the
phenomenology with the feeling, “I understand better what it is like for someone to
experience that” (Polkinghorne, 1989, p. 46).
Grounded Theory Research

Although a phenomenology emphasizes the meaning of an experience for a number of
individuals, the intent of a grounded theory study is to move beyond description and to generate
or discover a theory, an abstract analytical schema of a process (or action or interaction, Strauss
& Corbin, 1998). Participants in the study would all have experienced the process, and the
development of the theory might help explain practice or provide a framework for further
research. A key idea is that this theory-development does not come “off the shelf,” but rather is
generated or “grounded” in data from participants who have experienced the process (Strauss
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& Corbin, 1998). Thus, grounded theory is a qualitative research design in which the inquirer
generates a general explanation (a theory) of a process, action, or interaction shaped by the
views of a large number of participants (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).
Procedures for Conducting Grounded Theory Research

Although Charmaz’s interpretive approach has many attractive elements (e.g., reflexivity, being
flexible in structure), I rely on Strauss and Corbin (1990, 1998) to illustrate grounded theory
procedures because their systematic approach is helpful to individuals learning about and
applying grounded theory research.
1. The researcher needs to begin by determining if grounded theory is best suited to study
his or her research problem. Grounded theory is a good design to use when a theory is not
available to explain a process. The literature may have models available, but they were
developed and tested on samples and populations other than those of interest to the
qualitative researcher. Also, theories may be present, but they are incomplete because
they do not address potentially valuable variables of interest to the researcher. On the
practical side, a theory may be needed to explain how people are experiencing a
phenomenon, and the grounded theory developed by the researcher will provide such a
general framework.
2. The research questions that the inquirer asks of participants will focus on understanding
how individuals experience the process and identifying the steps in the process (What
was the process? How did it unfold?). After initially exploring these issues, the researcher
then returns to the participants and asks more detailed questions that help to shape the
axial coding phase, questions such as: What was central to the process? (the core
phenomenon); What influenced or caused this phenomenon to occur? (causal conditions);
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What strategies were employed during the process? (strategies); What effect occurred?
(consequences).
3. These questions are typically asked in interviews, although other forms of data may also
be collected, such as observations, documents, and audiovisual materials. The point is to
gather enough information to fully develop (or saturate) the model. This may involve 20
to 30 interviews or 50 to 60 interviews.
4. The analysis of the data proceeds in stages. In open coding, the researcher forms
categories of information about the phenomenon being studied by segmenting
information. Within each category, the investigator finds several properties, or
subcategories, and looks for data to dimensionalize, or show the extreme possibilities on
a continuum of, the property.
5. In axial coding, the investigator assembles the data in new ways after open coding. This
is presented using a coding paradigm or logic diagram (i.e., a visual model) in which the
researcher identifies a central phenomenon (i.e., a central category about the
phenomenon), explores causal conditions (i.e., categories of conditions that influence the
phenomenon), specifies strategies (i.e., the actions or interactions that result from the
central phenomenon), identifies the context and intervening conditions (i.e., the narrow
and broad conditions that influence the strategies), and delineates the consequences (i.e.,
the outcomes of the strategies) for this phenomenon.
6. In selective coding, the researcher may write a “story line” that connects the categories.
Alternatively, propositions or hypotheses may be specified that state predicted
relationships.
7. Finally, the researcher may develop and visually portray a conditional matrix that
elucidates the social, historical, and economic conditions influencing the central
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phenomenon. It is an optional step and one in which the qualitative inquirer thinks about
the model from the smallest to the broadest perspective.
8. The result of this process of data collection and analysis is a theory, a substantive-level
theory, written by a researcher close to a specific problem or population of people. The
theory emerges with help from the process of memoing, a process in which the researcher
writes down ideas about the evolving theory throughout the process of open, axial, and
selective coding. The substantive-level theory may be tested later for its empirical
verification with quantitative data to determine if it can be generalized to a sample and
population (see mixed methods design procedures, Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007).
Alternatively, the study may end at this point with the generation of a theory as the goal
of the research.
For more information and similar items on grounded theory, refer to Year 92, Item 39; Year 93,
Item 42; and Year 94, Item 47.
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 See also: Creswell (2007, pp. 53-72); Creswell (2013, pp. 70-75, 90)
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59. Which option below can be defined as follows: “The tendency of control group subjects
who know they are in an experiment to exert extra effort and hence to perform above
their typical expected average”?
1) John Henry effect
2) Henry Kissinger effect
3) Hawthorne effect
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4) Halo effect
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
John Henry effect
Ary et al. (2014, p. 3030) states that this effect, also called compensatory rivalry, refers to the
tendency of control group subjects who know they are in an experiment to exert extra effort and
hence to perform above their typical or expected average. They may perceive that they are in
competition with the experimental group and they want to do just as well or better. Thus, the
difference (or lack of difference) between the groups may be caused by the control subjects’
increased motivation rather than by the experimental treatment.
Henry Kissinger effect

H. D. Brown (2000, pp. 59-60) states that upon reviewing the research on age and accent
acquisition, as Scovel (1999) did, we are left with powerful evidence of a critical period for
accent, but for accent only! It is important to remember in all these considerations that
pronunciation of a language is not by any means the sole criterion for acquisition, not is it really
the most important one. We all know people who have less than perfect pronunciation but who
also have magnificent and fluent control of a second language, control that can even exceed
that of many native speakers. I like to call this the "Henry Kissinger effect" in honor of the
former U.S. Secretary of State whose German accent is so noticeable yet who is clearly more
eloquent than the large majority of native speakers of American English.
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Hawthorne effect
Ary et al. (2014, pp. 303, 677) assert that the Hawthorne effect refer to an effect on the
dependent variable (i.e. the results of the study) which results from the treatment group’s
knowledge that the members are participating in an experiment. That is, when the experimental
group feel that they are participating in an experiment, they may change their behavior and the
result achieved may be attributed to this change of behavior, and not to the treatment.
Halo effect
Ary et al. (2014, p. 232) states that because ratings depend on the perceptions of human
observers, who are susceptible to various influences, rating scales are subject to considerable
error. Among the most frequent systematic errors in rating people is the halo effect, which
occurs when raters allow a generalized impression of the subject to influence the rating given
on very specific aspects of behavior. This general impression carries over from one item in the
scale to the next. For example, a teacher might rate a student who does good academic work as
also being superior in intelligence, popularity, honesty, perseverance, and all other aspects of
personality. Or, if you have a generally unfavorable impression of a person, you are likely to
rate the person low on all aspects. Hence, halo effect is a rating error.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 232, 303); H. D. Brown (2000, pp. 59-60)
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60. Which of the following classifications is WRONG?

1) Snowball sampling is a kind of non-random sampling.
2) Cluster sampling is a kind of non-probability sampling.
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3) Quota sampling is a kind of non-probability sampling.
4) Stratified sampling is a kind of probability sampling.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Dörnyei (2007, pp. 97-99) states the following classification for the probability and non-
probability sampling:
Probability sampling
1. Random sampling
2. Stratified random sampling
3. Systematic sampling
4. Cluster sampling
Non-probability sampling
1. Quota sampling and dimensional sampling
2. Snowball sampling
3. Convenience or opportunity sampling
Probability sampling
Probability sampling is a generic term used for a number of scientific procedures, the most
important of which are the following:
• Random sampling: The key component of probability sampling is 'random sampling'.
This involves selecting members of the population to be included in the sample on a
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completely random basis, a bit like drawing numbers from a hat (for example, by
numbering each member and then asking the computer to generate random numbers).
The assumption underlying this procedure is that the selection is based entirely on
probability and chance, thus minimizing the effects 'of any extraneous or subjective
factors. As a result, a sufficiently large sample should contain subjects with
characteristics similar to the population as a whole. Although this is rarely fully
achieved, the rule of thumb is that random samples are almost always more
representative than non-random samples.
• Stratified random sampling: Combining random sampling with some form of rational
grouping is a particularly effective method for research with a specific focus. In
'stratified random sampling' the population is divided into groups, or 'strata', and a
random sample of a proportionate size is selected from each group. Thus, if we want to
apply this strategy, first we need to identify a number of parameters of the wider
population that are important from the point of view of the research in a 'sampling frame'
– an obvious example would be a division of males and females – and then select
participants for each category on a random basis. A stratified random sample is,
therefore, a combination of randomization and categorization. In studies following this
method, the population is usually stratified on more than one variable and random
samples are selected from all the groups defined by the intersections of the various strata
(for example, we would sample female learners of Spanish, aged 13-14, who attend a
particular type of instructional programme in a particular location).
• Systematic sampling: In anonymous surveys it can be difficult to make a random
selection because we may have no means of identifying the participants in advance and
thus their names cannot be 'put in the hat' (Cohen et al. 2000). A useful technical shortcut
Research
is in such cases to apply 'systematic sampling', which involves selecting every nth
member of the target group.
• Cluster sampling: One way- of making random sampling more practical, especially
when the target population is widely dispersed, is to randomly select some larger
groupings or units of the populations (for example, schools) and then examine all the
students in those selected units.
Non-probability sampling
Most actual research in applied linguistics employs "non-probability samples'. In qualitative
research such purposive, non-representative samples may not be seen as a problem, but in
quantitative research, which always aims at representativeness, non-probability samples are
regarded as less-than-perfect compromises that reality forces upon the researcher. We can
distinguish three main non-probabilistic sampling strategies:
• Quota sampling and dimensional sampling: "Quota sampling' is similar to proportional
stratified random sampling without the 'random' element. That is; we start off with a
sampling frame and then determine the main proportions of the subgroups defined by
the parameters included in the frame. The actual sample, then, is selected in a way as to
reflect these proportions, but within the weighted subgroups no random sampling is used
but rather the researcher meets the quotas by selecting participants he/she can have
access to. For example, if the sampling frame in a study of 300 language learners
specifies that 50 per cent of the participants should come from bilingual and the other
50 per cent from monolingual families, the researcher needs to recruit 150 participants
from each group but the selection does not have to be random. 'Dimensional sampling'
is a variation of quota sampling: the researcher makes sure that at least one
83
representative of every· combination of the various parameters in the sampling frame is

included in the sample.
• Snowball sampling: This involves a 'chain reaction' whereby the researcher identifies a
few people who meet the criteria of the particular study and then asks these participants
to identify further appropriate members of the population. This technique is useful when
studying groups whose membership is not readily identifiable (for example, teenage
gang members) or when access to suitable group members is difficult for some reason.
• Convenience or opportunity sampling: The most common sample type in L2 research is
the 'convenience' or 'opportunity sample', where an important criterion of sample
selection is the convenience of the researcher: members of the target population are
selected for the purpose of the study if they meet certain practical criteria, such as
geographical proximity, availability at a certain time, easy accessibility, or the
willingness to volunteer. Captive audiences such as students in the researcher's own
institution are prime examples of convenience samples. To be fair, convenience samples
are rarely completely convenience-based but are usually partially purposeful, which
means that besides the relative ease of accessibility, participants also have to possess
certain key characteristics that are related to the purpose of the investigation. Thus,
convenience sampling often constitutes a less controlled version of the quota sampling
strategy described above.
For a similar item, refer to Year 96, Item 51.
For a more complete classification of probability and non-probability sampling, refer to Cohen
et al. (2011, pp. 153-163).
Research
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 163-170); Cohen et al. (2007, pp. 110-117; 2011, pp. 153-
163); Dörnyei (2007, pp. 97-99)
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84
Second Language Acquisition (Questions 61 – 80)
61. In the U-shaped behavior in L2 learning, ------------.

1) overgeneralization is avoided
2) the correct target-language form reappears at a late stage
3) a behavioristic approach to learning is utilized
4) learning ends in fossilization
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Restructuring
A concept of importance within the framework of information processing is that of
restructuring, which takes place when qualitative changes occur in a learner’s internal
representation of the second language or in the change in the use of procedures—generally from
inefficient to efficient. In terms of child language acquisition, McLaughlin described
restructuring in the following way: “Restructuring is characterized by discontinuous, or
qualitative change as the child moves from stage to stage in development. Each new stage
constitutes a new internal organization and not merely the addition of new structural elements.”
Lightbown (1985, p. 177) provides the following rationale for restructuring: [Restructuring]
occurs because language is a complex hierarchical system whose components interact in
nonlinear ways. Seen in these terms, an increase in error rate in one area may reflect an increase
in complexity or accuracy in another, followed by over-generalization of a newly acquired
structure, or simply by a sort of overload of complexity which forces a restructuring, or at least
a simplification, in another part of the system. McLaughlin and Heredia (1996) relate
restructuring, or representational changes, to a novice–expert continuum, whereby researchers
study changes that take place when a beginner at some skill gains greater expertise. In their
summary, they note that “experts restructure the elements of a learning task into abstract
schemata that are not available to novices, who focus principally on surface elements of a task.
Thus, experts replace complex sub-elements with schemata that allow more abstract
SLA
processing” (p. 217).
In relating this to language learning, one can think of chunk learning whereby learners have
fixed phrases, but may not have unpackaged these phrases into anything meaningful. Rather,
the string of sounds is a chunk with a holistic meaning. As she or he becomes more proficient,
the component parts become clear. In these situations, when this occurs, a learner’s speech may
on the surface appear simpler, but may in reality represent greater syntactic sophistication.
Thus, the learner has moved from formulaic speech to speech that entails an understanding of
structure. To put this somewhat differently, the learner is moving from exemplar-based learning
to a stage in which representations are more rule-based.
U-Shaped Learning
Destabilization, as discussed above, is a consequence of restructuring and often results in what
are known as U-shaped patterns. U-shaped patterns reflect three stages of linguistic use. In the
earliest stage, a learner produces some linguistic form that conforms to target-like norms (i.e.,
is error-free). At Stage 2, a learner appears to lose what he or she knew at Stage 1. The linguistic
behavior at Stage 2 deviates from TL norms. Stage 3 looks just like Stage 1 in that there is
again correct TL usage. This is illustrated in the following figure.
85
STAGE 1 Correct utterances STAGE 3
STAGE 2
Deviant Utterances
TIME
Schema of U-shaped behavior
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Gass and Selinker (2008, pp. 234-237)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
62. According to McLaughlin’s information processing model, -----------.
1) automatic knowledge is implicit by nature
SLA
2) restructuring is incompatible with the idea of processing limitations
3) representational change involves a shift from exemplar-based to rule-based
4) reutilization puts limits on information-processing capacity
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
For explanation, please refer to Year 91, Item 61.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Gass and Selinker (2008, p. 236)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
63. Parallel Distributed Processing is founded on -----------.

1) activation of units by input
2) the distinction between declarative and procedural knowledge
3) rule-governed connections between neurons
4) the serial processing of information
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
86
Explanation:
Connectionist/emergentist models
In this approach to language learning, also referred to as constructivist approaches, the emphasis
is on usage. Learning does not rely on an innate module, but rather it takes place based on the
extraction of regularities from the input. As these regularities or patterns are used over and over
again, they are strengthened. Frequency accounts (N. Ellis, 2002) are an example. Frequency
accounts of second language acquisition rely on the assumption that “humans are sensitive to
the frequencies of events in their experience” (p. 145). The approach is exemplar-based (NOT
rule-governed) in that it is the examples that are present in the input that form the basis of
complex patterns and from which regularities emerge. According to N. Ellis (2002, p. 144),
“comprehension is determined by the listeners’ vast amount of statistical information about the
behavior of lexical items in their language.” In other words, language is not driven by an innate
faculty; rather, the complex linguistic environment provides the information from which
learners abstract regularities. Assuming that aspects of language are sensitive to frequency of
usage, there are implications for how one conceives of grammar. The representation of
language, in this view, relies on the notion of variable strengths that reflect the frequency of the
input and the connections between parts of language.
In this approach, learning is seen as simple instance learning (rather than explicit/implicit
induction of rules), which proceeds based on input alone; the resultant knowledge is seen as a
network of interconnected exemplars and patterns, rather than abstract rules.
Even though connectionist approaches have been around for a number of years, it is only
recently that research within a second language context has begun to take place. Connectionism
is a cover term that includes a number of network architectures. One such approach is parallel
distributed processing (PDP). At the heart of PDP is a neural network that is generally
biologically inspired in nature. The network consists of nodes that are connected by pathways.
Within connectionism, pathways are strengthened or weakened through activation or use.
Learning takes place as the network (i.e., the learner) is able to make associations, and
associations come through exposure to repeated patterns. The more often an association is
made, the stronger that association becomes. New associations are formed and new links are
made between larger and larger units until complexes of networks are formed. One of the
SLA
explanations for the order of acquisition of morphemes comes from Larsen-Freeman (1976),
who proposed that frequency of occurrence is a major determinant. To frame this explanation
within the framework of connectionism, we would want to say that learners are able to extract
regular patterns from the input to create and strengthen associations, although they may not be
aware that this is what they are doing. N. Ellis and Schmidt (1997), in an experiment based on
a connectionist model, supported Larsen-Freeman’s suggestion, finding frequency effects for
the acquisition of second language morphology.
Not many second language studies have been conducted within the framework of
connectionism. As noted earlier, connectionist systems rely not on rule systems but on pattern
associations. Thus, if such a model is to work, we will need to have a clear understanding of
how to determine strength of associations. It stands to reason that the strength of associations
will change as a function of interaction with the environment, or, put differently, with the input.
It is to be noted that in the case of second language acquisition the strength of association may
already (right or wrong) be present; that is, a pattern of connectivity may already have been
established. In other words, the L1 is already in place and, therefore, there is a set of associations
with their strengths fixed. These associations can possibly interfere with the establishment of
an L2 network.
In terms of process, processing consists of a continuous and parallel (NOT serial)
determination of the activation values of all nodes and of the connection strengths between
87
nodes according to activation and learning rules. The activation rules determine how activation
is propagated between nodes.
In this model, knowledge is seen not as ‘patterns’ or ‘rules’, nor is there any distinction
drawn between declarative and procedural knowledge.
For similar items, refer to Year 91, Item 73; Year 92, Item 73; Year 93, Item 82; and Year 94,
Item 76.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis (1994, p. 403); Gass and Selinker (2008, 219-221); Mitchell and Myles
(2004, pp. 121-123); Robinson (2013, pp. 473-474)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
64. One of the shortcomings of sociocultural theory is that -----------.

1) ZPD is stable across individuals
2) microgenetic development happens only at the syntactic level
3) optimal scaffolding is not taken into account
4) other-regulation normally precedes self-regulation
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
A principle challenge to research based on educational interventions is the issue of how to
operationalize the quantity and quality of assistance. Unstructured and/or entirely emergent
assistance may provide the essential help needed for a learner to carry out a task that he or she
is unable to manage alone, but such conditions are problematic in two ways: a) tutors may
inadvertently over- or under-provide assistance, and b) qualitative and quantitative differences
in assistance and their precise correlations to learner performance cannot be consistently
documented. To address these issues, Aljaafreh and Lantolf developed a thirteen-point
“regulatory scale” that models tutor behaviors ranging from broad and implicit leading
questions to explicitly phrased corrections. This scale was used to code observable behavior
SLA
with particular attention to qualitative differences in assistance provided by the tutor
Scaffolding can encourage students to attend to the task, simplify it, keep them engaged in
completing it, and limit their frustration (Donato, 1994) to help learners “meet new, more
complex requirements” (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976, p. 89). For teachers and peers to assist
learners, they attend to learners’ understandings (Wood et al., 1976), gauge what learners know,
and determine how to build on their knowledge to guide them to new understandings. In fact,
“the level or amount of help is critical to scaffold learning” (Rodgers, 2004, p. 505). Given that
optimal scaffolding occurs when the teacher modifies her or his instruction based on each
“child’s present interests and abilities . . . and . . . reactions” (Wood & Middleton, 1975, p. 189),
appropriately scaffolding tasks to make them challenging and motivating for every student
based on individual potential can be difficult.
All that said though, the issue of optimal scaffolding (not being taken into account in
SCT) as a criticism levelled against SCT is NOT warranted anymore since it has been
dealt with by the researchers working in and proponents of the theory. However, Choice
3 is the best answer since the other choices are for sure NOT true.
Second language researchers working in a socio-cultural framework are making an

ambitious attempt to apply a general theory of cognition and of development that has been
88
influential in other domains of social and educational research, to the language-learning

problem. Dunn and Lantolf (1998) remind us of some of the most distinctive features of this
general theoretical position. First, the conventional separation between social and psychological
aspects of cognition and development is rejected. Similarly, the classic Saussurean view of
language as a formal abstract system that has an existence distinct from language use, is also in
principle rejected. Learning is seen as a social and inter-mental activity, taking place in the
Zone of Proximal Development, which precedes individual development (viewed as the
internalization or appropriation of socially constructed knowledge). These are challenging
ideas for a second language research community accustomed to the Chomskian distinction
between language competence and language performance, and to psycho-linguistic
assumptions about the primacy of individual development, whether through the 'triggering'
associated with Universal Grammar theory, or the 'restructuring' associated with cognitive
perspectives. They may, however, be more appealing to language educators, who can find that
socio-cultural theory offers an exhilarating agenda for the renewal of second language
classroom practice.
Therefore, other-regulation normally precedes self-regulation is just a challenging
issue and NOT a shortcoming of SCT (Choice 4 is NOT correct).
ZPD is NOT stable across individuals by default; according to the tenets of dynamic
assessment – a concept closely related to ZPD - abilities are emergent and dynamic not innate
and stable that can be measured; therefore Choice 1 is NOT a shortcoming at all.
The empirical research that have been carried out in the SCT domain has used a varied
range of socio-cultural constructs (private speech, activity theory, scaffolding, the Zone of
Proximal Development) to address a variety of aspects of SLL (from the acquisition of lexis
and grammar, to metacognition and the development of learning strategies, via the development
of skills such as second language writing) (Choice 2 is NOT correct).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Daniel, Martin-Beltran, Peercy, and Silverman (2015, p. 4); Lantolf and Thorne
(2006); Mitchell and Myles (2004, pp. 218-219)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
SLA
65. As to corrective feedback, -----------.
1) recast may be partial and focused on the error
2) metalinguistic explanation should be provided before other types of feedback
3) uptake is successful when the learner repeats his initial sentence
4) implicit feedback is strongly supported in the input model
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Ellis (2012, p. 139) provides a two dimensional classification of corrective feedback strategies.
Two dimensions of corrective feedback strategies (Ellis, 2012, p. 139)
Implicit Explicit
Input-providing CF  Recasts  Explicit correction
Output-prompting CF  Repetition  Metalinguistic clue

 Clarification requests  Elicitation
89
Input-providing CF provides the learners with input indicating target language norms, while
output-prompting CF indicates that an error has been made but does not supply the correct form,
encouraging learners to try to self-correct.
Feedback
Lyster and Ranta (1997) refer to six different types of feedback used by the four teachers in
their study.
1. Explicit correction refers to the explicit provision of the correct form. As the teacher provides
the correct form, he or she clearly indicates that what the student had said was incorrect (e.g.,
“Oh, you mean,” “You should say”).
2. Recasts involve the teacher’s reformulation of all or part of a student’s utterance, minus the
error. Following Doughty (1994a, 1994b), this widely used term from the L1 acquisition
literature has been adopted by Lyster and Ranta. Spada and Froehlich (1995) refer to such
reformulations as “paraphrase” in the COLT scheme; Chaudron (1977) included such moves in
the categories of “repetition with change” and “repetition with change and emphasis.”
Recasts are generally implicit in that they are not introduced by phrases such as “You
mean,” “Use this word,” and “You should say.” However, some recasts are more salient than
others in that they may focus on one word only, whereas others incorporate the grammatical or
lexical modification into a sustained piece of discourse. Recasts also include translations in
response to a student’s use of the L1.
In their initial analysis (Lyster & Ranta, 1995), they included translation as a separate type
of feedback but then combined this category with recasts for two reasons:
First, translation occurred infrequently and, second, when it did occur, translation clearly
served the same function as a recast.
3. Clarification requests, according to Spada and Froehlich (1995, p. 25), indicate to students
either that their utterance has been misunderstood by the teacher or that the utterance is ill-
formed in some way and that a repetition or a reformulation is required. This is a feedback type
that can refer to problems in either comprehensibility or accuracy, or both. Lyster and Ranta
SLA
have coded feedback as clarification requests only when these moves follow a student error. A
clarification request includes phrases such as “Pardon me.” It may also include a repetition of
the error as in “What do you mean by X?”
4. Metalinguistic feedback contains either comments, information, or questions related to the

well-formedness of the student’s utterance, without explicitly providing the correct form.
Metalinguistic comments generally indicate that there is an error somewhere (e.g., “Can you
find your error?”, “Non, “No, not X,” or even just “No.”). Metalinguistic information generally
provides either some grammatical metalanguage that refers to the nature of the error (e.g., “It’s
masculine”) or a word definition in the case of lexical errors. Metalinguistic questions also point
to the nature of the error but attempt to elicit the information from the student (e.g., “Is it
feminine?”).
5. Elicitation refers to at least three techniques that teachers use to directly elicit the correct
form from the student. First, teachers elicit completion of their own utterance by strategically
pausing to allow students to “fill in the blank” as it were. Such “elicit completion” moves may
be preceded by some metalinguistic comment such as “No, not that. It’s a . . .” or by a repetition
of the error. Second, teachers use questions to elicit correct forms (e.g., “How do we say X in
French?”). Such questions exclude the use of yes/no questions: A question such as “Do we say
90
that in French?” is metalinguistic feedback, not elicitation. Third, teachers occasionally ask
students to reformulate their utterance.
6. Repetition refers to the teacher’s repetition, in isolation, of the student’s erroneous utterance.
In most cases, teachers adjust their intonation so as to highlight the error. In addition to the
preceding six feedback types, Lyster and Ranta initially included in their analysis a seventh
category called multiple feedback, which referred to combinations of more than one type of
feedback in one teacher turn. Because this category revealed little information as to the nature
of the combinations, they became interested in examining the various combinations to
determine (a) whether certain combinations tended to occur more than others and (b) whether
one particular type of feedback tended to override others in terms of illocutionary force.
Repetition clearly occurred with all other feedback types with the exception of recasts: in
clarification requests (“What do you mean by X?”), in metalinguistic feedback (“No, not X. We
don’t say X in French.”), in elicitation (“How do we say X in French?”), and in explicit
correction (“We don’t say X in French; we say Y.”). Because repetition was common to these
combined feedback moves, it was the clarification request, metalinguistic feedback, elicitation,
and explicit correction that distinguished them, not the repetition. They thus coded these as
instances of clarification request, metalinguistic feedback, elicitation, and explicit correction,
respectively. Feedback coded as repetition, then, involves the teacher’s repetition, in isolation,
of the student’s error.
Another combination that occurred was recast and metalinguistic feedback. It soon became
evident, however, that such a combination was not “multiple” and necessitated instead the
creation of the category “explicit correction.” That is, as soon as the teacher’s provision of the
correct form is somehow framed metalinguistically, then the characteristics of a recast, along
with its condition of implicitness, no longer apply. Similarly, when elicitation accompanied
either a recast or an explicit correction, this was coded as “explicit correction” in order to
consistently capture in the coding instances where correct forms were explicitly provided:
Finally, there were a few instances of elicitation occurring with metalinguistic feedback. This
was coded as “elicitation” because the elicitation technique prevails in terms of illocutionary
force in that uptake is clearly expected.
SLA
Recasts
Recasts are just one of the several possible corrective strategies that teachers employ to deal
with learner errors. Lyster and Ranta (1997) identified five corrective strategies other than
recasts (i.e. explicit correction, clarification requests, metalinguistic information, elicitation and
repetition):
 Explicit correction: teacher supplies the correct form and clearly indicates what the
student has said was incorrect.
 Recasts: teacher reformulates all or part of the student’s utterance but does not explicitly
say that the student’s utterance is wrong.
 Clarification requests: teacher uses phrases such as “Pardon?” and “I don’t
understand.”
 Metalinguistic information: teacher provides comments, information, or questions
related to well-formedness of the student’s utterance, such as “C’est masculine.”
 Elicitation: teacher directly elicits a reformulation from students by asking questions
such as “How do we say that in French?” or by pausing to allow students to complete
teacher’s utterance, or by asking students to reformulate their utterance.
 Repetition: teacher repeats the student’s ill-formed utterance, adjusting intonation to
highlight the error.
91
Recast is a form of feedback, though they are less direct and more subtle than other forms of
feedback. A recast is a reformulation of an incorrect utterance that maintains the original
meaning of the utterance where the NS reformulates the NNS’s incorrect utterances.
Recasts can take many different forms as Sheen (2006) and Loewen and Philp (2006) have
shown. For example, a recast may occur by itself or in combination with another CF strategy;
it may or may not include prosodic emphasis on the problematic form; it may be performed
with rising intonation (i.e., as a confirmation check) or with falling intonation (i.e., as a
statement); it may be partial (i.e., reformulate only the erroneous segment in the learner’s
utterance) or complete (i.e., reformulate all of it); and it may involve correcting just one or more
than one feature. Depending on the particular way the recast is realized, it may be implicit (as
in the case of full recasts performed in isolation, as a confirmation check, and without any
prosodic emphasis) or much more explicit (as in the case of partial recasts performed in
conjunction with another CF strategy, such as repetition, and as a statement with prosodic
emphasis).
Uptake
‘Uptake’ is a term that has been used to refer to a discourse move where learners respond to
information they have received about some linguistic problem they have experienced. The
move typically occurs following corrective feedback (CF), as in Extract 1.
Extract 1:
1. S: I have an ali[bi].
2. T: you have what?
3. S: an ali[bi].
4. T: an alib-? An alib[ay].
5. S: ali [bay].
6. T: okay, listen, listen, alibi.
7. SS: alibi.
The linguistic problem here arises in turn (1), where a student mispronounces the word ‘alibi’.
The teacher responds in (2) with a request for clarification, signaling that there is a linguistic
SLA
problem. (3) is an uptake move but the student fails to repair the pronunciation error. This
results in explicit correction by the teacher in (4), a further uptake move in (5), which again
fails to repair the error, more explicit correction by the teacher in (6), and a final choral uptake
move in (7), where the class as a whole now pronounces ‘alibi’ correctly. From this example,
it should be clear that uptake following corrective feedback can be of two basic kinds – ‘repair’
(as in turn 7) or ‘needs repair’ (as in turns 3 and 5). Lyster and Ranta (1997) also distinguished
different categories of these two basic types, as shown in the following table.
Types of uptake move (Lyster and Ranta, 1997)
A. Repair
1. Repetition (i.e. the student repeats the teacher’s feedback).
2. Incorporation (i.e. the student incorporates repetition of the correct form in a longer
utterance.
3. Self-repair (i.e. the student corrects the error in response to teacher feedback that did
not supply the correct form).
4. Peer-repair (i.e. a student other than the student who produced the error corrects it in
response to teacher feedback).
92
B. Needs repair
1. Acknowledgement (e.g. the student says ‘yes’ or ‘no’).
2. Same error (i.e. the student produces the same error again).
3. Different error (i.e. the student fails to correct the original error and in addition
produces a different error).
4. Off-target (i.e. the student responds by circumventing the teacher’s linguistic focus).
5. Hesitation (i.e. the student hesitates in response to the teacher’s feedback).
6. Partial repair (i.e. the student partly corrects the initial error).
Ellis, Basturkmen and Loewen (2001) defined ‘uptake’ more broadly. They noted that there
are occasions in communicative lessons where teachers or learners themselves pre-empt
attention to a linguistic feature (e.g. by asking a question). In student initiated exchanges, the
student still has the opportunity to react, for example, by simply acknowledging the previous
move or by attempting to use the feature in focus in his/her own speech. Extract 3 provides an
example of this type of uptake (see turn 3). In teacher-initiated exchanges, learner uptake is also
possible, for example, when the learner repeats the linguistic form that the teacher has identified
as potentially problematic.
Extract 2:
1. S: You can say just January eighteen<th>?
2. T: jan- january eighteen?, January eighteen? Mmm It’s okay, It’s a little casual (.)
casual. Friends (.) January eighteen, okay, but usually January THE eighteenth or
THE eighteenth of January.
3. S: January THE eighteenth.
4. T: the, yeah, good.
To take account of this type of uptake Ellis et al. proposed the following definition:
1. Uptake is a student move.
SLA
2. The move is optional (i.e., a focus on form does not obligate the student to provide an
uptake move).
3. The uptake move occurs in episodes where learners have demonstrated a gap in their
knowledge (e.g. by making an error, by asking a question or by failing to answer a teacher’s
question).
4. The uptake move occurs as a reaction to some preceding move in which another participant
(usually the teacher) either explicitly or implicitly provides information about a linguistic
feature.
It should be noted, however, that most of the research that has examined learner uptake has
been based on the narrower definition (i.e. uptake as the move following corrective feedback).
For more information and similar items, see Year 91, Item 90, and 98; Year 92, Items 7 and 70;
Year 93, Item 13; Year 94, Items 87 and 88; and Year 96, Item 62.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis (2012, pp. 178-181); Ellis (2009); Lyster and Ranta (1997); Mackey
(2007)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
93
66. Anderson’s ACT model has been primarily criticized for -----------.
1) having a cognitive orientation
2) a unilateral movement from declarative to procedural knowledge
3) a UG-based approach to information processing
4) ignoring the concepts of control and automaticity
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
A distinction frequent in the literature of SLA is the difference between declarative and
procedural knowledge or sometimes declarative and procedural memory. Declarative
knowledge is concerned with knowledge about something and declarative memory underlies
learning and storage of facts (e.g., Newfoundland dogs are generally black). With regard to
language, declarative knowledge relates to such aspects of language as word knowledge
(collocation, pronunciation, meaning). In general, this information is relatively accessible to
conscious awareness; that is, we can retrieve that information when called upon to do so.
Procedural knowledge or procedural memory relates to motor and cognitive skills that involve
sequencing information (e.g., playing tennis, producing language). Using language (e.g.,
stringing words together to form and interpret sentences) is thought to involve procedural
knowledge and, unlike declarative knowledge, is relatively inaccessible.
Unilateral Movement from Declarative to Procedural Knowledge

Anderson's (1983) application of his model to first language acquisition has been criticized for
insisting that all knowledge starts out in declarative form (DeKeyser, 1997). This is clearly
problematic in the case of first language learners, as Anderson has accepted in answering some
of these criticisms. With respect to language learning, Anderson does not claim that all
knowledge needs to start as declarative knowledge any longer (Anderson and Fincham, 1994;
MacWhinney and Anderson, 1986). However, other applications, such as to the learning of
algebra, geometry or computer programming, have been very successful. Indeed, it is the
comparability of the teaching or learning of second languages in instructional environments
SLA
with the teaching or learning of complex skills such as algebra that has attracted the attention
of second language acquisition researchers. Because Anderson's model is a general cognitive
model of skill acquisition, it can be applied to those aspects of SLL that require
proceduralization and automatization (Raupach, 1987; O'Malley & Chamot, 1990; Schmidt,
1992; Towell & Hawkins, 1994; Johnson, 1996).
For a similar item, refer to Year 92, Items 83 and 90.

For more information about declarative/procedural distinction, refer to Year 94, Item 75.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis (2008, p. 427-430); Gass and Selinker (2008, p. 242); Mitchell and Myles
(2004, p. 103)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
67. All of the following are among the claims made by a UG approach to SLA EXCEPT -
----------.
1) UG can stop the realization of wild interlanguage grammars
2) negative feedback can be related to the lack of a structure in input
3) there are limits on the effects of input frequency on L2 acquisition
4) the poverty-of-the-stimulus problem can be solved by sufficient input
94
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
What Needs to Be Explained by Theories in SLA?
Observation about the frequency of input:
The claim of UG theory is that certain properties of language are not subject to frequency
effects. Indeed, the idea is the opposite: UG allows learners to acquire properties quite unrelated
to frequency; children achieve certain kinds of knowledge on the basis of little or no input.
The logical problem of L1 acquisition

Chomsky has consistently argued that UG principles are inherently impossible to learn, and that
therefore, they must be innate. They make up the ‘initial state’, and as such provide the basis
that enables a child to acquire a language. This position is based on the view that the input to
which children are exposed is degenerate. It is known as the poverty of the stimulus argument.
The logical problem of language acquisition concerns how all children come to acquire
with ease and complete success a rich and complex body of linguistic knowledge despite both
their lack of cognitive sophistication and insufficient input.
Choice 4 is NOT correct because even if the problem is solved by providing sufficient
input, then the behavioristic fashion of learning will be at work which is the rejection of LAD
introduced by UG.
How is knowledge of language acquired by second language learners?

Based on UG, and from a theoretical point of view, there are different possible scenarios open
to consideration when it comes to the question, “How is knowledge of language acquired by
second language learners?
a. Second language grammars are constrained by Universal Grammar. The second language is
one example of a natural language, and it is constrained by Universal Grammar in the same way
as native grammars are. Within this view, there is a range of different possibilities. For example,
SLA
some researchers believe that second language learners start off with the parameter settings of
their first language, and reset them on the basis of input. Others believe that second language
learners have available to them from the onset the full range of Universal Grammar parameters,
like first language child learners, and do not resort to first language parameter settings in the
first instance. Others still believe that second languages gradually draw on Universal Grammar,
and that (for example) functional categories are not available to learners at the beginning of the
learning process. All these approaches believe that the second language grammar can (but does
not necessarily) become native-like.
b. Universal Grammar does not constrain second-language grammars or Universal Grammar is
impaired. Some researchers believe that second language grammars are fundamentally different
from first language grammars because they are not constrained any longer by Universal
Grammar, and learners have to resort to general learning mechanisms, giving rise to 'wild'
grammars, that is, grammars which do not necessarily conform to the general rules underlying
natural human languages. Other researchers believe that only the principles and parameters
instantiated (activated) in the learners' first language will be available, and that parameter
resetting is impossible. Within this view, the second language grammar is still Universal
Grammar constrained in the sense that it does not violate Universal Grammar principles and
parameters (it is not 'wild'), but it cannot become the same as that of first language speakers of
the same language. There is considerable controversy around all these issues, and there are
95
many representatives of each of these positions in the literature about second language
acquisition.
For similar items, refer to Year 92, item 77; Year 93, Item 80.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis (2008, pp. 591-592); Mitchell and Myles (2004, pp. 55-56); VanPatten and
Williams (2015, pp. 47)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
68. In form-focused instruction, proactive FonF -----------.

1) is rooted in incidental learning of target forms
2) begins when the teacher receives implicit feedback
3) includes techniques such as textual highlighting
4) is based on spontaneous response to learner error
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Form-focused instruction
Form-focused instruction has been operationalized as either proactive or reactive (Doughty &
Williams, 1998; Rebuffot & Lyster, 1996). Proactive form-focused instruction involves pre-
planned instruction designed to enable students to notice and to use target language features
that are otherwise difficult to learn through exposure to classroom input. Reactive form-focused
instruction occurs in response to students' language production during teacher-student
interaction and includes corrective feedback as well as other attempts to draw learners' attention
to the target language.
Since proactive form-focused instruction involves pre-planned instruction of some
linguistic items/information, it is, thus, rooted in “intentional” learning of target forms, and it
is not in response to feedback and learner error. Therefore, choices (1), (2) and (4) are
incorrect.
For explanation, refer to Year 94, Item 88.
SLA
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Hinkel (2005, pp. 673-670); VanPatten and Benati (2015, pp. 116-117)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
69. The claim that “using language to reflect on language produced by the self mediates
L2 learning” -----------.
1) originates from the sociocultural theory of mind
2) is referred to as metapragmatic reflective function
3) was first supported in Long’s interaction model
4) runs counter to the notion of other-regulation
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Output Hypothesis
Doubts about the validity of the Input Hypothesis stressing the importance of comprehensible
input as the cause of language acquisition were raised after a thorough analysis of the outcomes
of immersion projects. It turned out that, despite the fact that immersion students were exposed
to copious quantities of comprehensible input, they displayed considerable difficulties in the
96
area of language production concerning accuracy and appropriacy. Commenting on the results
of the French immersion program in Canada, Swain (1985) pointed out that lower scores of
immersion students stemmed from the fact that they did not speak as much French as English.
What is more, their French teachers, concentrating on message conveyance, did not require or
‘‘push’’ them to use the language that would be accurate, appropriate and coherent. In the light
of the fact that Krashen’s (1985) views on the role of comprehensible input in language learning
were not able to account for the weaknesses of immersion projects, alternative explanations
were sought. One such attempt was the Output Hypothesis formulated by Swain (1985)
following informal and formal observations conducted in immersion classrooms. The main
tenet of the Output Hypothesis (OH) is the assumption that, under certain conditions, language
production (i.e. speaking or writing) is a part of the process of language learning. According to
Swain (1995) output plays the following functions in the acquisition of the target language:
1. Noticing/Triggering Function. This function is manifested if learners, in the course of vocal

or subvocal language production, discover that they do not know how to express the intended
meaning. As Swain (2005, p. 474) puts it, ‘‘(…) the activity of producing the target language
may prompt second language learners to recognize consciously some of their linguistic
problems’’. The importance of this function lies in the fact that such awareness triggers
cognitive processes responsible for generating and consolidating linguistic knowledge. While
producing the language, learners not only notice that they are not able to express what they
want, but they may also notice differences between the target language form and the form they
produce themselves. However, it needs to be remembered that attention to a given form may
differ in its length and depth. For successful acquisition, it is necessary both to pay attention to
forms and also the relationships that exist among them and regulate the ways in which these
forms make a unified whole. On the basis of his study on relativization, Izumi (2002, p. 571)
concluded that it was output processing that enabled learners to conceive the underlying
structure of the form in question, which was accomplished in the course of grammatical
encoding operations. Such operations, whose function is to stimulate integrative processes and
connect separate elements, are performed during the production, not the comprehension
process. The effects of grammatical encoding are quite different from those of grammatical
SLA
decoding since the latter do not result in reorganizing of the form-meaning mappings learners
have established. As Swain (1995, p. 128) states, ‘‘Output may stimulate learners to move from
the semantic, open-ended non-deterministic, strategic processing prevalent in comprehension
to the complete grammatical processing needed for accurate production. Output, thus, would
seem to have potentially significant role in the development of syntax and morphology’’.
2. Hypothesis Testing Function. Corder (1981) proposed that learners formulate hypotheses
concerning the structural features of the target language on the basis of the data derived from
the input they are exposed to. The newly formed hypotheses are confirmed if the forms
produced on their basis are accepted and do not lead to a breach of communication. They are
disconfirmed, in turn, if the message is misunderstood or the utterance corrected (Ellis 1994, p.
352). The proponents of the Output Hypothesis (Pica et al. 1989; Swain 1995; Loewen 2002;
Mackey 2002) observe that changes in the output result from different forms of feedback:
clarification requests, confirmation checks, or incidental focus on form. The key assumption
underlying the utility of output restructuring is that it constitutes part of the language learning
process. Swain (2005) cites the findings included in the unpublished dissertations of Mackey
(2002) and Storch (2001) who attempted to establish whether the production of modified output
facilitates L2 learning. In the analysis she presents, the learning effect of output production is
explained by the fact that output stimulates processes involved in language learning and that
97
modified output has priming effects on subsequent output. Since priming leads to the repetition
of a syntactic form, it may result in automatic retrieval of that form.
3. Metalinguistic/Reflective Function. The principal assumption here is that second language

learning can be mediated by the language used to reflect on the language produced by the
self and others. At the beginning, language is regulated by others and only at a later time do
the regulatory mechanisms become internalized by an individual. Thus, engagement in a
conversation, which entails internalization of operations on language data into one’s own
mental activity, becomes an act of learning. The problem-solving dialogue performed by
learners collaboratively in an attempt to solve a linguistic problem becomes a part of an
individual student’s mental reality and helps them deal with problems on their own. As Swain
(2005, p. 478) states ‘‘Collaborative dialogue is thus dialogue in which speakers are engaged
in problem solving and knowledge building—in the case of second language learners, solving
linguistic problems and building knowledge about language’’. The very act of articulation or
verbalization of thought is believed to reshape experience. What is more, the newly formulated
idea is now available for further reflection by others or the self. The questions or doubts it raises
allow elimination of possible inconsistencies and gradual refinement of ideas. Language
production thus becomes a potent cognitive tool that enables internalization and mediates
thinking (Swain 2005, p. 478).
Most of Swain’s concepts have origins in the Socio-Cultural theory of language learning.
For more information, refer to Year 92, Item 71.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Mystkowska-Wiertelak and Pawlak (2012, pp. 54-55); VanPatten and Williams
(2015, pp. 184, 186)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
70. Interlanguage pragmatic development involves the acquisition of pragmalinguistic

competence which -----------.
1) encompasses knowledge of social power, distance, and imposition
SLA
2) deals with the social appropriacy of speech acts
3) needs the ability for use of conventions of forms
4) can be developed only if instruction involves elicitation of output
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Pragmatics, the ability to act and interact by means of language, is a necessary and sometimes
daunting learning task for second and foreign language learners.
Developing Pragmatic Competence

Sociopragmatic and Pragmalinguistic Competence
The challenge that learners face in acquiring the pragmatics of a second language is
considerable because they have to learn (to paraphrase Austin, 1962) not only how to do things
with target language words but also how communicative actions and the "words" that
implement them are both responsive to and shape situations, activities, and social relationships.
Following Leech (1983), these two intersecting domains of pragmatic competence are referred
to as sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic competence.
98
Sociopragmatic competence encompasses knowledge of the relationships between

communicative action and power, social distance, and the imposition associated with a past or
future event (Brown & Levinson, 1987), knowledge of mutual rights and obligations, taboos,
and conventional practices (Thomas, 1983), or quite generally, the social conditions and
consequences of "what you do, when and to whom" (Fraser, Rintell & Walters, 1981). Whereas
sociopragmatics describes the interface between pragmatics and social organization,
pragmalinguistics focuses on the intersection of pragmatics and linguistic forms (Leech,
1983). Hence, pragmalinguistic competence comprises the knowledge and ability for use of
conventions of means (such as the strategies for realizing speech acts) and conventions of
form (such as the linguistic forms implementing speech act strategies; Clark, 1979; Thomas,
1983). Becomıng pragmatically competent can be understood as the process of establishing
sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic competence and the increasing ability to understand and
produce sociopragmatic meanings with pragmalinguistic conventions. From cognitive-
psychological and social-psychological perspectives, interlanguage pragmatics research has
investigated how the process of becoming pragmatically competent in a second or foreign
language is influenced by such factors as input, noticing and understanding, L2 proficiency,
transfer, and individual differences. In contrast, theories of L2 (pragmatic) learning as social
practice explore the interrelationship of sociopolitical contexts, social identities, and
participation opportunities in L2 pragmatic learning (cf. Kasper, 2001b; Kasper & Rose, 2002).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Hinkel (2005, pp. 317-318)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
71. Bialystok’s theory of L2 learning differs from Krashen’s in that the former-----------.
1) emphasized the sufficiency of minimal exposure
2) allows for explicit knowledge to become implicit
3) represents a non-interface position
4) rejects the suitability of formal practicing for knowledge construction
Answer: 2
SLA
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Explanation:
The Interface Issue
The interface issue concerns the relationship between explicit and implicit L2 knowledge.
1. The Non-Interface Position

This is the position promulgated by Krashen (1981), who views explicit and implicit knowledge
as entirely distinct and thus dismisses the possibility of the former transforming into the latter.
‘Learning,’ a conscious, intentional process, results in explicit knowledge; ‘acquisition’, an
unconscious, incidental process results in implicit knowledge. Krashen acknowledges only a
limited role for explicit instruction - to help learners “earn” a few simple grammatical rules that
they can then use to monitor their production when they are focused on form and have time to
do so. In effect, the non-interface position rejects any major role for explicit grammar
instruction in L2 acquisition.
2. The Strong Interface Position

This claims that acquisition (especially by adult learners) commences with explicit, declarative
knowledge which is then transformed into implicit knowledge through practice (Dekeyser,
1998). This position draws on skill-acquisition theory. It constitutes the primary theoretical
99
justification for PPP as it claims that explicit instruction can “bridge” the gap between explicit
and implicit knowledge. It should be noted, however, that DeKeyser sees little merit in
controlled practice activities. He argued that learners need to use their explicit knowledge as a
'crutch' while struggling to use the target structure in communication.
3. The Weak Interface Position

This makes two claims. The first is that explicit knowledge evolves into implicit knowledge but
only if the learner is ready to acquire the targeted feature. The second is that even if this does
not occur immediately, explicit knowledge can facilitate cognitive processes such as noticing
and noticing-the-gap (Schmidt, 1990) and so facilitate the long-term development of implicit
knowledge.
Ellis (1993) has drawn on the weak interface position to argue that explicit instruction
should be restricted to helping learners form explicit knowledge and left it to the learner to use
this knowledge to assist subsequent development of implicit knowledge. According to the weak
interface position, then, PPP will only be effective if it is timed to coincide with the learners'
readiness to acquire the target structure, which is impractical in most teaching contexts. It
supports the use of consciousness-raising and interpretation tasks, deployed without any
supporting practice activities, to assist learners to develop explicit knowledge of target features
and notice them in the input.
These different positions support radically different views about explicit language
instruction. The non-interface position proposes that explicit instruction is of little value. The
strong interface position supports the view dominant in language pedagogy, namely that a
grammatical structure should be first presented explicitly and then practiced until it can be
used accurately in free production. The underlying assumption of a grammatical syllabus aimed
at implicit knowledge is that a strong interface is possible. The weak interface position
supports an approach based on teaching explicit knowledge to assist learners to attend to
grammatical input and thus facilitate the acquisition of implicit knowledge over time.
In brief, with regard to whether learning will lead to or help acquisition or not, there are three
positions:
SLA
1. The non-interface hypothesis: Krashen (1981) remarks learning that cannot contribute to
acquisition.
2. The strong interface hypothesis: This hypothesis is based on the idea that explicit
knowledge becomes implicit through proceduralization. Hence, he believes that all learned
knowledge becomes acquired knowledge after enough staying with the knowledge or
practice.
3. The weak hypothesis: Explicit knowledge “might” promote the development of implicit
knowledge since it plays the role of a facilitator of intake by providing the ability to notice
details in the input.
Regarding Choice (3), according to the Interface Hypothesis, instruction facilitates acquisition
by (1) supplying learners with conscious rules, and (2) providing practice to enable them to
convert this conscious, 'controlled' knowledge into 'automatic' knowledge. Sharwood Smith
(1981) built on the work of Bialystok and McLaughlin in order to develop a full interface
model. He claimed that it is quite clear and uncontroversial to say that most spontaneous
performance is attained by dint of practice" (1981: 166). DeKeyser (1998) made a similar claim,
drawing on skill-building theory; Declarative knowledge is converted into procedural
knowledge by means of practice that involves the learner in communicative behavior.
100
For similar items, refer to Year 92, Item 78; Year 95, Item 24; and Year 96, Item 67.
For Bialystok’s theory, refer to Year 91, item 93; and specifically to Year 92, Item 78.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Celce-Murcia et al. (2014, pp. 36-37); Ellis (2008, pp. 421-422); Gass and
Selinker (2008, p. 453)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
72. In Schmidt’s position about consciousness, -----------.

1) some degree of consciousness is necessary for noticing
2) consciousness is a prerequisite for perception
3) noticing the gap is not necessarily conscious
4) understanding involves conscious and unconscious analyses
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The Noticing Hypothesis –a hypothesis that input does not become intake for language learning
unless it is noticed, that is, consciously registered (Schmidt, 1990, 2001)— has been around
now for about two decades and continues to generate experimental studies, suggestions for L2
pedagogy, and controversy. Schmidt (1990, 1994, 2001) claimed that attention to input is a
conscious process. He viewed noticing (i.e. registering formal features in the input) and
noticing-the-gap (i.e. identifying how the input to which the learner is exposed differs from the
output the learner is able to generate) as essential processes in L2 acquisition.
Specifically, he claims that the only linguistic elements in the input that learners can acquire
are those elements that they notice. By noticing, Schmidt means that learners are paying
attention, that there is some level of awareness in learning. He contrasts this to implicit learning,
learning without awareness, subliminal learning, and other scenarios. In many respects,
Schmidt’s claim is a reaction to Krashen’s idea that acquisition involves subconscious learning.
Because Schmidt believes in some level of awareness on the part of the learner, he tends to
reject a major role for any kind of implicit or unconscious learning. The concept of noticing
SLA
and the role of noticing are not universally accepted within SLA and remain controversial.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis (2008, p. 265); VanPatten and Benati (2015, p. 152)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
73. The competition model of second language acquisition does NOT lend support to the
idea that -----------.
1) the human capacity for language learning is non-specific
2) grammar emerges from input-cognition interaction
3) form-function mappings vary in different languages
4) competence has priority over performance in L1 and L2 acquisition
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Competition Model
The competition model is another emergentist theory of L2 acquisition and is entirely
compatible with connectionist theory, as MacWhinney (2001) explicitly recognized. It can also
be seen as a functionalist model and like other such models seeks to account for the kind of
101
knowledge that underlies real-time processing in real-world language behavior, although it has
been investigated by means of experimental studies which elicited rather artificial language
responses. It also resembles other functionalist models in that it is interactionist; that is, the
learner's grammar is viewed as resulting from the interaction between input and cognitive
mechanisms relating to perceptual abilities, channel capacity, and memory.
Central to the model is the idea of form-function mappings. As MacWhinney, Bates, and
Kligell (1984) put it: ‘the forms of natural languages are created, governed, constrained,
acquired and used in the service of communicative functions. Any one form may realize through
a number of functions and, conversely, any one function can be realized through a number of
forms. The learner’s task is to discover the particular form-function mappings that characterize
the target language. Form-function mappings are characterized as being of varying
strengths in different languages. This is usually illustrated with reference to the function of
‘agency’, which has a number of possible formal exponents:
1) Word order: in the case of transitive constructions, the first noun mentioned in a clause is
likely to function as the agent. For example, in the English sentence Mary kissed John, ‘Mary’
is the agent.
2) Agreement: the noun phrase which functions as agent may agree in number with the verb.
Thus, in English, a singular noun phrase functioning as agent takes a singular verb form (e.g.,
She likes ice-cream), while a plural noun phrase takes a plural verb form (e.g., They like ice-
cream). The object of the sentence has no effect on the verb form.
3) Case: the noun phrase functioning as agent may be morphologically marked in some way.
For example, the agent is signaled in German by nominative case marking on the article,
while the object is signaled by means of accusative case marking (e.g., Der Mann isst den
Apfel = The man is eating the apple).
4) Animacy: agents are normally animate, patients are normally inanimate. Any one language
is likely to utilize several devices for signaling the ‘agent’ of a sentence. English, for example,
uses all four, as illustrated in these sentences:
Mary kissed John. (word order)
Money they like. (agreement)
SLA
She kissed him. (case)
This book Mary likes a lot. (animacy)
However, a language is likely to assign different weights to these devices in terms of the
probability of their use in signaling a given function. English, as the above examples show,
relies primarily on word order to encode agency, while Russian uses case marking, and
Japanese, animacy. Like variability models, the Competition Model (CM) is probabilistic in
nature. The model takes its name from the ‘competition’ that arises from the different devices
or cues that signal a particular function. For example, in a sentence like that lecturer we like a
lot there is competition between ‘lecturer’, ‘we’, and ‘lot’ for the role agent of the verb. ‘Lot’
rapidly loses out because, unlike ‘lecturer’ and ‘we’, it is inanimate, and because it follows
rather than precedes the verb. The candidacy of ‘lecturer’ is promoted by its position in the
sentence—it is the first noun—but, ultimately, this cue is not strong enough to overcome two
other cues. ‘We’ is the strongest candidate for agent because it is nominative in case and because
it agrees in number with the verb.
The task facing the L2 learner is to discover (1) which forms are used to realize which
functions in the L2, and (2) what weights to attach to the use of individual forms in the
performance of specific functions. This is what is meant by form-function mapping. The input
supplies the learner with cues of our broad types: word order, vocabulary, morphology, and
102
intonation. The usefulness of a cue is determined by several factors: (1) cue reliability (the
extent to which a cue always maps the same form onto the same function), (2) cue availability
(how often the cue is available in the input), and (3) conflict validity (whether a cue 'wins' or
'loses' when it appears in competitive environments). For example, if we consider the
information available to the L2 learner regarding the role of word order in realizing agency in
English, we can characterize this 'cue' as relatively reliable (the noun phrase preceding the verb
is typically the agent) and readily available (the input is likely to supply plentiful examples of
this mapping). Also, in English, word order tends to override other cues (except agreement).
Thus, in a sentence like 'Mary bit the dog, Mary is the agent, even though experience of the
world might lead one to suspect that 'the dog' is the more likely agent. As MacWhinney (2001)
put it, the Competition Model 'provides a minimalist, empiricist prediction for the ways in
which cues are acquired' (p.76).
Non-specificity of Human Capacity for Language Learning

Ellis (1994, p. 373) states that like other functionalist models and unlike linguistic models
associated with Universal Grammar, the Competition Model sees the human capacity for
language learning as non-specific (i.e. as resulting from general cognitive mechanisms
involved in other kinds of learning). Hence, the Competition Model is based on General
Nativism (as opposed to the special/linguistic nativism of Chomsky)
Competition Model as a Model of Linguistic Performance

As for Choice (4), Bates and MacWhinney (1987, pp. 159-160) state that the Competition
Model is a particular instantiation of a general functionalist approach to language performance
and language acquisition. AS defined by MacWhinney, Bates, and Kliegl (1984, p. 128),
functionalism is the belief that “The forms of natural languages are created, governed,
constrained, acquired and used in the service of communicative functions.”
Bates and MacWhinney (1987, p. 160) add that the competition model makes functionalist
claims about language acquisition, and that is NOT offered as a formal model of linguistic
competence but rather as a model of linguistic performance. This concentration of performance
has one particularly important implication: In modelling the differences among natural
SLA
languages, our goal is to provide an explicit account not only for the kinds of discrete “yes or
no” phenomena that play a role in traditional linguistic models, but also for the probabilistic
differences between natural languages that are observed in real-time language use. In other
words, we are focusing on cross-linguistic variation in the mapping between form and function
in language comprehension, production, and acquisition.
Hence, the Competition Model is not a formal model of linguistic competence, but of
performance. Therefore, Choice (4) is incorrect.
For more information regarding Choice 4, refer to Year 93, Item 82.
For similar items, refer to Year 91, Item 63; Year 92, Item 73; Year 93, Item 82; and Year 94,
Item 76.
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 See also: Ellis (2008, pp. 474-477); MacWhinney (1987, pp. 159-160)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
74. The relexification principle is an operating principle in SLA -----------.

1) referring to the use of L1 structures with L2 lexical items
2) reflecting the overgeneralization of lexical meanings
3) encoding the form-meaning relationship in the input
4) indicating the one-to-one correspondence between meaning and surface form
103
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Operating principles in second language acquisition
In second language acquisition, operating principles have been investigated by Andersen (see
Andersen, 1984, 1990, 1991; Andersen & Shirai, 1994). Andersen's principles are based on
those of Slobin, but are then adapted to the learning of second languages (Andersen, 1990, pp.
51-63).
1. The one-to-one principle
2. The multifunctionality principle
3. The principle of formal determinism
4. The principle of distributional bias
5. The relevance principle
6. The transfer to somewhere principle
7. The relexification principle: when you cannot perceive the structural pattern used by the
language you are trying to acquire, use your native language structure with lexical items from
the second language. Example:
Japanese learners of English sometimes use Japanese SOV word order in English in the
early stages, with English lexical items.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Mitchell and Myles (2004, pp. 118-120)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
75. In a functional perspective on SLA, -----------.

1) function-form analysis substitutes form-function analysis
2) analysis is primarily confined to the development of speech acts
3) the distinction between pragmatic and syntactic modes is rejected
4) communicative need motivates interlanguage development
Answer: 4
SLA
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Functionalist views of L2 knowledge
Functionalist theories of L2 acquisition share a number of concerns with variability theories.
For instance, both are concerned not just with how linguistic knowledge is represented in the
mind of the learner, but also with how this knowledge is used in discourse. Also, both types
assume that syntax cannot be considered separately from semantics and pragmatics and, as
such, are opposed to accounts of L2 acquisition based on a clear distinction between linguistic
and pragmatic competence (for example, Gregg, 1989).
Rather than making the formal linguistic system their starting point, these researchers are
centrally concerned with the ways in which second language learners set about making
meaning, and achieving their personal communicative goals. They argue that the great variety
of interlanguage forms produced by second language learners cannot be sensibly interpreted
unless we pay attention also to the speech acts (Choice 2 is Not correct) that learners are
seeking to perform, and to the ways they exploit the immediate social, physical and discourse
context to help them make meaning. Further, it is argued that these meaning-making efforts on
the part of learners are a driving force in ongoing second language development, which interacts
with the development of formal grammatical systems. The reader should note that the term
'functional' is being used here in a different sense from the way it is used in recent Chomskyan
104
theory. Here, we follow the definition offered by Rispoli (1999, p. 222), 'Functionalism in
linguistics is the explication and explanation of grammatical structure in which semantic and
pragmatic constructs are integral'. The functionalist tradition is well established in SLL theory.
Its fundamental claim is that language development is driven by pragmatic communicative
needs, and that the formal resources of language are elaborated in order to express more
complex patterns of meaning.
In a functionalist model, learning a language is seen as a process of mastering a number
of fundamental functions of language-spatial and temporal reference, for example-and the
linguistic means for conveying them. Thus, from this perspective, L2 knowledge is comprised
of a network of form-function mappings. Initially the network is a relatively simple one but t it
gradually complexifies as the learner acquires new L2 forms, matches these to existing
functions and uses them to realize new functions.
This functional view of interlanguage development is closely associated with the work of
Klein and Perdue. According to Klein (1991) language acquisition is functionally driven:
It is... functions... which drive the learner to break down parts of the input and to
organize them into small subsystems, which are reorganized whenever a new piece
from the flood of input is added, until eventually the target system is reached (or
more or less approximated).
(p. 220)
Perdue (1991) reported a study demonstrating how this takes place. As part of the European
science foundation project on adult second language acquisition, the study examined how two
learners handled spatial and temporal reference. Initially, the learners acquired a few simple
words to express 'essential' reference and relations (for example, 'up’/'above' and 'left’/‘right'),
they used transparent form-meaning relationships, they decomposed complex relations into
simpler ones (for example, instead of between two chairs' they used circumlocutions like 'side
of chair, side of other chair, middle'), and they relied on the inferencing capacities of their
interlocutors. This was characteristic of a pre-basic variety. Some learners progress beyond this
by grammaticalizing their interlanguage but other learners do not. Perdue and Klein (1992)
reported on a study of two adult Italian learners of L2 English in London, who differed in the
extent to which their interlanguages became 'grammaticalized' over time. Both learners began
SLA
by producing very simple utterances, but whereas one of the learners, Andrea, proceeded to
'grammaticalize his speech over a period of about 20 months (for example, by developing
systematic verb morphology and case markings), the other, Santo, maintained the 'basic variety'
throughout.
Functionalist researchers such as Perdue and Klein also emphasize the importance of
discourse-contextual constraints on linguistic representation and interlanguage development. As
Perdue (2000) put it the learner has to learn how to reconcile the informational structure with the
linguistic means available, and if this is not possible to acquire further means' (pp. 301-2). Like
Klein and Perdue, Givón (1979) also saw syntax as inextricably linked to discourse-it is 'a
dependent, functionally motivated entity in the sense that its formal properties reflect its
communicative uses. He distinguished two types of language, reflecting two different types of
interlanguage system. There are the loose, paratactic structures found in informal/unplanned
discourse, which constitute the 'pragmatic mode (later referred to as the 'pre-grammatical mode'
in Givón I995). There are also the tight, grammaticalized' structures found in formal/planned
discourse, which constitute the 'syntactic mode' (later called the 'grammatical mode'). (Choice 3
is NOT correct) An example of the former is the topic-comment structure of an utterance like:
Ice cream, I like it.
while an example of the latter is the subject-predicate structure of an utterance like:
I like ice cream.
105
Givón argued that learners progressively syntacticize their interlanguages as they move from a
pre-grammatical to a grammatical mode. However, they retain access to the pre-grammatical
mode which they employ when the conditions are appropriate. Givón also argued that other
aspects of language – such as the historical evolution of languages and creolization – are also
characterized by the same process of syntactization.
Functional Analyses
Functional analyses are of two kinds; form-function analysis in which a specific form is
selected and the meanings that form realizes are analyzed; and function-form analysis in which
a certain language function is selected and the linguistic forms that perform that function are
identified. In other words, we can distinguish between two types of functional analyses: Form-
function analysis and function-form analysis. On the one hand, when conducting a form-
function analysis, the researcher starts from a linguistic form and then investigates the meanings
this form can realize in a sample of learner language. On the other hand, in a function-form
analysis, the researcher selects a language function and, analyzing the samples, identifies the
forms that can be used to perform such a function.
Regarding Choice (1), Bardovi-Harlig (2015) states that functionalist approaches to
language hold that language is primarily used for communication and does not exist without
language users. Functionalism views language in terms of form-to-function and function-
to-form mappings. Functional approaches to second language acquisition investigate such
mappings in interlanguage and are especially interested in how these change over time in the
developing interlanguage system. (VanPatten & Willimas, 2015, p. 54).
Thus, Choice 1 is NOT correct. Also refer to Year 94, Item 84.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis (2008, pp. 415-417); Mitchell and Myles (2004, pp. 131-132, 154)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
76. The morpheme studies in the 1970s -----------.

1) were predominantly shaped by government and binding theory
SLA
2) have been criticized for ignoring the L1 natural order
3) employed obligatory occasion analysis
4) focused on a variant order of acquisitional grammatical features
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Methods for investigating developmental patterns
There are a number of different ways in which researchers can set about trying to identify
developmental patterns. One way is to examine whether learners' errors change over time. There
is some evidence to show that this does happen, but as we saw in the last chapter, error analysis
has not succeeded in providing clear and conclusive evidence of developmental patterns. A
second way is to examine samples of learner language collected over a period of time in order to
identify when specific linguistic features emerge. According to this approach, acquisition' is
defined as 'first occurrence. It has been used extensively in first language acquisition research (for
example, Wells 1985) and to a lesser extent in SLA research (for example, Pienemann 1984).
One common method for identifying and describing developmental patterns is obligatory
occasion analysis. This has been widely used by L2 acquisition researchers and is clearly
described in Brown (1973). The basic procedure is as follows. First, samples of naturally
106
occurring learner language are collected. Second, obligatory occasions for the use of specific TL
features are identified in the data. In the course of using the L2, learners produce utterances which
create obligatory occasions for the use of specific target-language features, although they may
not always supply the features in question. Thus, if a learner says: 'My sister visited us yesterday'
or ‘My father arrive yesterday', obligatory occasions for the use of past -ed have been created in
both utterances. Third, the percentage of accurate use of the feature is then calculated by
establishing whether the feature in question has been supplied in all the contexts in which it is
required. A criterion level of accuracy can then be determined in order to provide an operational
definition of whether a feature has been 'acquired'. Usually, the level is set at 80-90 per cent,
below 100 per cent, to take account of the fact that even adult native speakers may not achieve
complete accuracy. Brown (1973) considered a feature to be 'acquired' if it was performed at the
90 per cent level on three consecutive data collection points-a very rigorous definition.
One problem with obligatory occasion analysis is that it takes no account of when a learner
uses a feature in a context for which it is not obligatory in the T TL. For example, the learner
who says *I studied last night and now I understood better' has overgeneralized the past tense,
using it where the TL requires the present tense. Clearly, acquisition of a feature such as past
tense requires mastering not only when to use it but also when not to use it. To take account of
over-uses as well as misuses a number of researchers (for example, Pica 1983) have suggested
a procedure known as target-like use analysis. Pica (1984) has shown that substantial
differences in estimates of learners' abilities arise depending on whether obligatory occasion or
target-like use analysis is employed.
Both obligatory occasion and target-like use analysis are target-language-based – that is,
like error analysis, they seek to compare learner language and the TL – and thus reflect the
comparative fallacy (Bley-Vroman, 1983). That is, they ignore the fact that learners create their
own unique rule systems in the process of learning an L2. One way of investigating these is to
catalogue the various linguistic devices that learners use to express a particular grammatical
structure (such as negatives) and then to calculate the frequency with which each device is used
at different points in the learners' development. (See, for example, Cazden et al. 1975.) This
method is called frequency analysis or interlanguage analysis. It is able to show the vertical
variation' in learners' development (.e. how different devices become prominent at different
SLA
stages) and serves as one of the best ways of examining developmental sequences.
Many of the related studies are longitudinal, involving data collection over a period of
many months and, in some cases (for example, Schmidt 1983) several years. Such studies
provided the strongest evidence of developmental patterns. In addition, there have been a
number of cross-sectional studies (i.e., data were collected only at a single point in time). In
order to make claims about the order of acquisition on the basis of cross-sectional data,
researchers resorted to a number of statistical procedures. Some researchers argued that the
accuracy order with which different features were performed corresponded to their acquisition
order (for example, Dulay and Burt 1973, 1974c) (examples of the morpheme studies in the
1970s). Thus, for example, if the data showed that short plural -s (as in 'boys) was performed
more accurately than long plural -es (as in churches), then this indicated that the short plural
form was acquired before the long plural form. An alternative procedure for establishing order
of acquisition from cross-sectional data involves implicational scaling. This technique was first
used in Creole studies (Decamp, 1971). It seeks to exploit the inter-learner variability that exists
in a corpus of learner language in order to establish which features different learners have
acquired and whether the features can be arranged into a hierarchy according to whether the
acquisition of one feature implies the acquisition of one or more other features for each learner.
For interested readers, Hatch and Farhady (1982) provide a clear explanation of how
implicational scaling is carried out.
107
The existence of developmental patterns can be investigated in different areas of language:

linguistic (phonological, lexical, and grammatical), semantic, and functional.
For more information about the morpheme studies in the 1970s (to find out why Choices
1, 2, and 4 are NOT correct), refer to Year 93, Item 76.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis (2008, pp. 68-69); Mitchell and Myles (2004, pp. 39-40, 43-44)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
77. Interference from the L1 in the acquisition of pragmatic competence -----------.

1) can reveal itself in speech act realization strategies
2) is reflected in the universal aspects of pragmatics
3) is realized most clearly in typological universals
4) can be studied through uncontrolled methods such as discourse completion tasks
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
According to Erickson (1984), there are three categories of pragmatic failure. First, at the level
of explicit, referential meanings, there can be inappropriate transfer of speech act realization
strategies or of expressions from the L1 to the L2 that can be interpreted differently. This is
termed pragmalinguistic failure, which involves differences in the linguistic encoding of
pragmatic meaning or force. This type is usually due to transfer or interference from the first
language and can be observed in the linguistic forms used to, for example, apologize, to enact
politeness, or to hedge a request. The differences may arise in the additional phrases that
accompany, for example, an apology. Bergman and Kasper (1993) studied speech act by native
speakers of Thai and of English as well as nonnative Thai speakers of English, where they
considered such features as the role of contextual factors in choice of apology strategies by
those three speaker groups. The apology strategies could vary along several scales: severity of
the offense, obligation to apologize, degree of offense to the addressee’s face, social distance
between the participants, and the need to take responsibility. Bergman and Kasper found
SLA
differences in the use of apology routines by the three groups in their data collection. In
particular, 50 percent of the apology routine use by the Thai nonnative English speakers
reflected transfer from Thai apology patterns. Nonnative English speakers may express surprise
when they hear Americans use the word “sorry” when giving condolences to someone whose
family member has recently passed away.
The second category of pragmatic failure – sociopragmatic failure – refers to mismatches
in terms of the implied social meaning of a word, phrase, or speech act. The mismatches derive
from divergent assessments of the social aspects of the context of utterance, such as the social
distance between the speaker and addressee and the rights and obligations of speakers and
listeners. One example involves the assumption that calling a senior faculty member by his first
name entitles the graduate student to telephone that person at his home late in the evening or
during the weekend.
Third, there can be misattribution or faulty assessment of other participants’ intentions,
competence, and background knowledge. In this category, the presuppositions underlying
speaker meaning need to be unpacked. In the north of England, postal clerks, both male and
female, may address their regular customers with “Morning, luv, what can I do for you?”
Customers not used to the word “luv” may take offence, seeing the male clerk, in particular, as
sexist or too familiar with the woman customer. The effect of misunderstandings of this sort in
cross-cultural or regional cultural contact environments is to attribute them to personality flaws
108
(someone may be regarded as rude as the result of her or his personal communication style). Or
the discomfort may be due to ethnocultural origins, thereby stigmatizing or stereotyping all
members of an ethnic group (Tannen, 1986).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: LoCastro (2012, pp. 84-85).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
78. It is NOT true that the acculturation model -----------.

1) considers psychological distance to include language shock
2) regards acculturation as the cognitive aspect of second language acquisition
3) was based on the language development of an immigrant in an ESL context
4) assumes that more contact results in more acquisition
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The Acculturation Model
Schumann's acculturation model was established to account for the acquisition of an L2 by
immigrants in majority language settings. It specifically excludes learners who receive formal
instruction. The model recognizes the developmental nature of L2 acquisition and seeks to
explain differences in learners' rate of development and also in their ultimate level of
achievement in terms of the extent to which they adapt to the target-language culture.
Acculturation, which can be defined generally as 'the process of becoming adapted to a
new culture' (Brown 1980, p. 129), is seen by Schumann as governing the extent to which
learners achieve target-language norms. As Schumann put it:
... second language acquisition is just one aspect of acculturation and the degree to which
a learner acculturates to the target-language group will control the degree to which he
acquires the second language.
(1978a, p. 34)
In fact, Schumann (1986) distinguished two kinds of acculturation, depending on whether the
SLA
learner views the second language group as a reference group or not. Both types involve social
integration and therefore contact with the second language group but in the first type, learners
wish to assimilate fully into its way of life, whereas in the second they do not. Schumann argued
that both types of acculturation are equally effective in promoting L2 acquisition.
Schumann proposed the Acculturation Model as a means of accounting for the apparent
fossilization of one of the six learners (Choice 3) studied by Cazden, Cancino, Rosansky, and
Schumann (1975). Whereas the other five manifested considerable development over the 10-
month period of the study, Schumann (1978b) claimed that Alberto did not advance in most of
the structural areas investigated. Alberto's lack of development could not be satisfactorily
explained by either his cognitive abilities, as he demonstrated normal intelligence, or age, as
many older learners achieve satisfactory levels of L2 proficiency. The problem appeared to be
that he had a very limited need to communicate in the L2.
The extent to which learners acculturate depends on two sets of factors which determine
their levels of social distance and psychological distance (Schumann 1978a, 1978b, 1978c).
Social distance concerns the extent to which individual learners become members of the target-
language group and, therefore, achieve contact with them. Psychological distance concerns the
extent to which individual learners are comfortable with the learning task and constitutes,
therefore, a personal rather than a group dimension. The various social and psychological
factors which Schumann identified as important are described in the following table. The social
109
factors are primary. The psychological factors mainly come into play where social distance is
indeterminate (i.e. where social factors constitute neither a clearly positive nor a negative
influence on acculturation).
Factors affecting social and psychological distance (based on Schumann, 1978b)

Factor Description
Social distance
1. Social dominance The L2 group can be politically, culturally, technically, or
economically superior (dominant), inferior (subordinate), or equal.
2. Integration pattern The L2 group may assimilate (i.e. give up its own lifestyle and values
in favor of those of TL group), seek to preserve its lifestyle and values,
or acculturate (Choice 2) (i.e. adopt lifestyle and values of TL group,
while maintaining its own for intra-group use).
3. Enclosure The L2 group may share the same social facilities (low enclosure) or
may have different social facilities (high enclosure).
4. Cohesiveness The L2 group is characterized by intra-group contacts (cohesive) or
inter-group contacts (non-cohesive).
5. Size The L2 group may constitute a numerically large or small group.
6. Cultural congruence The culture of the L2 group may be similar or different from that of the
TL group.
7. Attitude The L2 group and TL group may hold positive or negative attitudes
towards each other.
8. Intended length of The L2 group may intend to stay for a long time or a short time.
residence
Psychological distance
1. Language shock The extent to which L2 learners fear they will look comic in speaking
(Choice 1) the L2.
2. Culture shock The extent to which L2 learners feel anxious and disorientated upon
SLA
entering a new culture.
3. Motivation The extent to which L2 learners are integratively (most important) or
instrumentally motivated to learn the L2.
4. Ego-permeability The extent to which L2 learners perceive their L1 to have fixed and
rigid or permeable and flexible boundaries and therefore the extent to
which they are inhibited.
A learning situation can be bad' or 'good' (Schumann, 1978c). An example of a 'good' learning
situation is when (1) the L2 and TL groups view each other as socially equal, (2) both groups
are desirous that the L2 group assimilate, (3) there is low enclosure, (4) the L2 group lacks
cohesion, (5) the group is small, (6) both groups display positive attitudes towards each other,
and (7) the L2 group envisages staying in the TL area for an extended period. Several ‘bad'
learning situations are possible, as many of the social variables permit three-way alternatives.
Also, different learning situations manifest degrees of badness' in accordance with the extent of
the overall social distance.
In his early writings, Schumann suggested that acculturation affects L2 acquisition by its
effect on the amount of contact learners have with TL speakers: the greater the contact, the
more acquisition takes place (Choice 4). Subsequently, Schumann (1986) proposed that
acculturation may also affect the nature of the verbal interactions that learners take part in and
110
thus the quality as well as the quantity of L2 input. The Acculturation Model, however, does
not specify the internal processes that are involved in acquisition.
The test of any model is whether it is supported by the results of empirical research. The
Acculturation Model has received only limited support, as Schumann (1986) acknowledged.
A number of theoretical objections have also been lodged against the model. (See Larsen-
Freeman and Long 1991.) A major concern is Schumann's assumption that it is contact that
mediates the relationship between social distance and acquisition. It is not clear to what extent
more contact correlates with higher levels of acquisition.
However, perhaps the greatest failing of the Acculturation Model is that it has nothing to
say about how social factors influence the quality of contact that learners experience. The model
represents a Type I theory. That is, it assumes that social factors determine the rate and success
of L2 acquisition. As such, it allows no room for the possibility that learners have agency and
can challenge the social factors that impede their learning. To account for the quality of contact,
a Type 2 approach is needed.
For more information, see Year 91, Item 13; Year 93, Item 4; and Year 96, Item 88.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis (2008, pp. 326-329)
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79. As a term in SLA studies, -----------.

1) microgenesis refers to the learning that the human race has undergone across generations
2) repair refers to those corrections which are self-initiated
3) a property theory is mostly concerned with the SLA process
4) perceptual saliency applies to the significance of the beginning and end of stimuli
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Microgenesis
SLA
For Vygotsky the general principles of socio-cultural learning theory apply on a range of
different timescales. They apply to the learning that the human race has passed through over
successive generations (phylogenesis), as well as to the learning that the individual human
infant passes through in the course of its early development (ontogenesis). For the entire human
race, as well as for the individual infant, learning is seen as first social, then individual.
Consciousness and conceptual development are seen firstly as inter-mental phenomena, shared
between individuals; later, individuals develop their own consciousness, which becomes an
intra-mental phenomenon. For the human race, and also for the individual infant, language is
the prime symbolic mediating tool for the development of consciousness. Throughout their life,
of course, human beings remain capable of learning; and the local learning process for more
mature individuals acquiring new knowledge or skills is viewed as essentially the same. That
is, new concepts continue to be acquired through social or interactional means, a process that
can sometimes be traced visibly in the course of talk between expert and novice. This local,
contextualized learning process is labelled microgenesis; it is central to socio-cultural accounts
of SLL.
Property Theory and Transition Theory

We can only pursue a better understanding of SLL in an organized and productive way if our
efforts are guided by some form of theory. A theory is a more or less abstract set of claims
111
about the units that are significant within the phenomenon under study, the relationships that
exist between them and the processes that bring about change. Thus, a theory aims not just at
description but also at explanation. Theories may be embryonic and restricted in scope, or more
elaborate, explicit and comprehensive. They may deal with different areas of interest to us; thus,
a property theory will be primarily concerned with modelling the nature of the language
system that is to be acquired, whereas a transition theory will be primarily concerned with
modelling the change or developmental processes of language acquisition.
Perceptual Saliency
In his Processability Theory (refer to Year 96, Item 64), Pienemann has relied on the principle
of perceptual saliency, a widely used concept in cognitive psychology. The feature of perceptual
saliency that Pienemann resorts to in the explanation of the stages of his theory, is that the
beginning and end of stimuli are easier to remember and therefore to manipulate. This
means that learners will first be able to move elements from inside to outside the sentence, that
is, to sentence-initial or sentence-final positions, then from outside to inside before being able
to move elements within the sentence.
For repair, refer to 91, Item 65.

For a similar item on microgenesis, refer to Year 92, Item 87.
For a similar item on property theory, refer to Year 92, Item 76.
For a similar item on perceptual saliency, refer to Year 92, Item 85; and Year 93, Items 9 and
79.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Mitchel and Myles (2004, pp. 7, 115, 119, 197-198)
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80. In the Labovian approach to the study of variability, -----------.

1) variable rules reflect performance rather than competence
2) variable rules are used to describe systematic variations
3) social factors are responsible for intra-speaker variation
SLA
4) the study of the vernacular style requires systematic observation
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The Labovian paradigm
The Labovian paradigm has exerted considerable influence on the study of variability in SLA
research, particularly in much of the earlier work. Two constructs are of particular importance:
speech styles and variable rules.
Labov (1970) listed five axioms relating to the study of speech styles:
1. “… there are no single style speakers.” All speakers vary their language to some degree
when the social context or topic changes.
2. Styles can be ranged along a single dimension, measured by the amount of attention
paid to speech. Language users vary in the degree to which they monitor their speech in
different situations.
3. The vernacular style is the style in which minimum attention is given to monitoring
speech. It is the style associated with informal, everyday speech and it provides 'the
most systematic data' for linguistic study.
112
4. It is not possible to tap the vernacular style of users by systematic observation of how
they perform in a formal context (such as an experiment).
5. The only way to obtain good data on the speech of language users is through systematic
observation.
The conflict between the fourth and the fifth axioms leads to what Labov called the observer's
paradox. Good data require systematic observation, but this prevents access to the user's
vernacular style.
As an example of how Labov set about examining speech styles, let us consider one of his
studies. Labov (1970) examined the speech patterns of New Yorkers. He collected data using a
variety of tasks in order to sample a range of speech styles, which he classified as (1) casual
speech (i.e. the relaxed speech found in the street and in bars), (2) careful speech (for example,
the speech found in interviews),.(3) reading, (4) word lists, and (5) minimal pairs. These styles
were spread along a continuum according to the amount of attention paid by the speakers to
their own speech, the least attention being paid in (1) and the most in (5). Thus, attention is seen
as the mechanism through which other factors can affect style. Labov's model, therefore,
although primarily sociolinguistic, also incorporates a psycholinguistic factor-attention.
Attention serves as the mechanism through which causative social factors such as verbal task
(in particular), topic, interlocutor, setting, or the roles of the participants influence actual
performance. However, Labov appeared to view “attention” as a global sort of activity rather
than as involving a conscious focus on the variable in question. He investigated a number of
pronunciation features and was able to show that the use of sounds like /θ/ (i.e. the first sound
in 'thing') and their variants (for example, /t/) signaled sociolinguistic meaning. Speakers used
the prestige /θ/ more frequently in styles where they were able to pay attention and the less
prestigious sounds such as /t/ in styles where little or no attention to speech was paid. Labov
referred to these changes in n speech as style shifting. He distinguished indicators (i.e. features
that showed no style shifting but which differed according to social stratification), markers (i.e.
features that signaled both style shifting and social stratification), and stereotypes (i.e. features
that are socially stigmatized and therefore actively avoided).
Labov's work indicated that style shifting was systematic either categorically or
SLA
probabilistically. Categorical style shifting is evident when it can be shown that speakers always
use one particular feature (such as /θ/) in one style and another (such as /t/) in a different style.
In such cases it is possible to write a categorical rule to describe the speech behaviour. Such a
rule has this form:
X+Y/__A
where X refers to the variable itself, Y to its actual realization, and A the particular context (for
example, the first sound of 'thing' is realized as /t/ in a context calling for a casual style). The
actual behaviour of Labov's subjects, however, was not usually categorical in this way. They
tended to use one variant in one style and another variant in another style to a greater or lesser
extent. In other words, their behavior was probabilistic. To account for this, Labov proposed
the use of variable rules. These state that a given variable feature, X, is manifest as either Y or
Z with differing levels of probability depending on the context/style. Such a rule can account
for the patterns of variability in the choice of /θ/ and /t/ which Labov found in the speech of
New Yorkers. It can show that speakers are much more likely to use the prestige feature /θ/ in
a careful style than in a more casual style and, conversely, /t/ they are more likely to use a less
socially prestigious feature /t/ in casual than in a careful style.
113
Variable rules have been used to describe the extent of the systematic variation that
occurs in relation to situational factors (i.e. in style shifting) and also that which arises as a
result of linguistic context. For example, Labov (1969) was also able to show that the use of
variants of copula 'be' (full, contracted, and zero copula) in Black English Vernacular (BEV)
was influenced by the preceding and following elements in the sentence. Thus, zero copula was
most likely to occur when the preceding word ended in a vowel and 'gonna' followed:
He gon' try to get up. (+ vowel/+ verb)
and least likely to occur when the preceding word ended in a consonant and a noun phrase
followed:
Bud is my friend. (consonant/+ noun phrase)
A variable rule can express the probability of a particular form being used in a particular
linguistic context.
Powerful statistical procedures such as logistic regression (as used in VARBRUL) have
been developed to account for the effects that various factors relating to both situational and
linguistic context can have on speakers' choice of language forms. These provide a means of
determining the differential effect of a number of factors and how they interact.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis (2008, pp. 119-121)
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SLA
114
Language Skills (Questions 81 – 100)
81. Having learners listen to instances of casual conversation containing phrases which
appear to be intended more as contributions to a conversation than as instances of
information giving can be dubbed as -----------.
1) autodirectional
2) transactional
3) interactional
4) unidirectional
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Some Psychological Dimensions of Language and the Listening Act
The Dynamic Process of Communicative Listening: Active, Not Passive
Listening, along with reading, has been labeled a "passive" skill. Nothing could be further from
the truth. Anderson and Lynch (1988) reject a conceptualization of listening as a passive act,
calling it a "listener-as-tape-recorder" explanation. They argue that such a perspective fails to
account for the interpretations listeners make as they hear the spoken text according to their
own purposes for listening and their own store of background knowledge.
Implications for Instruction: One of the obvious implications for instruction is to bring
students to an understanding that listening is not a passive skill, but an active receptive skill
which needs special attention in language study. This goal can be accomplished gradually as a
part of listening skill-building activities. Learners can be guided to realize that achieving skill
in listening requires as much work as does becoming skilled in reading, writing, and speaking
in a second language.
Listening in Three Modes: Bidirectional, Unidirectional, and Autodirectional

If we consider the roles we play in our listening interactions, we can identify three specific
communicative listening modes: bidirectional, unidirectional, and autodirectional.
Bidirectional Listening Mode: The obvious mode is two-way or bidirectional
Skills
communicative listening. Here the reciprocal speech chain of speaker/listener is easily observed
(Denes & Pinson 1963). Two (or more) participants take turns exchanging speaker role and
listener role as they engage in face-to-face or telephone verbal interaction.
Unidirectional Listening Mode: A second mode is one-way or unidirectional
communicative listening. Auditory input surrounds us as we move through the day. The input
comes from a variety of sources: overheard conversations, public address announcements,
recorded messages (including those on telephone answering machines), the media (e.g., radio,
television, films), instructional situations of all kinds, and public performances (e.g. lectures,
religious services, plays, operas, musicals, concerts). As we hear speakers but are unable to
interact, we often talk to ourselves in a reactive or self-dialogue manner as we analyze what we
hear. We may subvocalize or even vocalize these responses.
Autodirectional Listening Mode: The third communicative listening mode is
autodirectional. We can think of this as self-dialogue communication in which we may not be
aware of our internal roles as both speaker and listener/reactor in our own thought processes.
Sometimes we re-create language internally and "listen again" as we retell and relive
communicative interludes. Sometimes we simply attend to our own internal language which we
produce as we think through alternatives, plan strategies, and make decisions – all by talking to
ourselves and listening to ourselves.
115
In all of these communicative listening modes, notice that listening is not a passive
experience. Each listening mode is a highly active, clearly participatory, verbal experience.
Implications for Instruction: S/FL learners need to have instruction and practice in both
the bidirectional communicative listening mode and in the unidirectional mode. In addition,
self-dialogue in the autodirectional communicative listening mode should not be ignored. It is
an important feature of language behavior which should be discussed with students.
Autodirectional "talk" is something which learners should be led to develop as a skill in its own
right, as well as a tool to be used in connection with bidirectional and unidirectional listening.
Psychosocial Functions of Listening: Transactional Listening and Interactional

Listening
Brown and Yule (1983) suggest dividing language functions into two major divisions: language
for transactional purposes and language for interactional purposes. They note that transactional
language corresponds to Halliday's notion of ideational, while interactional language
corresponds to his term interpersonal (Halliday, 1970, p. 143).
Transactional Language Function: Transactional language is message oriented and can
be viewed as "business-type" talk with the focus on content and conveying factual or
propositional information. Transactional language is used for giving instructions, explaining,
describing, giving directions, ordering, inquiring, requesting, relating checking on the
correctness of details, and verifying understanding. The premium is on message clarity and
precision. Speakers often use confirmation checks to make sure what they are saying is clear:
they may even contradict the listener if he or she appears to have misunderstood.
Interactional Language Function: The most important difference between the two types
of language use is that interactional language is “social-type” talk; it is person oriented more
than message oriented. Its objective is the establishment and maintenance of cordial social
relationships. Brown and Yule comment that a great deal of casual conversation contains
phrases or echoes of phrases which appear to be intended more as contributions to a
conversation than as instances of information giving. Important features of interactional
language are those of identifying with the other person's concerns, being nice to the other
person, and maintaining and respecting "face."
Implications for Instruction: Teachers need to provide practice experiences in both
Skills
transactional talk and interactional talk. While the contrast between the two types of talk is
usually clear, sometimes it is not so obvious in an interaction where the two functions may be
intertwined. Students need instruction and listening practice to help them recognize when one
of the two functions is operating and how they can respond appropriately.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Celce-Murcia (2001, pp. 72-74)
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82. In bidirectional interactive communication, the extralinguistic way of meaning

conveyance refers to-----------.
1) the meaning transmitted through various aspects of body language
2) the word and the meanings thereof
3) vocal meaning
4) part of the meaning created based on the shared knowledge between the interlocutors
Answer: 1
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116
Explanation:
AFFECT AND ATTITUDES
In developing activities and materials for listening instruction, it is essential to consider the
affective domain, which includes attitudes, emotions, and feelings. Here the focus is on (1) the
ways attitudinal and emotional information may be conveyed, both linguistically and
nonlinguistically and (2) some of the attitudinal language functions that second language
learners need to experience via instructional listening materials.
Linguistic and Nonlinguistic Cues to Affect

As the old saying goes, it's not what you say, it's how you say it! But how can ESL and EFL
listeners learn to recognize and interpret aspects of the how as well as the what in two-way and
one-way oral communication? How can they become skilled at processing both nonlinguistic
and linguistic affective information?
In bidirectional interactive communication, messages are conveyed in at least three ways:
linguistic (i.e., the words and their meanings), paralinguistic (i.e., vocal meaning) and
extralinguistic (i.e. the meaning transmitted through various aspects of body language). In
unidirectional communication, the visual cues of extralinguistic information may be missing,
and the listener must then rely on only the linguistic and paralinguistic information
Linguistic Messages (the words): Meanings begin in people. But sometimes meanings don't
come across clearly, and we hear speakers protest, "But that's not what I meant." In an attempt
to convey an intended meaning, speakers choose words and arrange them into sentences or
partial sentences, groups of sentences, and larger pieces of monologue or dialogue discourse.
Both the words chosen, and their intrasentential and intersentential arrangements, map affect
(i.e., feelings) onto the linguistic information. As speakers do this, they may or may not be
conscious of either the nature or the strength of the affective coloring; on the other hand, they
may use it deliberately, with careful design.
Examples
That was an (interesting/excellent/good/fair/so-so/terrible) movie.
I like him a lot but.
Even though she's my best friend, I must tell you that…
Clearly, affective interpretation must be a part of listening comprehension activities. This means
Skills
that instructional experiences must be contextualized and must reflect real-world situations and
feelings.
Paralinguistic Messages (Vocally Transmitted Meaning): The very way the voice is used in
speaking transmits meaning. That is, the way words, sentences, and groups of sentences in
spoken language are programmed vocally enables them to carry information about how they
are to be interpreted. Although the speaker may not be aware of it, the speaker's attitude toward
what he or she is saying is transmitted I by vocal features. In the important realm of intonation,
the work by Brazil, Coulthard, and Johns (1980) and Brown, Currie, and Kenworthy (1980) has
explored a variety of aspects of intonational meaning in oral discourse. The vocal elements that
map affective information onto the linguistic message are those beyond the neutral patterns of
basic stress, rhythm, and intonation. Nuances of meaning can be transmitted by subtle changes
in tone quality, rate, rhythm, stress, and many other features.
Extralinguistic Messages (Meaning Transmitted through Body Language): Speakers also

convey meaning through body language. That is, simultaneous physical messages are being
transmitted with the words and vocal information and must be interpreted by the listener. Once
again, the speaker may or may not be fully aware of this aspect of his or her communication.
Elements involved include body postures, body movements, body and hand gestures, facial
117
expressions, facial gestures, eye contact, and use of space by the communicators. It is important
to help students learn the meanings of specific features of body language in the second
language; they also need to recognize that body language differs greatly between languages and
between cultures.
Intellectual, Emotional and Moral Attitudes

As noted above, an important part of communication is the expression and comprehension of
attitudes. Van Ek (1976) lists six basic language functions, including three which are attitudinal:
intellectual, emotional, and moral attitudes.
Intellectual Attitudes: These include expression and comprehension of agreement/
disagreement; confirming/denying; accepting/declining; getting/remembering; possibility/
impossibility; capability/incapability; uncertainty; obligation, permission; and more (pp. 45-47).
Emotional Attitudes: Included in this area are expressing pleasure/displeasure; interest/lack of
interest; surprise; hope; fear; worry; satisfaction/dissatisfaction; disappointment; preference;
gratitude; sympathy; intention; wants and desires; and more (pp. 47-48).
Moral Attitudes: Moral attitudes are expressed in the language of apologizing; expressing
approval/disapproval; appreciation; indifference; regret; and more (p. 48). (For additional
information see Munby 1978; Wilkins 1976).
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 See also: Celce-Murcia (2001, p. 75)
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83. In a listening lesson, making sure that both the information and the nature of the use
of the information has a more direct bearing on which of the following materials
development principles?
1) Task orientation
2) Applicability
3) Relevance
4) Situational authenticity
Answer: 3
Skills
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
In order to get learners' attention, to keep them actively and purposefully engaged in the task at
hand, and to maximize the effectiveness of listening/language-learning experiences, three
materials development principles are suggested: relevance, transferability/applicability, and
task orientation. These three principles are important in making choices about both language
content (i.e., the information presented) and language outcomes) (i.e., the way the information
is put to use).
1. Relevance
Both the listening lesson content (i.e., the information) and the outcome (i.e., the nature of the
use of the information) need to be as relevant as possible to the learner. This is essential for
getting and holding learner attention and provides a genuine motivational incentive. Lessons
need to feature content and outcomes that have "face validity" for students. The more that
lessons focus on things with real-life relevance, the more they appeal to students, and the better
the chance of having learners' wanting to listen. And if students really want to listen, we have
accomplished at least part of the task which Strevens (1988) calls encouraging the intention to
learn.
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Relevance is easy to control in self-created classroom listening activities. However, when

using published materials, it is necessary to choose those lessons with topics that are relevant
to one's students. It may be necessary to modify both the way the material is presented and the
way students are asked to use the information. Richards suggests some ways to adapt materials,
including modifying the objectives; adding prelistening activities; changing the teaching
procedures for class presentation; and devising postlistening activities (1983, pp. 287-288).
2. Transferability/Applicability
Whatever is relevant is also likely to have potential for transferability. Insofar as possible, at
either the content level or the outcome level, or both listening lessons need to have
transferability/ applicability value, internally (i.e., can be used in other classes), externally (i.e.,
can be used in out-of-school situations), or both. In order to foster transfer of training, the best
listening lessons present in-class activities that mirror real life. For example, the use of radio or
television news broadcasts in adult classes can provide not only a real experience in listening
comprehension, but such lessons also contain content that can be applicable outside of class as
a source of conversation topics.
3. Task Orientation
In formal language classes for teenage and adult students and in language activity lessons for
children, it is productive to combine two different kinds of focus: (1) language use tasks and
(2) language analysis activities.
Notions of task have developed out of communicative teaching and materials production.
Johnson defines task-oriented teaching as teaching which provides "actual meaning" by
focusing on tasks to be mediated through language, and in which success is judged in terms of
whether the tasks are performed (Brumfit & Johnson 1979, p. 200). Maley and Moulding focus
on instruction which is task-oriented not question-oriented, providing learners with tasks which
use the information in the aural text, rather than asking learners to "prove" their understanding
of the text by answering questions (1979, p. 102). Candlin and Murphy note, "The central
process we are concerned with is language learning, and tasks present this in the form of a
problem-solving negotiation between knowledge that the learner holds and new knowledge.
This activity is conducted through language in use, which may, itself, be seen as a negotiation
Skills
of meaning" (1987, p. 1)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
84. One’s knowledge of how to perform speech act falls within the domain of -----------
competence.
1) sociolinguistic
2) illocutionary
3) textual
4) organizational
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Canale and Swain (1980) provide a comprehensive, four-part definition of communicative
competence:
119
1. Grammatical competence or accuracy: It is the degree to which the language learners

mastered the linguistic code, including vocabulary, including vocabulary, grammar,
pronunciation, spelling, and word formation.
2. Sociolinguistic competence: It is the extent to which utterances can be used or
understood appropriately in various social contexts. It includes knowledge of speech
acts such as persuading, apologizing, and describing.
3. Discourse competence: It is the ability to combine ideas to achieve cohesion in form and
coherence in thought, above the level of the single sentence.
4. Strategic competence: It is the ability to use strategies like gestures or "talking around"
an unknown word in order to overcome limitations in language knowledge
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Oxford (1990, p. 7)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
85. Which of the following does not belong to the text-based view towards reading
comprehension?
1) Applying reading skills leads to meaning.
2) Function precedes form in reading.
3) Reading is a precise process.
4) Reading is a separate process from speaking, listening and writing.
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Some theorists believe that meaning resides in the text itself; others maintain that meaning is
the product of the reader's interacting with the text. In short, some believe that text-based
factors determine meaning, while others believe that inside-the-head factors determine
meaning (Bernhardt, 1984).The text-based view implies than the proper approach in teaching
students to read IS to teach the language forms they will need to know to be able to comprehend
the reading. The inside-the-head view implies that reading comprehension rests primarily on
the students' knowledge base and that students should therefore read materials that their
background knowledge permits them to comprehend. The text-based approach is referred to as
Skills
bottom-up processing, and the inside-the-head model is referred to as top-down processing.
Anderson (1984, p. 186) summarizes the contrasts between the two principal approaches to
comprehension in the following comparison:
Skills Model Psycholinguistic Model

1. Reading is made up of separate skills. 1. Reading is an integrated process.
2. Reading has a hierarchical skills 2. Reading has no one sequence of skills.
sequence.
3. Applying reading skills leads to meaning. 3. Reading is meaning centered.
4. Reading is a separate process from 4. Reading is an alternate language process.
speaking, listening, and writing.
5. Reading is a passive process. 5. Reading is an active process.
6. Reading is a precise process. 6. Reading is an inexact process.
7. Form precedes function in reading. 7. Function precedes form in reading
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
120
86. A register-based approach to materials development for reading -----------.

1) views the function-form correspondence as the starting point
2) regards the rhetorical functions of texts as the basis
3) goes beyond merely linguistic considerations
4) fails to adequately heed the mental processes learners go through to acquire terminal
behavior
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
In the last five decades there has been a growing demand for the knowledge of English to
communicate in academic and professional contexts, which has led to the development of
English for Specific Purposes (hence ESP), sometimes referred to as English for Professional
and Academic Purposes (hence EPAP) (Ruiz et al., 2010). The burgeoning ESP literature
tackles theoretical issues, the pedagogical standpoint of ESP and ESP applications in numerous
publications including books, papers, journals and teaching materials. The main research line
is ESP course design (syllabus design, methodology, materials, evaluation and roles of the ESP
teacher).
Thus, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has developed in the last five decades in
response to learners’ communicative needs in specific scientific fields and professional settings.
English for Specific Purposes (ESP)

Some brief discussion on the historical perspective of ESP in order to understand some of the
principles of the framework is necessary. A detailed discussion on this subject is not possible
therefore only salient developments are presented.
Today ESP has become an important aspect of English Language Teaching (ELT). Over
the years it has passed through various stages of development (Strevens, 1970) and now
encompasses areas in education, training and practice and draws on three areas of knowledge:
language, pedagogy and students’ specialist area of interest (Robinson, 1991: 1).
ESP is defined as a language teaching area which ‘requires the careful research and design
of pedagogical materials and activities for an identifiable group of learners within a specific
Skills
learning context’ (Johns and Dudley-Evans, 1991, p. 298). ESP is thus made up of such
categories as Academic Englishes (English for Science and Technology (EST), English for
Graduate Teaching Assistants), “General” English for Academic Purposes (GEAP) and
Occupational Englishes (English for Business, English at the Work Place).
A Historical Overview
Since its beginnings in the 1960s, ESP has undergone six distinct phases of development (Johns
and Dudley Evans, 1991; Hutchinson and Waters, 1987).
The first phase in the early ‘60s was influenced by the then emerging view of register
analysis largely associated with Halliday et al. (1964). The aim was to identify the grammatical
and lexical features of registers (see Hutchinson and Waters, 1987; Robinson, 1991 and Tickoo,
1994). Halliday et al.’s work paved the way for a second phase.
In phase two the focus of research shifted to research above the sentence level as ESP
became more closely involved with the emerging field of discourse or rhetorical analysis
typified by the work of Lackstrom, Selinker and Trimble (1972), Widdowson (1981), and
Trimble (1985). The research focus centered on the identification of organizational patterns in
texts (see Robinson, 1980, 1991, Johns and Dudley-Evans, 1991; Tickoo, 1994). Such research
assisted researchers and curriculum designers to identify levels of discourse within texts. For
example, Swale’s (1984, 1990) work on genre analysis (G.A) has similarly led other researchers
121
to examine sections of texts (e.g. introductions) in various disciplines in order to identify the
type of discourse moves or steps required.
A third stage in the development of ESP is the emergence of Needs Analysis - particularly
Target Situation Analysis (TSA). Needs Analysis was initially seen as a simple process
exemplified by Munby (1978) which provided a more systematic way of designing a syllabus in
ESP based on the learners’ needs. However Munby’s needs profile was found to be inadequate.
This led to new directions in needs assessments which have grown increasingly sophisticated as
materials developers become aware of the problematic nature of their task (Johns and Dudley-
Evans, 1991, p. 299). See West, (1994) for an excellent discussion on needs analysis.
The fourth stage in the development of ESP focused on the thinking processes that underlie
language use. The focus was on developing reading skills in the field of applied linguistics
exemplified by contributions from Grellet (1981), Nuttall (1982), Alderson and Urquhart (1984)
the National ESP Project in Brazil and the University of Malaya ESP Project (1980). This led to
the development of a skill-based syllabus approach which paved the way for the development of
cognitive and language skills (Robinson, 1991, p. 37 and White, 1986, p. 68).
The fifth phase is the stage that advocates the learning-centered approach also known as the
Method-Based Approach (Breen, 1984, 1987; Candlin, 1987; Hutchinson and Waters, 1987;
Robinson, 1991; Long and Crookes, 1993). For a critique of this see Tickoo (1987, 1994, pp. 31-
32).
A sixth phase is the emergence of the content-based syllabus and the situationally-based
syllabus (Wilkins, 1976; White, 1988; Robinson, 1991). Finally, all the previous developments
in ESP have revived the role of rhetorical discourse approach which is gaining strength and
meshes with the genre -based approach.
It is the latest stage in the nineties typified by contributions from Halliday (1973), Swales
(1990), Bhatia (1993), Halliday and Martin (1993), Connor (1995). Its role in materials design
should be seriously considered and will be discussed in chapter four. A more detailed view of
the historical development of ESP is summarized in table 1.
Table 1: Stages in the Historical Development of ESP

Stage Key Characteristics Period Key Figures
One Register Analysis 1960’s and - Halliday, Strevens and
Skills
It focuses on lexis and structural analysis. early 70’s McIntosh (1964)
It focuses on the identification of - Ewer and Latorre (1969)
grammatical & lexical features of - Barber (1962)
different registers at sentence level - Swales (1971)
Two Discourse or Rhetorical Analysis 1970’s to - Lackstrom, Selinker and
Linguistic analysis above the sentence late 80’s Trimble (1972)
level. - Widdowson (1981)
Focus on organizational patterns in text - Moore (1979, 1980)
and the writers’ purpose. Marked an - Halliday (1973)
important move in linguistic analysis - Selinker and Trimble (1976)
Landmark- Trimble’s Rhetorical Process - Trimble (1985)
Chart - Tarone, Dwyer, Gillette &
Icke (1981)
- Selinker, Tarone &
Hanzeli(eds.) (1981)
- Selinker (1979)
- Lackstrom, Selinker &
Trimble (1973)
122
Three Needs Analysis Late 70’s - Munby (1978)

1. Target Situation Analysis (TSA): through the - Richterich and Chancerel
Focus on Linguistic components early 80’s (1980)
2. Present Situation Analysis (PSA): - Pilbeam (1979)
Focus both on aspects of TSA and more - Holliday & Cook (1982)
on learners - Bhatia (1994)
3. Language Audit: Focus on the current - Ramani, Chako, Singh &
state of language needs in job Glendinning (1988 )
sectors/industry
4. Means Analysis
5. Ethnographic principles
Four Thinking processes Late 70’s - Grellet (1981)
Focus mainly on reading skills and - Nuttal (1982)
the 80’s - Chitravellu (1980)
Five Learning-Centered Approach (Method- Mid’ 80’s Hutchinson and Waters (1987)
Based Approach) to Breen (1984)
Focus on the process of language learning late 80’s Candlin (1984)
Six Content-Based Syllabuses Late 70’s to - Wilkins (1976)
1. Focus on language form, language early 90’s - Bates and Dudley -Evans
notion and language function (1976)
2. Focus on topics and situations (mainly - Allen and Widdowson (1973)
in the context of EOP) - Mullen and Brown (1984)
- Radice (1981)
- Yates (1981,1989)
Seven Genre Analysis (Revival of Phase 1 and Late 80’s to - Swales (1990)
2) present - Bhatia (1993)
Focus on text types, topic types and the - Halliday and Martin (1993)
discourse communities
Register Analysis
A register-based approach materials development can, in fact, be subsumed under a more
generalized approach to syllabus design: a “language-centered” approach (see Hutchinson &
Skills
Waters, 1987, pp. 65-68).
Briefly speaking, a register-based approach to ESP focuses on lexis and structural analysis. It
focuses on the identification of grammatical and lexical features of different registers at
sentence level.
Criticisms
1. It does not focus on the mental processes learners go through to acquire language.
2. It does not go beyond the sentence level, that is, it does not include a discourse analysis
approach for materials development.
3. Also, in this approach, ESP was equated with EST, it was heavily structure-based and paid
insufficient attention to meaning. In other words, register analysis too often loses sight of
the global meaning of a text by an overemphasis on the parts.
For similar items, refer to Year 93, Item 65; and year 94, Item 61.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Hutchinson and Waters (1987, pp. 65-68); Negro Alousque (2016)
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123
87. When students read a text and the teacher asks, “What motive did Ted have for what
he did?”, the question is a/an ----------- question type.
1) analysis
2) product
3) choice
4) evaluation
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Categories of questions and typical classroom question words (adapted from Kinsella 1991
and Bloom 1956)
1. Knowledge questions: Eliciting factual answers, testing recall and recognition of
information.
Common question words: Define, ten list, identify, describe, select, name, point out, label,
reproduce. Who? What? Where? When? Answer "yes" or "no."
2. Comprehension questions: Interpreting, extrapolating.
Common question words: State in your own words, explain, define, locate, select, indicate,
summarize, outline, match.
3. Application questions: Applying information heard or read to new situations.
Common question words: Demonstrate how, use the data to solve, illustrate how, show
how, apply, construct, explain. What is __ used for? What would result? What would
happen?
4. Inference questions: Forming conclusions that are not directly stated in instructional
materials.
Common question words: How? Why? What did __ mean by? What does __ believe? What
conclusions can you draw from . .. ?
5. Analysis questions: Breaking down into parts, relating parts to the whole.
Common question words: Distinguish diagram, chart, plan, deduce, arrange, separate,
outline, classify, contrast, compare, differentiate, categorize. What is the relationship
between? What is the function of? What motive? What conclusions? What is the main idea?
Skills
6. Synthesis questions: Combining elements into a new pattern.
Common question words: Compose, combine, estimate, invent, choose, hypothesize, build,
solve, design, develop. What if? How would you test? What would you have done in this
situation? What would happen if ... ? How can you improve _.. ? How else would you _ . _ ?
7. Evaluation questions: Making a judgment of good and bad, right or wrong, according to
some set of criteria, and stating why.
Common question words: Evaluate, rate, defend dispute, decide which, select, judge,
grade, verify, choose why_ Which is best? Which is more important? Which do you think is
more appropriate?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: H. D. Brown and Lee (2015, pp. 264-265)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
88. A teacher following a/an -----------approach to evaluating writing does so based on
characteristics unique to the particular audience and purpose of the writing such as
persuasiveness, clarity, and so on.
1) integrative
2) analytical
3) holistic
4) primary trait
124
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Perkins (1983) has serious reservations about the use of objective measures to evaluate students'
writing. In his opinion, they are not valid measures of writing quality associated with the
communication of meaning, and they are not adequate to quantify factors such as cohesion,
coherence, organization, tone, and focus which contribute to effective writing. He concludes
(p. 662) that objective measures are "impractical, tedious, and time consuming for classroom
use." Instead, he suggests three types of subjective ratings for compositions: (l) holistic (also
referred to as integrative or global), (2) analytical, and (3) primary trait. A teacher following
a holistic approach uses one rating scale to assign a grade; one following an analytical approach
rates selected aspects of the writing such as organization, wording, or ideas. A teacher following
a primary trait approach evaluates characteristics unique to the particular audience and purpose
of the writing such as persuasiveness, clarity, and so on. Objective scoring measures tend to
have greater reliability because they are objectively quantifiable, and global (or integrative)
ratings tend toward higher validity because they measure factors that are considered important
characteristics of good writing.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Chastain (1988, p. 261); Perkins (1983)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
89. The citation of references is part of -----------in categories for evaluating writing.
1) mechanics
2) discourse
3) content
4) organization
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Categories for evaluating writing (adapted from J. D. Brown, 1991)
Skills
Content
• thesis statement
• related ideas
• development of ideas through personal experience, illustration, facts, opinions
• use of description, cause/effect, comparison/contrast
• consistent focus
Organization
• effectiveness of introduction
• logical sequence of ideas
• conclusion
• appropriate length
Discourse
• topic sentences
• paragraph unity
• transitions
• discourse markers
• cohesion
• rhetorical conventions
• reference
• fluency
125
• economy
• variation
Syntax
Vocabulary
Mechanics
• spelling
• punctuation
• citation of references (if applicable)
• neatness and appearance
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: H. D. Brown (2001, p. 357)
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90. When the teacher reappraises the student’s erroneous utterance by changing one or
more components while still referring to its central meaning, the correction type is
known as--------------.
1) elicitation
2) explicit correction
3) recast
4) metalinguistic feedback
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
For more information and similar items, see Year 91, Items 65, 90, and 98; Year 92, Items 7
and 70; Year 93, Item 13; Year 94, Items 87 and 88; and Year 96, Item 62.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Lyster and Ranta (1997)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
91. Which of the following statements is a description of today’s applied linguistics?
1) It is multilateral process which relates different representations of reality.
2) It tends to dance attendance to whatever tune is in theoretical fashion.
Skills
3) It involves direct application of concepts deriving from linguistics
4) It is a purely linguistic evaluation based on a proper understanding of proposed ideas.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Linguistics Applied vs. Applied Linguistics
The difference between these modes of intervention is that in the case of linguistics applied the
assumption is that the problem can be reformulated by the direct and unilateral application of
concepts and terms deriving from linguistic enquiry itself. That is to say, language problems are
amenable to linguistic solutions. In the case of applied linguistics, intervention is crucially a
matter of mediation. Here there is the recognition that linguistic insights are not self-evident but
a matter of interpretation; that ideas and findings from linguistics can only be made relevant in
reference to other perceptions and perspectives that define the context of the problem. Applied
linguistics is in this respect a multilateral process which, of its nature, has to relate and reconcile
different representations of reality, including that of linguistics without excluding others.
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 See also: Widdowson (2000, p. 5)
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126
92. The nature of the interactions that takes place in task-based language teaching (TBLT)
depends on all the following factors EXCEPT -----------.
1) proficiency level of the learners
2) method of implementing the task
3) the design features of the task
4) developmental readiness of the learners
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Impoverished interaction
A common objection to TBLT is that learners’ performance of tasks will result only in samples
of impoverished language use that are of little acquisitional value. This was implicit in
Widdowson’s criticism regarding the failure of tasks to address semantic meaning. This
criticism has been made more explicitly by Seedhouse (1999), who claimed that the
performance of tasks is characterized by indexicalized and pidginized language as a result of
the learners’ over-reliance on context and the limitations of their linguistic resources. In support
of this claim he cited the interaction from Lynch shown in Table 1, where the learners are
engaged in performing an information-gap activity that requires them to describe simple
diagrams to each other. Seedhouse argued that such interactions are likely to promote
fossilization rather than acquisition.
There is no doubt that such tasks can result in the kind of interaction shown in Table 1. But
this does not justify a dismissal of task-based instruction, for two reasons. First, if the learners
are beginners, then engaging in such interaction might in fact be beneficial, encouraging them
to develop the capacity to make use of their limited resources and thus helping them to develop
their strategic competence. Nor can the acquisitional potential of such interactions be dismissed.
In Ellis (2003) I argued that the interaction in Table 1 manifests a number of the qualities of the
‘progressive discourse’ that Wells (1999) claimed were required for collaborative knowledge
building. It is clear, for example, that the participants are working towards a ‘common
understanding’ (i.e. the meaning of dot) and that they frame questions in ways that help them
to expand their knowledge base (i.e. by proposing synonyms for dot). As a result, they arrive at
Skills
the collectively valid proposition that a dot is a ‘small point’). Thus, there would seem to be a
clear ‘knowledge artefact’ that results from this interaction (i.e. the meaning of dot).
Table 1: An example of an impoverisehd task-based interaction (from Lynch, 1989)

L1: What?
L2: Stop.
L3: Dot?
L4: Dot?
L5: Point?
L6: Dot?
LL: Point, point, yeh.
L1: Point?
L5: Small point.
L3: Dot
The second reason for rejecting Seedhouse’s argument is simply that the nature of the
interactions that take place in TBLT will depend on three factors: the proficiency level of the
students, the design features of the task, and the method of implementation. More advanced
127
learners performing more complex tasks will engage in more linguistically rich interactions,
especially if they are given the opportunity to engage in pre-task and on-line planning (Yuan &
Ellis, 2003). There is plenty of evidence from the task-based literature (see e.g. the studies of
the effects of planning on task-based performance in Ellis 2005) to show that tasks can result
in highly complex language use.
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 See also: Ellis (2009)
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93. Which hypothesis is based on the observation that instruction facilitates acquisition
by supplying learners with conscious rules?
1) Interface hypothesis
2) Learnability hypothesis
3) Input hypothesis
4) Teachability hypothesis
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Instruction as facilitation: The essential claim of the facilitative position is that although
formal instruction is not necessary to acquire an l2, it helps learning, in particular by speeding
up the process of 'natural' acquisition. There are, in fact, several different versions of the
facilitative position. One is the interface hypothesis – the claim that by practicing specific
structures learners can 'control' them i.e. that explicit knowledge gradually becomes implicit
(Dekeyser 1998). The second is the variability hypothesis, according to which instruction can
directly affect the learners’ ability to perform structures in some kinds of use but not the third,
associated in particular with Pienemann (1985), is the teachability hypothesis. The fourth is that
formal instruction helps to make the internalization of rules easier in the long term by helping
learners to notice them. We can refer to this as the weak interface hypothesis.
1. The Interface Hypothesis
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According to the Interface Hypothesis, instruction facilitates acquisition by (1) supplying
learners with conscious rules, and (2) providing practice to enable them to convert this
conscious, 'controlled' knowledge into 'automatic' knowledge. Sharwood Smith (1981) built on
the work of Bialystok and McLaughlin in order to develop a full interface model. He claimed
that it is quite clear and uncontroversial to say that most spontaneous performance is attained
by dint of practice" (1981: 166). DeKeyser (1998) made a similar claim, drawing on skill-
building theory; Declarative knowledge is converted into procedural knowledge by means of
practice that involves the learner in communicative behavior.
2. The Variability Hypothesis

The Variability Hypothesis differs from the interface hypothesis in one major respect: it claims
that teaching learners new structures will affect their careful style but not their vernacular style.
Thus, its effects will be evident when learners are performing in planned language use but not
in unplanned language use. In my earlier publications (for example, Ellis 1987c), I claimed that
the explanation for this lies in the relationship between different types of classroom interaction
and the learner's variable interlanguage system:
Participation in the kind of planned discourse that results from teacher-directed
language drills leads to the acquisition of target language norms in the learner's careful
style ... Participation in the more freely-structured discourse that results from unfocused
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activities requires the performance of a greater range of speech acts and induces the
negotiation of meaning required for the development of the vernacular style.
(1987c: 191-2)
In addition to the direct effect that FFI has on learners' careful styles, it can have an indirect
effect on their vernacular styles. Tarone (1983) suggested that there is movement along the
stylistic continuum over time, while Dickerson (1974, cited in Tarone 1982) claimed that the
continued advancement in the careful style may have a 'pull effect on the vernacular style. In
other words, forms that enter a learner's interlanguage in the careful style will gradually become
available for use in unplanned discourse.
3. The Teachability Hypothesis

The third version of the facilitative position – the Teachability Hypothesis – has a considerable
history (see Nickel 1973, Bailey, Madden, & Krashen 1974; Valdman 1978) but by far the most
detailed proposal came from Pienemann (1085). His Teachability Hypothesis, based on his
views about processibility, predicts that instruction can only promote language acquisition if
the interlanguage is close to the point when the structure to be taught is acquired in the natural
setting (so that sufficient processing prerequisites are developed) (p. 37). The corollaries of this
hypothesis are:
1. Do not demand a learning process which is impossible at a given stage (i.e. order of
teaching objectives to be in line with stages of acquisition).
2. But do not introduce deviant (i.e. interlanguage) forms.
3. The general input may contain structures which were not introduced for production.
(p. 63)
Pienemann considered that 'teachability only applied to developmental features, not to
variational features (i.e. features that could be acquired at any stage).
Lightbown (1985b) rightly pointed out that our knowledge of natural acquisition sequences
is too limited to make specific recommendations about how they should be related to teaching
sequences. Pienemann and his fellow researchers subsequently attempted to overcome this
problem by developing a broad theoretical framework with predictive power for when specific
structures will be acquired.
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Learnability hypothesis: It is the idea, attributed to Manfred Pienemann, that a second or
foreign language learner’s acquisition of linguistic structures depends on how complex these
structures are from a psychological processing point of view, defined as the extent to which
linguistic material must be re-ordered and re-arranged when mapping semantics and surface
form. The psycholinguistic processing devices acquired at one stage are a necessary building
block for the following stage. This implies a teachability hypothesis as well, since structures
cannot be taught successfully if the learner has not learned to produce structures belonging to
the previous stage (Richards & Schmidt, 2010, pp. 325-326).
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 See also: Ellis (2008, pp. 845-846); Richards and Schmidt (2010, pp. 325-326)
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94. According to Kumaravadivelu (2003), which of the following gives rise to claiming
ownership of the English language teaching enterprise?
1) Viewing method as a colonial construct
2) Moving from nativization to decolonization
3) Abolishing the postcolonial predicament
4) Indiginizing the phonological, syntactic, and pragmatic features of English
129
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Much has been written about the coloniality of the English language. Now more than ever, one
senses among a section of the applied linguistics community a critical awareness of the fact that
the English language, in its long march to its current global status, was aided and abetted by
colonialist and imperialist projects that trampled upon the political, cultural and linguistic heritage
of millions of people across the globe. The nature of English linguistic imperialism (Phillipson,
1992), the colonial character that still adheres to it (Pennycook, 1998), and the subaltern attempts
to resist its dominance (Canagarajah, 1999) have all been documented in detail.
Equally well-documented is the globality of the English language. “A language achieves a
genuinely global status,” observes Crystal (1997: 2), “when it develops a special role that is
recognized in every country.” Clearly, English has achieved such a role. In that global role,
English has spawned a large number of local varieties, aptly called world Englishes. An
interesting aspect of the emergence of world Englishes is that it is not con fined to former British
colonies alone. In addition to Inglish in India, Singlish in Singapore, etc., one now hears about
Franglais in France, Denglish in Germany, and so on.
The emergence of world Englishes with their amazing form, function and spread has been
the result of what Kachru has called nativization (see, for instance, Kachru, 1982, 1983).
Varieties such as Indian English, Nigerian English and Singaporean English represent the extent
to which a foreign language can be profitably reconstructed into a vehicle for expressing
sociocultural norms and networks that are typically local. Creative writers such as Salman
Rushdie, Chinua Achebe and others have shown how the Western language can be used for
communicating sociocultural nuances that are completely alien to the Western culture.
Common people who speak English as an additional language see it more as a language of
communicational necessity than as a symbol of cultural identity. They use English according to
their individual and institutional needs, and keep it separate from their local cultural beliefs and
practices. What Krishnaswamy and Burde, 1998: 153) said about Indian English is mostly true
of other varieties as well: Indian English has not “made any serious inroads into the social
customs, ceremonies connected with births, marriages and deaths, religious functions and
rituals that go with festivals, worship in temples, intimate interactions in the family and in the
Skills
peer group ± even in urban areas.” (For a critique of this position, see D'souza, 1997 and 2001.)
There is hardly any doubt that different varieties of world Englishes have successfully
nativized the colonial language and have clearly delineated their use in certain specified
domains. Nativization, however, is not the same as decolonization (Kumaravadivelu, 2002). In
the context of world Englishes, nativization may be seen as an attribute of a language whereas
decolonization is an attitude of the mind. Nativization is a relatively simple process of
indiginizing the phonological, syntactic and pragmatic aspects of the linguistic system of the
English language – a target that has been largely achieved. Decolonization is a fairly complex
process of taking control of the principles and practices of planning, learning, and teaching
English ± a task that has not been fully accomplished. Nativization marks only the beginning,
not the end, of the process of decolonization. To erase the lingering traces of English
imperialism and to claim ownership of the English language learning and teaching
enterprise, it is imperative to move from nativization to decolonization.
A meaningful movement from nativization to decolonization necessarily involves
significant shifts in policies and programs and in methods and materials governing English
language teaching (ELT). It involves not only decentering the authority Western interests have
over the ELT industry but also, more importantly, restoring agency to professionals in the
periphery communities. There are signs that the ELT profession is moving, albeit painfully
slowly, in that direction. There has recently been a substantial professional engagement with
130
issues related to English language policies and planning (see, for instance, Agnihotri and
Khanna, 1997; Foley, et al., 1998; Hall and Eggington, 2000; Tollefson, 2002). However,
adequate attention has not been given to a pedagogic area that matters most: classroom
methodology. It is true that the concept of method has been problematized before (e.g.,
Pennycook, 1989). But, to my knowledge, there has been no systematic attempt to explore
possible methodological means to decolonize English language teaching.

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 See also: Kumaravadivelu (2003, pp. 539-540).
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95. According to Golombek (1998), personal practical knowledge (PPK) of teachers is
shaped by all the following factors EXCEPT -----------.
1) knowledge of subject matter
2) knowledge of instruction
3) knowledge of context
4) knowledge of needs analysis
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Categories of Personal Practical Knowledge
Golombek (1998) classifies teachers’ personal practical knowledge into four general categories:
(1) knowledge of self, (2) knowledge of subject matter, (3) knowledge of instruction, and (4)
knowledge of context.
Knowledge of self can be described in terms of the identities to which the teachers referred
when they reconstructed their experience, for example, language learner, teacher, and spouse.
Knowledge of subject matter includes the disciplinary knowledge that a teacher uses in the
Skills
classroom; more specifically, it is input from readings, classes, professors, and other
experiences that these teachers had filtered through their interpretive frameworks to shape their
understandings of L2 learning and teaching. Knowledge of instruction represents the
pedagogical knowledge that these teachers drew upon to teach and to make sense of their
teaching. This knowledge can be general as well as specific, as expressed in particular teaching
contexts and students, including knowledge of the role of teachers and students, the role of the
classroom and naturalistic settings in language learning, the role of lesson plans, the objectives
of tasks, evaluation of students and tasks, interaction with students, and assessment of students.
Knowledge of contexts includes the institutional and sociopolitical setting along with the time,
place, and actors within the setting.
Even though these categories help illustrate the personal practical knowledge of these
teachers, they are neither a comprehensive nor a prescriptive view of what teachers know. The
categories overlap and interact, and the content of and interaction among them are illustrated in
the description of each participant’s tension. In sum, L2 teachers’ personal practical knowledge
can be viewed as similar to that of L1 education teachers as described by Elbaz (1983),
Clandinin (1986), and Harrington (1994); that is, it is personally relevant, situational, oriented
toward practice, dialectical, and dynamic as well as moralistic, emotional, and consequential.
131
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 See also: Golombek (1998, pp. 451-452)
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96. The distinction between explicit/implicit learning and knowledge is often addressed in
the domain of consciousness as -----------.
1) control
2) attention
3) awareness
4) intentionality
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Schmidt (1994) distinguished four senses of consciousness.
First, there is consciousness as intentionality. That is, learners can set out to learn some
element of the L2 deliberately, or they can learn something incidentally while focused on some
other goal (for example, while processing input for meaning). This sense of 'conscious' then
juxtaposes 'intentional' and incidental' learning. Second, there is consciousness as attention.
Irrespective of whether acquisition takes place intentionally or incidentally, learners need to
pay conscious attention to form. This sense of consciousness encompasses the Noticing
Hypothesis. Third, there is consciousness as awareness. That is, learners may become aware
of what they are learning. Schmidt acknowledged that this is a contentious issue. He noted that
whereas some cognitive psychologists such as Reber (1993) have argued that learning is
essentially implicit (i.e. takes place without awareness), others (such as Carr & Curran, 1994)
have argued that learners consciously form and test hypotheses. Thus, while it is not
controversial to claim that awareness is involved in learning explicit knowledge, it is less
clear whether consciousness is involved-in the development of implicit knowledge. Fourth,
there is consciousness as control. That is, the actual use of knowledge in performance involves
conscious processes of selection and assembly. Schmidt proposed that whereas fluent
performance is essentially unconscious, it may have originated in earlier guided performance,
as proposed by Anderson (1993). Schmidt's seminal work has established a clear role for
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consciousness in L2 acquisition and helped to show what this consists of. The general position
that Schmidt adopted is that the role of unconscious learning has been exaggerated.
Increasingly, SLA researchers have moved away from debating the role of consciousness
to examining how attention functions in L2 acquisition. In making sense of the different
positions that have been advanced, it is helpful to distinguish a number of different senses of
'attention'. Eysenck (2001), for example, pointed out that its primary use in cognitive
psychology is to refer to selectivity in processing. He then distinguished focused attention',
which is studied by asking participants to attend to only one of two or more input stimuli, and
divided attention', which is studied by requiring participants to attend simultaneously to two or
more input stimuli. With this important distinction in mind, we will examine how different SLA
researchers have theorized the role of attention, starting with Schmidt.
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 See also: Ellis (2008, p. 434)
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132
97. Which of the following is NOT a shortcoming of the vocabulary knowledge scale
(VKS)?
1) It represents a continuum on which receptive word knowledge precedes productive word
knowledge.
2) It assigns ascending ordinal values to different nominal categories.
3) It reduces the complex nature of vocabulary knowledge to a single scale.
4) It does not account for cases where advanced learners possess productive word knowledge
without any receptive knowledge.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Paribakht and Wesche (1997) suggested the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) to measure
the learners’ vocabulary knowledge. This version measures students’ receptive and productive
knowledge about a word, which can verify actual knowledge against perceived knowledge
(Min, 2008). Although VKS mainly relies on students’ self-report, Wesche and Paribakht
(1996) found high correlations between students’ rating and their scoring on the same scale.
These high correlations suggest that the students’ report of their knowledge level of the target
vocabulary is reasonably accurate (Horst, 2005). Also, unlike prompted meaning question items
(e.g., multiple-choice questions), which provide subjects with a range of possible answers to
choose from, self-report categories of VKS do not offer clues to the target words.
The VKS, however, has some limitations. It reduces the complex nature of vocabulary
knowledge to a single scale where multiple scales are needed (Read, 2000, p.136). Also, the
VKS scale represents a continuum on which receptive word knowledge is assumed to precede
productive word knowledge (Melka, 1997), but critics argue that it is equally likely for
advanced ESL/EFL learners to possess productive word knowledge without any receptive
knowledge (McNeill, 1996).
Even though there are some limitations as shown above, Min (2008) still believed in its
effectiveness of testing vocabulary knowledge and emphasized its one advantage, saying it is
Skills
sensitive enough to reflect changes in vocabulary knowledge during relatively brief
instructional periods. Therefore, he suggested the modified version of VKS, pointing out
several potential problems underlying the original VKS elicitation scale and its scoring
categories. He condensed the original five categories (Figure 1) into four and subsumed them
under the basic unknown/known dichotomy (Horst, 2005; Paribakht & Wesche, 1997). Figure
2 shows his modified vocabulary knowledge scale.
1. I haven’t seen this word before.

2. I have seen this word before, but I don’t know what it means.
3. I have seen this word before and I think it means …
4. I know this word. It means…
5. I can use this word in a sentence.
Figure 1: Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (from Wesche & Paribakht, 1996)
133
1. I don’t remember having seen this word before.

2. I have seen this word before, but I don’t know what it means.
3. I know this word. It means _________.
(Give the meaning in English or Korean.)
4. I can use this word in a sentence. _________ (Write a sentence.)
(If you do this section, please also complete #3.)
Figure 2: Modified Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (from Min, 2008)

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 See also: Kim (2014, pp. 34-35); Read (2000, pp. 135-138)
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98. What kind of recast is illustrated in the following episode?

L: Yeah, Whitman comes to my mind.
T: Comes to mind.
1) Complex
2) Multiple
3) Partial
4) Communicative
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
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 See also: Ellis (2009); Lyster and Ranta (1997); Mackey (2007)
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99. Critical language teacher education involves all the following activities EXCEPT-----.
1) critical self-reflection
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2) critical professionalism
3) critical awareness
4) critical pedagogical relations
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Critical Language Teacher Education Practices
McDonald and Zeichner (2008, cited in Hawkins & Norton) discuss the current move from
multicultural education to social justice teacher education. Social justice teacher education
seeks to address institutionalized as well as individual power differentials, with the goal of
promoting teacher's recognition and ownership of their roles as social activities.
There is an increasing body of literature within the fields of TESOL which addresses
theoretical stances around language teaching and language planning (Pennycook, 2001; and
Phillipson, 1992) but there are few accounts of critical language teaching practices mentioned
in TESOL Quarterly special issue, 1999. These accounts can be categorized as critical
awareness, critical self-reflection, and critical pedagogical relations. In each of these
accounts the notion of praxis is highlighted.
134
Critical awareness
A major focus of critical teacher educators is to promote critical awareness by raising
consciousness about the ways in which power relations are constructed and function in society,
and the extent to which historical, social, and political practices structure educational inequity.
This refers to a case in which teacher educators attempt to make visible to teacher-learners
inequitable relations of power in their communities, and the ways in which these affect the
language learners they teach.
Pennycook (2004, p. 341) offers an insightful reflection on what it means to be a critical
teacher educator, coining the term praxicum to capture how theory and practice come together
to create new understanding of the TESOL practicum. Pennycook identified three critical
moments in the teacher-learner’s classroom, arising from a) the actions of a disruptive male
student, b) the use of practice dialogs, and c) the recognition of non-standard English in the
classroom. Each of these critical moments raises larger questions of power and authority in
society and provides an opportunity for critical discussion and reflection. He suggests that
trying to be a critical educator is more than seeking and seizing small moments to open the door
on a more critical perspective. So his account locates praxis in the emerging critical awareness
of teacher-learners and its potential for social transformation.
Critical self-reflection
Critical language teacher educators encourage teacher-learners to critically reflect on their own
identities and positioning in society. Self-reflection provides a window on the relationship
between the individual and the social world, highlighting both constrains on and possibilities
for social change. An account that promoted self-reflection was conducted by Pavlenko (2003)
who demonstrated how she utilized theory to provide empowering options in a graduate
language education class in the US. She found that many teacher learners had internalized
traditional discourses of native vs. non-native speakers. To encourage self-reflection, she
introduced the notion of multi-competence proposed by Cook (1999) to enable her students to
see themselves as legitimate users of the target language, rather than as “failed native speakers”.
The comments of Ikuku, a female Japanese student, illustrate the power of theory to provide a
wider range of identity options for teacher-learners: Every day, I learn a new insight about
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English and socio-cultural aspect of the language, which knowledge empowers us. For instance,
I hesitated to see myself as a bilingual person until recently, and I kept thinking that my English
was not good enough and ultimately I should be able to speak or write like native person until
I learned the concept of multi-competency by Cook (p. 262). In this example, Praxis can be
defined as the emerging awareness (on the part of the teacher-learners) of ways in which
societal discourses have shaped their self-perception and thus their ability to act on the world.
Critical pedagogical relations

If the goal of critical pedagogy is to empower learners, pedagogical relations between teacher
educators and teacher-learners must be structured on equitable terms. Indeed, teacher educators
should reflect on their attempts to restructure power relations between themselves and their
teacher-learners, not only to model critical educational practices, but to encourage teacher-
learners to consider ways in which their own teaching can enhance opportunities for language
learners in their classes. As an account, Crookes and Lehner (1998), describe a language teacher
education course they taught in Hawaii in which they aimed to disrupt what Freire has referred
to as the banking model of education in favor of one in which all participants are equally
responsible for designing and participating in learning. Beginning with the negotiation of the
syllabus, they attempted to change the structure and dynamics of the class. Their account details
the struggle to implement a critical curriculum within a traditional environment, and is, in large
135
part, a reflection on the tensions between their positions of authority as educators and the desire
to enact a participatory, dialogic pedagogy. Therefore, praxis entailed a critical examination of,
and a shift in the structure of the curriculum and classroom.
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 See also: Burns and Richards (2009, pp. 32-36)
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100. Gass and Mackey (2007) have proposed that the interaction line of research be
considered as an approach because -----------.
1) it connects input, internal learner capacities, and output in productive ways
2) it enjoys the status of having both a strong and a weak version
3) it includes all the elements of a hypothesis, model, and theory
4) it has given rise to a large number of classroom-based and laboratory-based studies
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Interaction-Based Research
Over the past 25 years, interaction research has come to play a dominant role in our explorations
of how second languages are learned. Beginning with research in the early 1980s, scholars have
considered how conversational interaction can facilitate acquisition. The interaction approach
to second language acquisition research “takes as a starting point the assumption that language
learning is stimulated by communicative pressure and examines the relationship between
communication and acquisition and the mechanisms (e.g., noticing, attention) that mediate
between them” (Gass, 2003, p. 224). Long (1996) specified this within the framework of the
interaction hypothesis, explaining the interaction–L2 learning relationship as follows:
“Negotiation for meaning, and especially negotiation work that triggers interactional
adjustments by the NS or more competent interlocutor, facilitates acquisition because it
connects input, internal learner capacities, particularly selective attention, and output in
productive ways” (emphasis in original, pp. 451–452).
In a prototypical interaction study, learners’ interactions are recorded, and instances of
interactional modifications, such as recasts and negotiation (e.g., clarification requests,
Skills
comprehension checks), are tallied and analyzed based on the hypothesis that these interaction
routines result in some kind of change in second language knowledge (see Gass &Varonis,
1994; Mackey, 1999).
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 See also: Gass and Mackey (2007, p. 108); Loewen (2015, p. 13); Markee (2015, p. 187)
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136

‫سال ‪1392‬‬
Methodology
1. All of the following are true about the Grammar Translation Method EXCEPT that --
-------------.
1) the sentence is the unit of teaching and language practice
2) rules of grammar are explicitly presented
3) learners’ mother tongue is suppressed
4) oral skills are disregarded
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
For explanation and a similar item, refer to Year 91, Item 1.
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2. What type of learning activity does the following represent?
Teacher: I have seen him (never ever).
Student: I have never ever seen him.
1) Transposition
2) Rejoinder
3) Expansion
4) Inflection
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
The use of drills and pattern practice is a distinctive feature of the Audiolingual Method.
Various kinds of drills are used. Brooks (1964, pp. 156–61) includes the following:
1. Repetition. The student repeats an utterance aloud as soon as he has heard it. He does this
without looking at a printed text. The utterance must be brief enough to be retained by the ear.
Sound is as important as form and order.
EXAMPLE
This is the seventh month. –This is the seventh month.
After a student has repeated an utterance, he may repeat it again and add a few words,
then repeat that whole utterance and add more words.
EXAMPLES
I used to know him. –I used to know him.
I used to know him years ago. –I used to know him years ago when we were in
school. . . .
2. Inflection. One word in an utterance appears in another form when repeated.
EXAMPLES
I bought the ticket. –I bought the tickets.
He bought the candy. –She bought the candy.
I called the young man. –I called the young men. . . .
3. Replacement. One word in an utterance is replaced by another.
EXAMPLES
He bought this house cheap. –He bought it cheap.
Helen left early. –She left early.
138
They gave their boss a watch. –They gave him a watch. . . .
Methodology
4. Restatement. The student rephrases an utterance and addresses it to someone else, according
to instructions.
EXAMPLES
Tell him to wait for you. –Wait for me.
Ask her how old she is. –How old are you?
Ask John when he began. –John, when did you begin? . . .
5. Completion. The student hears an utterance that is complete except for one word, then repeats
the utterance in completed form.
EXAMPLES
I’ll go my way and you go. . . . –I’ll go my way and you go yours.
We all have . . . own troubles. –We all have our own troubles. . . .
6. Transposition. A change in word order is necessary when a word is added.
EXAMPLES
I’m hungry. (so). –So am I.
I’ll never do it again. (neither). –Neither will I. . . .
7. Expansion. When a word is added it takes a certain place in the sequence.
EXAMPLES
I know him. (hardly). –I hardly know him.
I know him. (well). –I know him well. . . .
8. Contraction. A single word stands for a phrase or clause.
EXAMPLES
Put your hand on the table. –Put your hand there.
They believe that the earth is flat. –They believe it. . . .
9. Transformation. A sentence is transformed by being made negative or interrogative or
through changes in tense, mood, voice, aspect, or modality.
EXAMPLES
He knows my address.
He doesn’t know my address.
Does he know my address?
He used to know my address.
If he had known my address.
10. Integration. Two separate utterances are integrated into one.
EXAMPLES
They must be honest. This is important. –It is important that they be honest.
I know that man. He is looking for you. –I know the man who is looking for you. . . .
11. Rejoinder. The student makes an appropriate rejoinder to a given utterance. He is told in
advance to respond in one of the following ways:
Be polite.
Answer the question.
Agree.
Agree emphatically.
Express surprise.
Express regret.
Disagree.
Disagree emphatically.
Question what is said.
Fail to understand.
139
BE POLITE. EXAMPLES
Thank you. –You’re welcome.
Methodology
May I take one? –Certainly.
ANSWER THE QUESTION. EXAMPLES
What is your name? –My name is Smith.
Where did it happen? –In the middle of the street.
AGREE. EXAMPLES
He’s following us. –I think you’re right.
This is good coffee. –It’s very good. . . .
12. Restoration. The student is given a sequence of words that have been pulled from a sentence
but still bear its basic meaning. He uses these words with a minimum of changes and
additions to restore the sentence to its original form. He may be told whether the time is
present, past, or future.
EXAMPLES
students/waiting/bus –The students are waiting for the bus.
boys/build/house/tree –The boys built a house in a tree. . . .
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3. According to the trace theory on which TPR is partly based, the more often a memory
connection is traced, the more likely -------------.
1) a nexus between variant linguistic components is established
2) a structure is internalized
3) the link between stimulus and response is reinforced
4) that memory is recalled
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Asher sees a stimulus-response view as providing the learning theory underlying language
teaching pedagogy. TPR can also be linked to the “trace theory” of memory in psychology (e.g.,
Katona, 1940), which holds that the more often or the more intensively a memory connection
is traced, the stronger the memory association will be and the more likely it will be recalled.
Retracing can be done verbally (e.g., by rote repetition) and/or in association with motor
activity. Combined tracing activities, such as verbal rehearsal accompanied by motor activity,
hence increase the possibility of successful recall.
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4. The syllabus in the Silent Way is generally said to be -------------.

1) notional
2) synthetic
3) lexical
4) analytic
140
Answer: 2
Methodology
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Explanation:
Despite the philosophical and sometimes almost metaphysical quality of much of Gattegno’s
writings, the actual practices of the Silent Way are much less revolutionary than might be
expected. Working from what is a rather traditional structural and lexical syllabus, the method
exemplifies many of the features that characterize more traditional methods, such as Situational
Language Teaching and Audiolingualism, with a strong focus on accurate repetition of
sentences modeled initially by the teacher and a movement through guided elicitation exercises
to freer communication (Richards and Rodgers, 2014, p. 289).
Synthetic syllabuses, similar to type A syllabuses in White (1988), segment the target
language into discrete linguistic items for presentation one at a time: “Different parts of
language are taught separately and step by step so that acquisition is a process of gradual
accumulation of parts until the whole structure of language has been built up…At any one time
the learner is being exposed to a deliberately limited sample of language. The language that is
mastered in one unit of learning is added to that which has been acquired in the preceding units.”
(Wilkins, 1976, p. 2). … The actual units according to which synthetic syllabuses are organized
vary. Structural, lexical, notional and functional, and most situational and topical syllabuses
are all synthetic (Long & Crookes, 1992, 1993; Long & Robinson, 1998).
Concluding remarks
Linguistic elements (lexical, notional, and functional elements, etc.) may be introduced either
synthetically or analytically. If they are introduced in segments, they follow a synthetic
approach to syllabus. If they are introduced holistically without being segmented, they follow
an analytic approach to syllabus. Therefore, the best option is Choice 2.
Syllabus Classifications
White (1988) discusses two main approaches to language syllabuses, which he calls Type A
and Type B. He summarizes the salient characteristics of these two types – drawing on the
curriculum classifications suggested by Davies (1976) – as follows:
Type A: What is to be learnt? Type B: How is it to be learnt?

• Interventionist • Non-interventionist
• External to the learner • Internal to the learner
• Other directed • Learner directed or self fulfilling
• Determined by authority • Negotiated between learners and teachers
• Teacher as decision maker • Learner and teacher as joint decision makers
• Content = what the subject is to the expert • Content = what the subject is to the learner
• Content = a gift to the learner from the teacher • Content = what the learner brings and wants
or knower
• Objectives defined in advance • Objectives described afterwards
• Assessment by achievement or by mastery • Assessment in relationship to learners’
criteria of success
• Doing things to the learner • Doing things for or with the learner
For over thirty years, syllabi have been divided into two paradigms. Wilkins (1976, pp. 2-13)
calls these synthetic and analytic syllabi, which also roughly correspond to White’s (1988, pp.
44-47) Type A and Type B syllabi. Synthetic (Type A) syllabi are concerned with structure and
141
what should be taught to learners, while analytic (Type B) syllabi focus on language acquisition
Methodology
and how to facilitate language learning. These two viewpoints move in opposite directions,
although one should not be seen as inherently better than the other.
Synthetic Analytic
• It is primarily product-oriented. • It is primarily process-oriented. It focuses on
procedures (i.e. it is procedural).
• Language is segmented into discrete units (of • Language is presented as whole chunks
grammar, notions, functions, etc.) for without linguistic control.
presentation one at a time.
• It is an interventionist approach and discrete • It is a non-interventionist, experiential
linguistics elements are presented in non-real- approach and immerses learners in real-life
life communication/ situations. communication.
• Careful control of linguistic elements/features • The focus is on behavior or performance, not
is taken. on linguistic elements.
• Language is linguistically graded. Language • Language is not linguistically graded.
items are graded based on grammatical Analytic syllabus is organized in terms of the
complexity, frequency of occurrence, purposes for which people are learning
contrastive difficulty to learners L1, and language and the kinds of language
pedagogic competence. performance that are necessary to meet those
purposes.
• It uses grammatical criteria in selecting and • It never uses grammatical criteria in selecting
grading content. and grading content.
• It is based on deductive reasoning and • It is based on inductive reasoning and
learning. learning.
• It is non-heuristic. • It is heuristic.
• It is mostly teacher-centered. • It is mostly learner-centered.
• The syllabus is decided a priori. • The syllabus is mainly negotiated.
• It mainly focuses on exercises. • It mainly focuses on tasks, content and
negotiation of meaning.
• Examples include: SW, GTM • Examples include: CLL, CLT
For more explanation and similar items, refer to Year 92, Item 12; Year 94, Item 3; and Year
96, Items 69 and 82.
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 See also: Baleghizadeh (2016, p. 21); Crookes (1993, p. 11); Nunan (1988, pp. 27-60);
Richards and Rodgers (2014, p. 289)
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5. Which of the following is in harmony with Lozanov’s views towards the role of the
teacher?
1) The teacher should maintain a solemn attitude towards classroom sessions.
2) The teacher should make students believe that they are as authoritative as she is.
3) The teacher should not reveal that she is biased towards any specific method.
4) The teacher should avoid engaging learners in childish activities such as role playing,
songs, etc.
142
Answer: 1
Methodology
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Explanation:
Lozanov lists several expected teacher behaviors that contribute to these presentations.
1. Show absolute confidence in the method.
2. Display fastidious conduct in manners and dress.
3. Organize properly and strictly observe the initial stages of the teaching process – this includes
choice and play of music, as well as punctuality.
4. Maintain a solemn attitude toward the session.
5. Give tests and respond tactfully to poor papers (if any).
6. Stress global rather than analytical attitudes toward material.
7. Maintain a modest enthusiasm.
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6. A learner who outlines his path towards ultimate success is said to be -------------.
1) sensitive to affective variables
2) using a cognitive strategy
3) metalinguistically aware
4) socially sensitive
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Based on Oxford’s (1990) classification of language learning strategies, “A learner who
outlines his path towards ultimate success” uses the metacognitive strategy of “Setting Goals
and Objectives”.
Setting Goals and Objectives: This strategy is a metacognitive strategy as proposed by
Oxford (1990). Goals and objectives are expressions of students' aims for language learning.
Students without aims are like boats without rudders; they do not know where they are going,
so they might never get there! Goals and objectives should be noted in the language learning
notebook, along with deadlines for accomplishing them and an indication as to whether those
deadlines were met. Goals are generally considered to be long-range aims referring to the
outcome of many months or even years. Objectives are short-term aims for hours, days, or
weeks (Oxford, 1990, p. 157). For more information, please refer to Year 93, Item 1.
Also, based on O’Malley et al.’s (1985) classification (cited in Brown, 2000, p. 125), “A
learner who outlines his path towards ultimate success” is, in fact, practicing self-management
and plans for his learning. Self-management is also a metacognitive strategy. For more
information, please refer to Year 91, Item 15.
But, Brown (2014, p. 126) provides another classification for language learning strategies
and includes “planning” as a “cognitive strategy”. Thus, based on Brown’s (2014)
classification, the best option is choice (2).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: H. D. Brown (2000, pp. 125-126); H. D. Brown (2014, pp. 125-126); Oxford
(1990, pp. 139, 153, 157)
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143
7. What corrective feedback type is used in the following exchange?

Student: “Yesterday I am sick, and I stay home.”
Methodology
Teacher: “Yesterday I was sick, and I stayed home.”
1) Repetition
2) Explicit feedback
3) Elicitation
4) Recast
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
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 See also: Ellis (2012, p. 139); Lyster and Ranta (1997)
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8. A major shortcoming of learner-based methods is that they -------------.

1) stress that teacher authority be made inferior to learner autonomy, which leads to
learners’ loss of trust in classroom learning
2) assume that learners cannot identify their own genuine needs
3) claim that learners’ needs are subject to change from context to context
4) confuse means and ends
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Teacher-centeredness vs. learner-centeredness
Brown and Lee (2015, pp. 45-46) make a distinction between two kinds of instruction: Teacher-
centered instruction and learner-centered instruction.
Teacher-centered instruction has been with us for centuries, if not millennia. The teacher
controls everything; students speak only when asked to; the teacher is an authority who is not
to be questioned. But around the middle of the twentieth century, this model began to erode as
educators probed new models of pedagogy. In the words of Weimer (2013), students "needed
to find their way past self-doubt, awkwardness, and the fear of failure to a place where they
could ask a question in class, make a contribution to a group, and speak coherently in front of
peers" (p. 5). By the end of the twentieth century, learner-centered instruction was a catchword
for a new model of education across many disciplines. Language teaching soon proved to be an
ideal subject matter to put the forward-thinking model into practice, as aptly demonstrated in
Nunan's (1988) manual describing curriculum design that incorporated collaboration between
student and teacher.
Richards and Schmidt (2010, p. 586) state that teacher-centered instruction (also known
as teacher-directed instruction, teacher-fronted instruction) is a teaching style in which
instruction is closely managed and controlled by the teacher, where students often respond in
unison to teacher questions, and where whole-class instruction is preferred to other methods.
Many current teaching approaches try to encourage less teacher-directed interaction through
the use of individualized activities or group work.
144
Learner-centered instruction turned teacher-centered models "upside down" by playing
Methodology
down the all-knowing, authoritative role of the teacher, and giving opportunities to students to
participate in a classroom without fear of being scolded or belittled by a teacher.
Brown and Lee (2015) provide some characteristics of leaner-centered teaching. Also,
Brown (2001) provides some principal features. These features are merged and included as
follows:
1. A focus on leaners’ needs and goals
2. Understanding individual differences among learners in a classroom
3. Gauging the curriculum to learners’ styles and preferences
4. Developing curricula that include the consultation and input of students and that do not
presuppose objectives in advance (i.e. a negotiated syllabus)
5. Including techniques that allow for student creativity and innovation (i.e. discovery
learning is supported)
6. Including techniques that enhance a student’s sense of competence and self-worth
7. Including techniques that give students a sense of ‘ownership’ of their learning and
thereby add to their intrinsic motivation
8. Creating a supportive, nonfearful, nondefensive atmosphere
9. Offering students choices in the types and content of activities
10. Giving some control to the student (e.g. group work, collaborative work of strategy
training)
Plus these features, the following are implicitly stated by Richards and Rodgers (2014, pp. 32-
33, 332-334):
11. Learners are no longer viewed as passive recipients of teaching. Rather they are viewed
as active participants in the learning process.
12. Knowledge is self-constructed or co-constructed by learners.
13. Learners are assigned much more power and autonomy in leaning.
14. Learners’ diversity (i.e. individual differences) is acknowledged.
15. Learners humanistic values are emphasized (based on the humanistic psychology)
16. Learning may be individualized based on leaners’ different goals and objectives in
language learning.
17. Learners are encouraged to reflect on their learning.
18. The teacher becomes less of an instructor and more of a facilitator. Thus, teacher is not
authoritative any longer.
19. Students are discouraged from relying on the teacher as the main source of knowledge.
20. Students’ capacity to learn from themselves are encouraged.
21. Students are encouraged to make decisions about what they learn.
22. Students’ awareness of their own learning styles is encouraged.
23. Students are encouraged to develop their own learning strategies.
24. Students are encouraged to self-monitor their own learning.
25. Students take responsibility for their own learning;
Richards and Schmidt (2010, pp. 326-327) elaborate on learner-centeredness as follows: A
learner-centered approach is a belief that attention to the nature of learners should be central
to all aspects of language teaching, including planning teaching, and evaluation. Learning is
dependent upon the nature and will of the learners. Learner-centeredness may be reflected by:
1. recognizing learners’ prior knowledge
2. recognizing learners’ needs, goals and wishes
3. recognizing learners’ learning styles and learning preferences
4. recognizing learners’ views of teaching and of the nature of classroom tasks.
145
In learner-centered approaches, course design and teaching often become negotiated processes,
Methodology
since needs, expectations, and student resources vary with each group. Learner-centered
teaching is contrasted with teacher-centered teaching, i.e. teaching in which primary decisions
are carried out by the teacher based on his/her priorities.
As for choice (2), since in learner-centered approaches to language teaching syllabus is
negotiated, learners are viewed as capable and self-aware of their needs.
With regard to choice (3), since learners’ goals and objectives are different and
individualized, their needs are subject to change from context to context.
Autonomous Learner Types

Nunan (1991, p. 170) made focus on the learner and distinguished four autonomous learner
types on the basis of the main activities that students are involved in.
Type 1: ‘concrete’ learners. These learners tend to like games, pictures, films, video, using
cassettes, talking in pairs and practicing English outside class.
Type 2: ‘analytical’ learners. These learners like studying grammar, studying English books
and reading newspapers, studying alone, finding their own mistakes and working on
problems set by the teacher.
Type 3: ‘communicative’ learners. These learners like to learn by watching, listening to native
speakers, talking to friends in English and watching television in English, using
English out of class in shops, trains, etc., learning new words by hearing them, and
learning by conversations.
Type 4: ‘authority-oriented’ learners. These learners prefer the teacher to explain everything,
like to have their own textbook, to write everything in a notebook, to study grammar,
learn by reading, and learn new words by seeing them.
To conclude with regard to choice (1), learner-centered methods seem to put too much emphasis
on learner autonomy and ‘voice’ at the expense of forgetting ‘teacher voice’. Also, if the teacher
starts his classroom teaching with a completely learner-centered approach, the authority-
oriented learners are may lose trust in the teacher and his expertise and knowledge.
Therefore, the teacher loses his status as an expert and the loss of expert status implies the
loss of autonomy and trust which teachers traditionally enjoyed and which also distinguished
them from ‘other workers’ and their work from ‘any work’ in the society (Swann, McIntyre,
Pell, Hargreaves, & Cunningham, 2010).
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 See also: H. D. Brown (2001, pp. 46-47); H. D. Brown (2014, pp. 121-123); Brown and
Lee (2015, pp. 45-46); Hutchinson and Waters (1987, pp. 67, 72); Kumaravadivelu (2006,
pp. 90-91, 129-131); Nunan (1991, p. 170); Richards and Schmidt (2010, pp. 153, 326-
327); Richards and Rodgers (2014, pp. 32-33, 331-334); Widdowson (1990, pp. 187-191)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
9. The heuristic function of language is its use to -------------.

1) explore the world around and inside one
2) identify and express the self
3) communicate new information
4) create a world of one’s own
Answer: 1
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146
Explanation:
Methodology
Developmental functions of language
According to Halliday, a young child in the early stages of language development is able to
master a number of elementary functions of language. Each of these functions has a choice of
meanings attached to it. He distinguishes seven initial functions:
1. Instrumental (“I want”): used for satisfying material needs
2. Regulatory (“do as I tell you”): used for controlling the behavior of others
3. Interactional (“me and you”): used for getting along with other people
4. Personal (“here I come”): used for identifying and expressing the self
5. Heuristic (“tell me why”): used for exploring the world around and inside one
6. Imaginative (“let’s pretend”): used for creating a world of one’s own
7. Informative (“I’ve got something to tell you”): used for communicating new information
At about 18 months, the child is beginning to master the adult’s system of communication,
including grammar, vocabulary and meaning components.
For more information and similar items, refer to Year 91, Item 11; and Year 93, Item 6.
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 See also: H. D. Brown (2014, pp. 212-213); Richards and Schmidt (2010, p. 166)
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10. Two scholars who have more in common concerning how languages are acquired
through genetic predisposition are -------------.
1) Vygotsky and Piaget
2) Halliday and Chomsky
3) Chomsky and Piaget
4) Halliday and Piaget
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Genetic Epistemology
It is a term used to describe the theories of developmental psychology of the Swiss psychologist
Jean Piaget (1896–1980). Piaget listed several different stages which children pass through in
mental development. These mental stages are believed to be genetically determined.
The first stage is the sensorimotor stage, from birth to about 24 months, when children
understand their environment mainly by acting on it. Through touch and sight children begin to
understand basic relationships which affect them and objects in their experience. These include
space, location of objects, and the relationships of cause and effect. But children cannot yet
make use of abstract concepts.
The next three stages are a movement towards more abstract processes. During the pre-
operational stage, from around two to seven years, children develop the symbolic function,
which includes such skills as language, mental imagery, and drawing. Children also begin to
develop the mental ability to use concepts dealing with number, classification, order, and time,
but use these concepts in a simple way. The concrete operational stage from about seven to
eleven years is the period when children begin to use mental operations and acquire a number
of concepts of conservation. During the formal operational stage (from around eleven onwards)
children are able to deal with abstract concepts and propositions, and to make hypotheses,
inferences, and deductions. Since the mental processes Piaget studied are important for
language development, linguists and psycholinguists have made use of Piaget’s ideas in
studying how mental development and linguistic development are related.
147
Thus, Piaget believes that humans have a genetic predisposition for learning – which can
Methodology
also be used for language learning.
Innatist Hypothesis
(also innatist position, nativist position, innateness position, rationalist position)
It is a theory held by some philosophers and linguists (following Chomsky’s lead) which says
that human knowledge develops from structures, processes, and “ideas” which are in the mind
at birth (i.e. are innate – humans are born with a genetic predisposition), rather than from the
environment, and that these are responsible for the basic structure of language and how it is
learned. This hypothesis has been used to explain how children are able to learn language. The
innatist hypothesis contrasts with the belief that all human knowledge comes from experience.
Thus, in brief, Chomsky believes that children are born with a certain “genetic
predisposition” that enables them to learn grammar. Chomsky called this predisposition the
Language Acquisition Device (LAD) which is believed to exist at birth.
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 See also: H. D. Brown (2014, pp. 10-15); Richards and Schmidt (2010, pp. 244, 285)
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11. A language task that involves more than one solution is known as -----------.
1) multiple outcomes
2) convergent
3) collaborative
4) two-way
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Pica, Kanagy, and Falodun (1993) classify tasks according to the type of interaction that occurs
in task accomplishment and give the following classification:
1. Jigsaw tasks: These involve learners combining different pieces of information to form a
whole (e.g., three individuals or groups may have three different parts of a story and have to
piece the story together).
2. Information-gap tasks: One student or group of students has one set of information and
another student or group has a complementary set of information. They must negotiate and
find out what the other party’s information is in order to complete an activity.
3. Problem-solving tasks: Students are given a problem and a set of information. They must
arrive at a solution to the problem. There is generally a single resolution of the outcome.
4. Decision-making tasks: Students are given a problem for which there are a number of
possible outcomes and they must choose one through negotiation and discussion.
5. Opinion exchange tasks: Learners engage in discussion and exchange of ideas. They do not
need to reach agreement.
Other characteristics of tasks have also been described, such as the following:
1. One-way or two-way: whether the task involves a one-way exchange of information or a
two-way exchange
2. Convergent or divergent: whether the students achieve a common goal or several different
goals
3. Collaborative or competitive: whether the students collaborate to carry out a task or compete
with each other on a task
148
4. Single or multiple outcomes: whether there is a single outcome or many different outcomes
Methodology
are possible
5. Concrete or abstract language: whether the task involves the use of concrete language or
abstract language
6. Simple or complex processing: whether the task requires relatively simple or complex
cognitive processing
7. Simple or complex language: whether the linguistic demands of the task are relatively simple
or complex
8. Reality-based or not reality-based: whether the task mirrors a real world activity or is a
pedagogical activity not found in the real world
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12. A grammatical syllabus rests on all the following assumptions EXCEPT that ---------.
1) the learner’s needs take precedence over learning prerequisites
2) language can be learned in an additive fashion
3) genuine communication transpires automatically
4) the rules constituting language are finite
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Grammatical syllabuses
The most common syllabus type was, and probably still is, one in which syllabus input is
selected and graded according to grammatical notions of simplicity and complexity.
Grammatical complexity, however, does not necessarily equate with learning difficulty. In
other words, what is grammatically complex will not necessarily be that which is difficult to
learn, and that which is grammatically simple will not necessarily be that which is easy to learn.
The most rigid grammatical syllabuses supposedly introduced one item at a time and required
mastery of that item before moving on to the next.
According to McDonough: The transition from lesson to lesson is intended to enable material
in one lesson to prepare the ground for the next; and conversely for material in the next to
appear to grow out of the previous one (McDonough, 1981, p. 21).
The assumption behind most grammatical syllabuses seems to be that language consists
of a finite set of rules which can be combined in various ways to make meaning. It is further
assumed that these rules can be learned one by one, in an additive fashion, each item being
mastered on its own before being incorporated into the learner's pre-existing stock of knowledge
. . The principal purpose of language teaching is to help learners to 'crack the code'.
Rutherford (1987) calls this the 'accumulated entities' view of language learning.
Assumptions are also made about language transfer. It is generally assumed that once learners
have internalized the formal aspects of a given piece of language, they will automatically be
able to use it in genuine communication outside the classroom.
For more explanation and similar items, refer to Year 92, Item 4; Year 94, Item 3; and Year
96, Items 69 and 82.
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 See also: Nunan (1988, pp. 28-30)
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149
13. An implication of chaos complexity science for developing and evaluating language
Methodology
teaching models would be -------------.
1) considering models as linear appraisal processes
2) foregrounding certain problems while obviating others
3) working for local models with higher certainty
4) searching for simple local solutions to universal challenges
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Chaos/complexity theory has the potential to contribute to our awareness about various aspects
of language and language acquisition in a number of ways:
1. Encourages a blurring of boundaries
2. Warns against settling for simple solutions prematurely
3. Provides some fresh images for SLA phenomena
4. Foregrounds certain problems, obviates others
5. Discourages theory construction through the aggregation of simple univariate cause-effect
links
6. Underscores the importance of details
7. Reminds us to hold the whole and to find a unit of analysis that allows this
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Larsen-Freeman (1997)
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14. According to this view of language learning, those elements most closely associated in
space and time will be connected in learning. This principle refers to ---------.
1) Popper’s demarcation criterion
2) Ausubel’s meaningful learning
3) Skinner’s operant conditioning
4) Thorndike’s law of contiguity
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Demarcation criterion
Falsifiability is the demarcation criterion proposed by Karl Popper as opposed to
verificationism: "statements or systems of statements, in order to be ranked as scientific, must
be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable observations". Popper saw demarcation
as a central problem in the philosophy of science. Unlike the Vienna Circle, Popper stated that
his proposal was not a criterion of "meaningfulness".
In Popper's later work, he stated that falsifiability is both a necessary and a sufficient
criterion for demarcation. He described falsifiability as a property of "the logical structure of
sentences and classes of sentences," so that a statement's scientific or non-scientific status does
not change over time. This has been summarized as a statement being falsifiable "if and only if
it logically contradicts some (empirical) sentence that describes a logically possible event that
it would be logically possible to observe."
150
Rote learning vs. meaningful learning
Methodology
Ausubel (1964) made a distinction between rote and meaningful learning. Meaningful
learning "subsumes" new information into existing structures and memory systems, and the
resulting associative links create stronger retention. Rote learning refers to taking in isolated
bits and pieces of information that are not connected with one's existing cognitive structures,
and in turn, it has little chance of creating long-term retention.
Respondent conditioning vs. Operant conditioning

Ivan Pavlov is the best known classical behaviorist and is known for respondent conditioning
while Skinner’s type of conditioning is called operant conditioning in which one “operates”
on the environment. Here, the importance of a (preceding) stimulus is deemphasized in favor
of rewards that follow desired behavior.
Associationism
Associationism is the theory that the mind is composed of elements – usually referred to as
sensations and ideas -- which are organized by means of various associations. Although the
original idea can be found in Plato, it is Aristotle who gets the credit for elaborating on
it. Aristotle counted four laws of association when he examined the processes of remembrance
and recall:
1. The law of contiguity. Things or events that occur close to each other in space or time tend
to get linked together in the mind. If you think of a cup, you may think of a saucer; if you think
of making coffee, you may then think of drinking that coffee.
2. The law of frequency. The more often two things or events are linked, the more powerful
will be that association. If you have an eclair with your coffee every day, and have done so for
the last twenty years, the association will be strong indeed -- and you will be fat.
3. The law of similarity. If two things are similar, the thought of one will tend to trigger the
thought of the other. If you think of one twin, it is hard not to think of the other. If you recollect
one birthday, you may find yourself thinking about others as well.
4. The law of contrast. On the other hand, seeing or recalling something may also trigger the
recollection of something completely opposite. If you think of the tallest person you know, you
may suddenly recall the shortest one as well. If you are thinking about birthdays, the one that
was totally different from all the rest is quite likely to come up.
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 See also: H. D. Brown (2014, pp. 62-63, 79-82, 83-84)
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15. In spite of bulky research on the effect of individual differences on ultimate

achievement of second language learning, the insights and implications borrowed
from these studies should be considered cautiously because of all of the following
EXCEPT ----------.
1) cross-cultural norms as underlying factors
2) psychometrically uncertain constructs
3) concatenative research methodology
4) overlapping operational definitions
Answer: 1
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151
Explanation:
Methodology
The study of individual learner differences (IDs) has a long history that predates the beginning
of SLA as a field of enquiry. Early treatments of individual differences were largely motivated
by the felt need to identify which learners should receive foreign language instruction by
devising testing instruments (such as the Modern Language Apitude Battery - Carroll and Sapon
1959) that would predict which learners would be successful. Learners were classified as ‘good
and bad, intelligent and dull, motivated and unmotivated' (Horwitz, 2000a). More cent research,
however, has sought to explain why some learners succeed more than others, and has been seen
as complementary to mainstream research in SLA, which has focused on the universalistic
aspects of L2 acquisition. As Horwitz pointed out, learners were now referred to by 'a myriad
of new terms such as 'integratively and instrumentally motivated, anxious and comfortable,
field independent and field sensitive, auditory and visual' (p. 532).
What has been lacking in this area of SLA, however, is a framework for examining these
factors. This is, in part, because there is no unifying theory of individual differences in L2
acquisition (Choice 2), and in part, perhaps, because the factors overlap in vague and
indeterminate ways (Choice 4).
Skehan (1989) distinguishes two general approaches to the study of IDs: (1) the
hierarchical approach, and (2) the concatenative approach. The hierarchical approach has as
its starting point a theory that affords predictions about how particular IDs affect learning.
These predictions generally take the form of specific hypotheses which can be tested
empirically (i.e. they can be confirmed or disconfirmed by carrying out studies that have been
specially designed to investigate them). The concatenative approach is a research-theory
approach. Its starting point is the identification of a general research question (such as "To what
extent does motivation account for L2 achievement?"). Data are then collected with a view to
identifying various IDs and the relationships among them and also between them and learning.
Such research is typically correlational in nature; that is, it can demonstrate the existence of
relationships but cannot easily determine what is cause and what is effect (Choice 3).
Nevertheless, it can contribute to theory development.
Much of the individual difference research has relied on quantitative methods of data
collection and analysis. A popular method is the survey questionnaire consisting of Likert scale
items that require learners to self-report on some aspect of their language learning. As noted
above, these techniques do not permit statements about cause and effect to be made, only how
the variables are related to each other-but see Gardner 2000 for a different view.
Doubts about the use of questionnaires in ID research, especially about their validity, have
been voiced on the grounds that asking learners to report general tendencies (as when they are
required to respond to questions like ‘I ask questions in English') is invalid because learners can
only report their approach to learning in relation to the specific learning activities they engage
in. Doubts also exist about the construct validity of some of the psychological tests used in ID
research (Choice 2). For example, there is controversy over whether the Group Embedded
Figures Test (GEFT) is a measure of field independence (i.e. the perceptual ability to distinguish
the details that comprise a whole), as it claims to be, or is simply a measure of general
intelligence, as Griffiths and Sheen (1992) claimed. Despite these problems, researchers have
continued to use the instruments in question.
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 See also: Ellis (2008, pp. 643-648)
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152
16. A morpheme is defined as -------------.

1) the smallest unit which leads to meaning difference
2) the smallest sound segment in a word
3) the most elemental unit of grammatical form
4) a distinctive sound in English
Answer: 1
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Linguistics
Explanation:
Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 36) define morpheme as the minimal unit of meaning. They state that
“a morpheme—the minimal linguistic unit—is thus an arbitrary union of a sound and a meaning
(or grammatical function) that cannot be further analyzed. They further add that a morpheme
may be represented by a single sound, such as the morpheme a- meaning ‘without’ as in amoral
and asexual, or by a single syllable, such as child and -ish in child + ish. A morpheme may also
consist of more than one syllable: by two syllables, as in camel, lady, and water; by three
syllables, as in Hackensack and crocodile; or by four or more syllables, as in hallucinate,
apothecary, helicopter, and accelerate.
Yule (2014, p. 66) defines a morpheme as “a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical
function.” Units of grammatical function include forms used to indicate past tense or plural, for
example. So, the word renewed consists of one minimal unit of meaning (new), another unit of
meaning (re- = “again”) and a unit of grammatical function -ed (= past tense). The word tourists
has two units of meaning (tour and -ist) plus a unit of grammatical function -s (= plural).
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17. All of the words below are monomorphemic words EXCEPT -----------.
1) butcher
2) water
3) father
4) diver
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
English speakers know that finger is a single morpheme, or a monomorphemic word. The
fings.” Similarly butter when not referring to goat-like behavior is monomorphemic food stuff.
The meaning of a morpheme must be constant. The agentive morpheme –er means ‘one
who does’ in words like singer, painter, lover, and worker, but the same sounds represent the
comparative morpheme, meaning ‘more,’ in nicer, prettier, and taller. Thus, two different
morphemes may be pronounced identically. The identical form represents two morphemes
because of the different meanings. The same sounds may occur in another word and not
represent a separate morpheme at all, as in finger, mother, brother, father.
The words butcher, water, and father are monomorphemic because they cannot be
decomposed into smaller morphemic units (i.e. other morphemes). But, the word diver is not a
monomorphemic word because it can be decomposed into dive + -er.
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For similar items, see also Year 91, Item 28; and Year 93, Item 30.
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18. The sentence “the man with the umbrella” can best be described as -----------.
1) N  N' PP
2) S  NP N
3) N  NP NP
4) N'  N PP
Linguistics
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Although the best choice seems to be option (1), according to Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 98),
option (1) must be revised as what follows:
NP  N' PP
According to Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 98), the tree diagram of the phrase “the man with the
umbrella” is:
NP
Det
N PP
the
P̅
man
P NP
with Det N̅
the N
umbrella
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19. The specification that “found” in “Tom found” must be followed by an NP is called -
--------------.
1) selectional restriction
2) subcategorization
3) logical subjectivity
4) unmarkedness
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Answer: 2
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Explanation:
A selectional restriction is a restriction concerning the relation between a predicate (or
predicate term) and its argument(s) (argument terms). It concerns inherent properties of the
relevant referents. For example, the verbal predicate assassinate requires an object that denotes
a famous person, i.e. it imposes a selectional restriction to this effect. Fromkin et al. (2014)
refer to this as S-selection. They state that a verb includes in its lexical entry a specification
that requires certain semantic properties of its subjects and complements, just as it selects for
syntactic categories. This kind of selection is called S-selection (S stands for “semantic”). For
Linguistics
example, the verb murder requires its subject and object to be animate, while the verb quaff
requires its subject to be animate and its object liquid. Verbs such as like, hate, and so on select
animate subjects. The following sentences violate S-selection and can only be used in a
metaphorical sense (We will use the symbol “!” to indicate a semantic anomaly).
!Golf plays John.
!The beer drank the student.
!The tree liked the boy.
The famous sentence Colorless green ideas sleep furiously is anomalous because (among
other things) S-selection is violated (e.g., the verb sleep requires an animate subject).
The well-formedness of a phrase depends, then, on at least two factors: whether the phrase
conforms to the structural constraints of the language as expressed in the X-bar schema, and
whether it obeys the selectional requirements of the head—both syntactic (C-selection) and
semantic (S-selection). The X-bar schema allows complements of any syntactic category (XP),
but the choice of complement type for any particular phrase depends on the lexical properties
of the head of that phrase.
Subcategorization: Complements (and specifiers) are not always present in the phrasal
structure. They are optional; only the head is obligatory. The parentheses included in the X‑bar
schema below indicate optionality:
XP
(Specifier) X̅
X (Complement)
Whether a head takes a complement or not depends on the properties of the head. For example,
verbs select different kinds of complements: find is a transitive verb and requires an NP
complement (direct object), as in The boy found the ball, but not *The boy found, or *The boy
found in the house. Some verbs like eat are optionally transitive. John ate and John ate a
sandwich are both grammatical. Sleep is an intransitive verb; it cannot take an NP
complement:
Michael slept.
*Michael slept their baby.
Some verbs, such as think, may select both a PP and a sentence complement:
Let’s think about it.
I think a girl won the race.
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Other verbs, like tell, select an NP and a sentence:

I told the boy a girl won the race.
Yet other verbs like feel select either an AP or a sentence complement:
Paul felt strong as an ox.
He feels he can win.
The information about the complement types selected by particular verbs and other lexical
items is called C-selection or subcategorization, and is included in the lexical entries of the
items in our mental lexicons (C stands for “categorial”).
Linguistics
Logical subjectivity: We as humans are creative in our conceptualizations. Our creation
of concepts are unique to each of us. We seem to act normatively in our construction of
concepts. Yet, while being normative, we have our own unique ways of constructing our own
versions of concepts. On the other hand, although the construction of each concept is dependent
on logical subjectivity – since only human beings are able to respond with normative freedom
to these normative conditions for logicality – no concept is exclusively the product of our
subjective logical functioning.
Marked vs. Unmarked: In many areas of language study, markedness is a state in which
one linguistic element is more distinctively identified (or marked) than another (unmarked)
element. Generally, the unmarked form is the more frequent option and also the one that has
the most neutral meaning. As Geoffrey Leech observes, "Where there is a contrast between two
or more members of a category such as a number, case, or tense, one of them is called 'marked'
if it contains some extra affix, as opposed to the 'unmarked' member which does not". For
example, the regular plural (such as tables) of a noun is the marked form in comparison with
the singular (table) because it has an extra affix, the -s (or -es) plural inflection. In a similar
way, the ordinary form of an adjective such as old is unmarked in contrast to the comparative
and superlative forms, older and oldest. . . .”
For similar items, refer to Year 92, Items 19, 21 and 25; and Year 93, Item 17.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 93-95, 157, 324-325)
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20. In the sentence “As for countries, China is the most populated one,” the subject and
the topic are respectively -----------.
1) “China” and “countries”
2) “countries” and “China”
3) “countries” and “one”
4) “China” and “one”
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
In describing the information structure of sentences, topic is a term for that part of a sentence
which names the person, thing, or idea about which something is said (the comment). The
concept of Topic and Comment is not identical with subject and predicate. Subject-Predicate
refers to the grammatical structure of a sentence rather than to its information structure. The
difference is illustrated in the following example:
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As for your drycleaning, I will bring it tomorrow.
Topic Subject Predicate
Comment
In some sentences in English, however, Topic-Comment and Subject-Predicate are identical.
For example:
Linguistics
Hilary is a dancer.
Subject Predicate
Topic Comment
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 See also: Richards and Schmidt (2010, p. 604)
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21. The expression “metal idea” -----------.

1) is syntactically odd
2) reveals a syntactic redundancy rule
3) violates the meaning postulate of “idea”
4) reveals the semantic feature of “concrete” for both of the expression components
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Anomaly
The semantic properties of words determine what other words they can be combined with. A
sentence widely used by linguists illustrates this fact:
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
The sentence obeys all the syntactic rules of English. The subject is colorless green ideas and
the predicate is sleep furiously. It has the same syntactic structure as the sentence
Dark green leaves rustle furiously.
but there is obviously something semantically wrong with the sentence. The meaning of
colorless includes the semantic feature ‘without color,’ but it is combined with the adjective
green, which has the feature ‘green in color.’ How can something be both ‘without color’ and
‘green in color’? Other semantic violations occur in the sentence. Such sentences are
semantically anomalous.
Semantic violations in poetry may form strange but interesting aesthetic images, as in
Dylan Thomas’s phrase a grief ago. Ago is ordinarily used with words specified by some
temporal semantic feature:
a week ago *a table ago
an hour ago but not *a dream ago
a month ago *a mother ago
a century ago
157
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22. A combination of Broca’s and Wernicke’s aphasia is called -----------.

1) neologistic aphasia
2) paraphasia
3) global aphasia
4) dyslexia
Linguistics
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Aphasia: The study of aphasia has been an important area of research in understanding the
relationship between the brain and language. Aphasia is the neurological term for any language
disorder that results from acquired brain damage caused by disease or trauma.
Neologistic aphasia is the language disorder in which the aphasiac misuses some linguistic
features and linguistic combinations and thereby coins new words or word combinations.
Global Aphasia: In global aphasia, speech output is nonfluent, and comprehension of
spoken language is severely impaired. Naming, repetition, reading, and writing are also
impaired. This syndrome represents the combined dysfunction of Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas
and usually results from strokes that involve the entire middle cerebral artery distribution in the
left hemisphere. Most patients are initially mute or say a few words, such as ‘hi’ or ‘yes’
(Whitaker, 2009, p. 51).
The term dyslexia refers to reading disorders. Acquired dyslexics—people whose reading
ability is impaired due to brain damage—make many word substitutions, such as the following:
Stimulus Response 1 Response 2
act play play
applaud laugh cheers
example answer sum
heal pain medicine
south west east
The patient was unable to read the stimulus word presented on a card, though his responses
were semantically related to the target.
For more information and a similar item, refer to Year 94, Item 28.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 463-470); Whitaker (2009, p. 51).
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23. The language called “creole” -----------.

1) is no longer a pidgin when it is based on the lexifier language
2) can be acquired by a child
3) shares very few features of a nonpidgin human language
4) is devoid of rules
Answer: 2
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158
Explanation:
A creole is defined as a language that has evolved in a contact situation to become the native
language of a generation of speakers. The traditional view is that creoles are the creation of
children who, exposed to an impoverished and unstable pidgin, develop a far richer and more
complex language that shares the fundamental characteristics of a “regular” human language
and allows speakers to use the language in all domains of daily life.
In contrast to pidgins, creoles may have inflectional morphology for tense, plurality, and
so on. Creoles typically develop more complex pronoun systems. Also, the compounds of
pidgins often reduce in creoles.
It should be noted that defining pidgins and creoles in terms of whether they are native
Linguistics
(creoles) versus non-native second languages (pidgins) is not without problems. There are
languages such as Tok Pisin, widely spoken in New Guinea, which are first languages to many
speakers, but also used as second contact languages by other speakers. Some linguists have also
rejected the idea that creoles derive from pidgins, claiming that the geographic areas and social
conditions under which they develop are different.
Moreover, the view that children are the creators of creoles is not universally accepted.
Various linguists believe that creoles are the result of imperfect second language learning of
the lexifier or dominant language by adults and the “transfer” of grammatical properties from
their native non-European languages. This hypothesis would account for some of the
characteristics that creoles share with L2 “interlanguages”: for example, invariant verb forms,
lack of determiners, and the use of adverbs rather than verbs and auxiliaries to express tense
and modality.
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24. A determiner in an NP or an adverb in a VP is called a -----------.

1) semantic prime
2) S-structure
3) semantic rule
4) specifier
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Psycholinguists have conducted a great deal of research on lexical access or word recognition,
the process by which listeners obtain information about the meaning and syntactic properties
of a word from their mental lexicon. Several different experimental techniques have been used
in studies of lexical access. There are some techniques for word recognition or lexical access.
One of them is semantic priming in which words can be activated by hearing semantically
related words. A listener will be faster at making a lexical decision on the word doctor if he has
just heard nurse than if he just heard a semantically unrelated word such as flower. The word
nurse is said to prime the word doctor. When we hear a priming word, related words are
“awakened” and become more readily accessible for a few moments. This priming effect might
arise because semantically related words are near each other or linked to each other in the
mental lexicon (pp. 451-452).
159
The derived structures—the ones that follow the application of transformational rules on
deep structures—are called surface structures or s-structures (p. 110).
Semantic rules are principles for determining the meanings of larger units like sentences
from the meanings of smaller units like noun phrases and verb phrases (pp. 144-146)
In English, a phrase may have an element preceding the head. These elements are called
specifiers. For example, in the NP the mother of James Whistler, the determiner the is the
specifier of the NP. In English, possessives may also be specifiers of NP, as in Nellie’s ball.
Similarly, in the PP just over the hill, just is the specifier. The specifier position may also be
empty, as in the NP dogs with bones or the PP over the hill. Specifier is a purely structural
notion. In English it is the first position in the phrase, if it is present at all, and a phrase may
Linguistics
contain at most one specifier. APs and VPs also have a specifier position and their specifiers
usually show up when the phrase is embedded in another sentence, as in:
a. Betty made [Jane wary of snakes].
b. I heard [Pavarotti sing an aria].
c. I saw [everyone at the stadium].
In (a) Jane is the specifier of the AP wary of snakes, in (b) Pavarotti is the specifier of the VP
sing an aria, and in (c) everyone is the specifier of the PP at the stadium (p. 88).
For similar items on semantic priming, refer to Year 91, Item 26; and Year 93, Item 63.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 88, 110, 144-146, 451-452)
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25. The concept of anomaly is realized in the sentence -----------.

1) The bachelor is pregnant
2) I will eat my hat
3) Jane is an only child
4) Time is money
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
There are cases when the meaning of larger units does not follow from the meaning of its parts
(i.e. they are non-compositional).
Anomaly is when the pieces do not fit sensibly together, as in colorless green ideas sleep
furiously. In other words, an expression is an anomaly when its individual words have
incompatible meanings as in Choice (1).
Metaphors are sentences that appear to be anomalous, but to which a meaningful concept
can be attached, such as time is money.
Idioms are fixed expressions whose meaning is not compositional but rather must be
learned as a whole unit, such as kick the bucket meaning ‘to die.’ Choice (2) is another example
for an idiom.
Choice (3) is a compositional sentence. Thus, the meaning of the whole sentence follows
from the meaning of its parts.
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26. All of the following sets of words are deictic EXCEPT -----------.
1) this place, next June, left
2) behind, I, that man
3) then, front, last week
4) now, Friday, here
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
The words in Choices (1), (2) and (3) are deictic. The words now and here in Choice (4) are
Linguistics
also deictic, but the word Friday is not a deictic because its interpretation does not depend on
the situational context. See the explanation on deixis below for more information.
Reference
First, we should note that ‘words themselves do not refer to anything’. People refer. This can
be clarified by means of some examples. Take the following two examples:
(1) a. Can I borrow your Shakespeare?
b. Yeah, it’s over there on the table.
(2) a. Where’s the cheese sandwich sitting?
b. He’s over there by the window.
We know that Shakespeare is the name of a famous person, but here in example (1), the word
Shakespeare is used to ‘refer’ to ‘a thing’ – a book by Shakespeare. In example (2), the phrase
‘the cheese sandwich’ is used to ‘refer’ to ‘a person’. Consequently, people use the words to
refer to entities: words themselves do not refer to anything.
Yule (1996, p. 17) defines reference “as an act in which a speaker, or writer, uses linguistic
forms to enable a listener, or reader, to identify something.”
Note: A distinction is made between “referent” and “antecedent”. The former refers to “an
entity in the world”, and the latter refers to “a constituent in the co-text.”
Referring Expressions
Yule (1996, p. 17) identifies four types of referring expressions:
1) Proper nouns: Shakespeare, Hawaii, John, etc.
2) Definite noun phrases: the singer, the island, the author, etc.
3) Indefinite noun phrases: a man, a woman, a beautiful place, etc.
4) Pronouns: he, her, it, them, etc.
The choice of one type of referring expressions rather than another seems to be based, to a large
extent, on what the speaker assumes the listener already knows.
Uses of Referring Expressions

Yule (1996, p. 18) identifies two uses for referring expressions:
1) Referential use
2) Attributive use
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Referential use:
Some referring expressions refer to ‘physically present entities’. For example, in the following
sentence ‘a man’ is used in the referential sense:
(3) There’s a man waiting for you.
Attributive use:
Some referring expressions do not refer to ‘physically present entities’. In fact, some entities
are assumed to exist. For example, ‘the tooth fairy’ or ‘Santa Claus’ do not refer to physically
present entities. Rather, we assume that they exist and we know them by their ‘descriptive
properties’, hence the name attributive (i.e. the attributes/adjectives of the entity).
Linguistics
Examples:
(5) We’d love to find a nine-foot-tall basketball player.
In reality, ‘a nine-foot-tall basketball player’ does not exist: the speaker just knows the
attributes.
(6) There was no sign of the killer.
In this example, also, the speaker ‘assumes the existence’ of the killer. Thus, the definite noun
phrase ‘the killer’ is used in an attributive sense.
Acts of Reference
There are two types of acts of reference:
1) Exophora: One-act reference. Exophoric acts of reference refer to entities in the
situational context.
2) Endophora: Two-act reference: Endophoric acts of reference refer to entities back or
forwards in the text.
1. Anaphoric
1. Endophoric 2. Cataphoric
3. Zero anaphoric / Ellipsis
Acts of reference
1. Deictic
2. Exophoric 1. Impersonal reference
2. Non-deictic
2. Homophora
Endophora:
Endophoric expressions are those that refer to entities in the verbal/linguistic context (i.e. in the
co-text). They are usually composed of two acts of reference. Endophoric expressions are also
called “textual co-reference”. Endophoric expressions are of three types:
1) Anaphoric reference
2) Cataphoric reference
3) Null anaphoric reference: (also known as zero anaphoric reference or ellipsis)
1) Anaphoric reference
If the first act of reference is a noun phrase (called the antecedent) and the second act is a
pronoun or other referring expressions (called the referent) which refer back to the first noun
phrase, the reference is called an anaphoric reference. In other words, an anaphoric linguistic
162
item is an item that refers back to something else in the same text. For example, he is used
anaphorically in the following sentence:
The reader should read the text carefully so that he can understand the details.
The noun phrase “the reader” is called the antecedent and he is called the anaphor.
2) Cataphoric reference
On the other hand, if the first act of reference is a pronoun or some other referring expression
that refers forwards to a noun phrase, it is referred to as ‘cataphoric reference’. In other words,
a cataphoric linguistic item is an item which refers to something along in the text. For example,
Linguistics
he is used cataphorically in the following sentence:
If he reads the text carefully, the reader can understand all the details.
3) Null anaphoric reference

Null anaphoric reference is also known as zero anaphoric reference or ellipsis. Take the
following example:
a. Peel an onion and slice it.
b. Drop the slices into hot oil.
c. Cook for three minutes.
In the above example, in sentence (c), the anaphor is omitted. In fact, when the interpretation
requires us to identify an entity, as in ‘Cook (?) for three minutes”, and no linguistic expression
is present, it is called ‘zero anaphora’, or ‘ellipsis’.
Exophora:
Exophoric expressions are those that refer to entities in the situational context. They are single
acts of reference.
An exophoric linguistic item is one that refers to a situation outside of language. For
example, when we say that book and indicate by gesture which one it is.
1) Deictic Exophora: Deixis

There are some very common words in our language that cannot be interpreted at all if we don’t
know the context. These are words such as here and there, this or that, now or then, yesterday,
today or tomorrow, as well as pronouns such as you, me, she, him, it, them. Some sentences of
English are virtually impossible to understand if we don’t know who is speaking, about whom,
where and when. For example: You’ll have to bring it back tomorrow because she isn’t here
today.
Out of context, this sentence is really vague. It contains a large number of expressions (you,
it, tomorrow, she, here, today) that rely on knowledge of the local context for their interpretation
(i.e. that the delivery driver will have to return on February 15th to 660 College Drive with the
long box labeled “flowers, handle with care” addressed to Lisa Landry). Expressions such as
tomorrow and here are technically known as deictic (/'daɪktɪk OR 'deɪktɪk /) expressions, from
the Greek word deixis, which means “pointing” via language. We use deixis to point to people
(him, them, those things), places (here, there, after this) and times (now, then, next week).
Person deixis: me, you, him, her, us, them, that woman, those idiots
Spatial deixis: here, there, beside you, near that, above your head
Temporal deixis: now, then, last week, later, tomorrow, yesterday
163
All these deictic expressions have to be interpreted in terms of which person, place or time
the speaker has in mind. We make a broad distinction between what is close to the speaker (this,
here, now) and what is distant (that, there, then). We can also indicate whether movement is
away from the speaker (go) or toward the speaker (come). Just think about telling someone to
Go to bed versus Come to bed.
Spatial deixis can be adverbs or verbs. Examples of adverbs include here, there, back,
above. Examples for verbs include come, go.
Deixis can even be entertaining. The bar owner who puts up a big sign that reads Free Beer
Tomorrow (to get you to return to the bar) can always claim that you are just one day too early
for the free drink.
Linguistics
Terminology
Deixis: Yule (1996, p. 9) defines deixis as a technical term (from Greek) which means ‘pointing
/indexing’ via language. For example, when you notice a strange object and ask, ‘What’s that?’,
you are using a deictic expression (‘that) to indicate something in the ‘immediate context’ (or
non-verbal/nonlinguistic context, or the situational context).
Deictic expression: It is definable as any linguistic form used to accomplish this ‘pointing’ via
language (Yule, 1996, p. 9). Deictic expressions are also sometimes called indexicals.
Deictic center: The speaker is the deictic center of speech because it is the speaker, and every
deictic expression is interpreted based on the speaker’s position in time and place.
Proximal terms/deictic expressions: Proximal terms are those deictic expressions that indicate
a position ‘near’ speaker/deictic center. Examples include ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’.
Distal terms/deictic expressions: Distal terms are those deictic expressions that indicate a
position ‘away’ from speaker/deictic center. Examples include ‘you’, ‘he/she’, ‘there’, ‘then’.
NOTES:
Note that time expressions can be either deictic or non-deictic: For example, now, before,
and tomorrow are deictic because their interpretations depend on the situational context.
However, time expressions like Friday, January, and 1995 are non-deictic because their
interpretations does NOT depend on the situational context.
Further note that place expressions can be either deictic or non-deictic: For example, here,
and there are deictic because their interpretations depend on the situational/nonverbal context.
However, time expressions like at office, home, and at work are non-deictic because their
interpretations does NOT depend on the situational/nonlinguistic context
Note also that personal pronouns can be either deictic or non-deictic: When their
interpretations depend on the context (i.e. situational context or ‘context of situation’), they are
deictic, and when their interpretations depend on the co-text (or the verbal/linguistic context),
they are non-deictic and thus called ‘referent’. Consequently, all endophoric referring
expressions are non-deictic.
Therefore, in the following example, the word she is not a deictic expression. Rather, it is
a referring expression.
Mary has bought a new house. She is moving tomorrow.
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Deictic Center
(I, me, here, now, etc.)
Person deixis
Linguistics
He / later, soon,
You
She tomorrow
there
now here
Proximity
Distance
there
before,
recently,
yesterday
Accordingly, we can classify deictic expressions as follows:
1. Person: e.g. I
1. Proximal 2. Spatial: e.g. here
3. Temporal: e.g. now

Deictic
expressions
1. Person: e.g. you, he
2. Distal 2. Spatial: e.g. there
3. Temporal: e.g. then
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2) Non-deictic Exophora
Non-deictic Exophora are of two types: (1) impersonal reference, and (2) homophora.
(1) Impersonal reference

In the following examples, ‘each person’, and ‘one’ do not refer to any particular entity;
therefore, they are ‘impersonal’ and all impersonal referring expressions are non-deictic
because they do not require the situational context for their interpretation.
a. Each person has to clean up after him- or herself.
b. To send a fax, one should follow the instructions carefully.
Linguistics
(2) Homophora
A homophoric linguistic item is one that refers to one’s general knowledge. The reference is
cultural. Homophoric items differ in the degree of how general or specific their reference is.
For example, the sun, the earth, and the moon will have the same reference for everybody who
understands English, whereas the prime minister, the queen and the government will have the
reference restricted usually to one’s country.
a. I haven't seen the sun for days.
b. People used to think the earth was flat.
c. The government will raise the income tax.
In example (c), the government is interpreted based on one’s country. If the speaker is in Iran,
the noun phrase the government refers to Iran’s government. If the speaker is in Italy, the noun
phrase the government refers to Italy’s government.
Homophora vs. Deixis

Homophora is an antonym of deixis. As nouns, the difference between homophora and deixis
is that homophora is a reference that requires some type of “general knowledge” to understand
while deixis is a reference within a sentence that relies on the context being known to interpret
correctly.
Two other -phoras

Paraphora
A paraphoric linguistic item refers to something in another text, for example, another work of
art (say, an item in one of Shakespeare’s plays refers to something ‘very specific’ in another
paly of Shakespeare) expected to be known and related to the text at hand in a special way.
Esphora
Esphora is the use of the definite article in a modified NP or an NP with an apposition. The
resultant definite NP is used to introduce a new entity into discourse, rather than indicating the
accessibility of its referent to the audience. The following example best illustrates this
difference:
(1) Anyway, I get so much back from my girls it more than compensates. I think
small children do need their parents around. I agree with the lady [a former
Independent Schools Association chairman, Paddy Holmes] who said the other
week that two-year-olds were too young to be in nursery full-time. (The Sunday
Times, 5/5/96)
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The use of the definite article in ‘the lady...’ is required by the post-modification in the phrase
and the writer's intention of introducing PADDY HOLMES as new is clear because she used
an indefinite NP as the apposition.
The few people who came back were John, Dave and Judy.
From the point of view of text processing, esphora is distinctively different from cataphoric co-
reference, which is a relation between two expressions, the interpretation of the earlier-
appearing one depending on the later appearing one. Esphora occurs within a noun phrase.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 166-170); Yule (1996, pp. 9-10, 17-24); Yule (2014,
Linguistics
p. 128)
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27. The pair “teacher/student” best exemplifies -----------.

1) complementary pairs
2) relational opposites
3) comparative opposites
4) gradable pairs
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Words are related in various ways. They may be synonyms, various kinds of antonyms such
as gradable pairs and relational opposites, or homonyms, words pronounced the same but
with different meanings such as bare and bear.
Words that are opposite in meaning are antonyms. There are several kinds of antonymy.
There are complementary pairs:
alive/dead present/absent awake/asleep
They are complementary in that alive = not dead and dead = not alive, and so on.
There are gradable pairs of antonyms:
big/small hot/cold fast/slow happy/sad
The meaning of adjectives in gradable pairs is related to the objects they modify. The words do
not provide an absolute scale. For example, we know that “a small elephant” is much bigger
than “a large mouse.” Fast is faster when applied to an airplane than to a car.
Gradable pairs give rise to implications, so that An elephant is bigger than a mouse implies
A mouse is smaller than an elephant. But beware of idioms! Blood is thicker than water as an
idiom about family ties does not imply the nonsensical (as an idiom) water is thinner than
blood.
Another kind of opposition involves pairs like
give/receive buy/sell teacher/pupil
They are called relational opposites, and they display symmetry in their meanings. If X gives
Y to Z, then Z receives Y from X. If X is Y’s teacher, then Y is X’s pupil. Pairs of words ending
in -er and -ee are usually relational opposites. If Mary is Bill’s employer, then Bill is Mary’s
employee.
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Comparative opposites: Not all words are absolute opposites. For example, old is not the
absolute opposite of young, since someone who is thirty years of age may be ‘young’ to
someone of seventy, but ‘old’ to someone of seven. These are known as comparative opposites
(Thornborrow & Wareing, 1998, p. 85).
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 155-158); Thornborrow and Wareing (1998, p. 85)
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28. Patients who suffer from anomia -----------.

1) reveal defects in the ability to name object presented to them
Linguistics
2) produce nonoccurring but possible words
3) mispronounce words and produce inappropriate words
4) substitute two related words
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Fromkin et al. (2014) state that aphasics who suffer from anomia have constant word-finding
difficulties.
Akmajian et al. (2010) state that in classic anomia the patient has difficulty finding words,
both during the flow of speech and in naming on confrontation. That is, when presented with a
stimulus object, the individual is unable to retrieve its name. Yet when these individuals are
offered the correct name of the stimulus item, they instantly recognize it. Further, they can
usually select the correct name from a group of names. Comprehension and repetition of speech
are normal, and speech is fluent although filled with circumlocutions.
For more information and a similar item, refer to Year 92, Item 22; and Year 94, Item 28.
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 See also: Akmajian et al. (2010, p. 550); Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 467)
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29. The common features of [g] and [k] are that both are -----------.
1) unaspirated, palatal, and consonantal sounds
2) obstruent, velar, and stop sounds
3) consonantal, strident, and back sounds
4) aspirated, nonvowel, and back sounds
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Stops: Stops are consonants in which the airstream is completely blocked in the oral cavity for
a short period (tens of milliseconds). All other sounds are continuants. The sound [t] is a stop,
but the sound [s] is not, and that is what makes them different speech sounds.
 [p], [b], and [m] are bilabial stops, with the airstream stopped at the mouth by the
complete closure of the lips.
 [t], [d], and [n] are alveolar stops; the airstream is stopped by the tongue, making a
complete closure at the alveolar ridge.
 [k], [g], and [ŋ] are velar stops, with the complete closure at the velum.
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 [ʧ] and [ʤ] are palatal affricates with complete stop closures. They will be further
classified later.
 [Ɂ] is a glottal stop; the air is completely stopped at the glottis.
Obstruents: The non-nasal stops, the fricatives, and the affricates form a major class of
sounds called obstruents. The airstream may be fully obstructed, as in nonnasal stops and
affricates, or nearly fully obstructed, as in the production of fricatives.
Velars [k] [g] [ŋ]: Another class of sounds is produced by raising the back of the tongue
to the soft palate or velum. The initial and final sounds of the words kick [kɪk] and gig [gɪg]
and the final sounds of the words back [bæk], bag [bæg], and bang [bæŋ] are all velar sounds.
Linguistics
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30. In English, nasality is -----------.

1) nonredundant when a vowel occurs before a nasal sound
2) generally a redundant feature for consonants
3) a feature in all consonants preceding nasalized vowels
4) a redundant feature for vowels
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Distinctive vs. Nondistinctive Features
When a feature distinguishes one phoneme from another, hence one word from another, it is a
distinctive feature or, equivalently, a phonemic feature. For two phones to contrast meaning
there must be some phonetic difference between them. The minimal pairs seal [sil] and zeal
[zil] show that [s] and [z] represent two contrasting phonemes in English. They cannot be
allophones of one phoneme because one cannot replace the [s] with the [z] without changing
the meaning of the word. Furthermore, they are not in complementary distribution as both occur
word initially before the vowel [i]. They are therefore allophones of the two different phonemes
/s/ and /z/. We know that [s] and [z] differ in voicing: [s] is voiceless and [z] is voiced. The
phonetic feature of voicing therefore distinguishes the two words. Voicing also distinguishes
feel and veal [f]/[v] and cap and cab [p]/[b].
Aspiration is not a distinctive feature of English consonants. It is a nondistinctive or
redundant or predictable feature (all equivalent terms). Some features may be distinctive for
one class of sounds but nondistinctive for another. For example, nasality is a distinctive feature
of English consonants but not a distinctive feature for English vowels. There is no way to
predict when an /m/ or an /n/ can occur in an English word. You learn this when you learn the
words. On the other hand, the nasality feature value of the vowels in bean, mean, comb, and
sing is predictable because they occur before nasal consonants. Thus the feature nasal is
redundant or nondistinctive for vowels. In other words, vowel nasality in English is not
crucial to identifying a word.
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31. Language learning as a profoundly social practice and the situated nature of SLA are
characteristics which make research in this field more compatible with -----------.
1) ethnographic research
2) case study research
3) survey research
4) experimental research
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Ary et al. (2014) state that ethnography is the in-depth study of naturally occurring behavior
within a culture or entire social group. It seeks to understand the relationship between culture
and behavior, with culture referring to the shared beliefs, values, concepts, practices, and
attitudes of a specific group of people. It examines what people do and interprets why they do
it. What are the meanings of these human actions and interactions within this context?
Ethnographers typically describe, analyze, and interpret culture over time using observations
and fieldwork as the primary data collecting strategies. The final product is a cultural portrait
that incorporates the views of participants (emic perspective) as well as views of researcher
(etic perspective). Ethnographic studies consider where people are situated and how they go
about daily activities as well as cultural beliefs.
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Dörnyei (2007, p. 130) states that applied linguistics as a field has an inherent interest in
intercultural communication and therefore ethnographic research has been embraced by
scholars who look at language learning as a profoundly social practice and see 'second
language learning', 'second culture learning', and 'language socialization' as inextricably bound.
In addition, because of the increasingly situated nature of much recent SLA research,
ethnography has also been utilized for the contextualized analysis of classroom discourse and
school learning.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 33, 490-492); Dörnyei (2007, p. 130)
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32. What kind of scale is used in the following item?

How would you evaluate the candidate in terms of creativity?
Among the first 5 percent
1) Bipolar adjective scale
2) Likert scale
3) Rating scale
4) Comparative rating scale
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Likert Scales: Method of Summated Ratings
The Likert scale (1932), named for Rensis Likert who developed it, is one of the most widely
used techniques to measure attitudes. A Likert scale (a summated rating scale) assesses
attitudes toward a topic by presenting a set of statements about the topic and asking respondents
to indicate for each whether they strongly agree, agree, are undecided, disagree, or strongly
disagree. The various agree–disagree responses are assigned a numeric value, and the total scale
score is found by summing the numeric responses given to each item. This total score assesses
the individual’s attitude toward the topic.
Bipolar Adjective Scales

The bipolar adjective scale presents a respondent with a list of adjectives that have bipolar or
opposite meanings. Respondents are asked to place a check mark at one of the seven points in
the scale between the two opposite adjectives to indicate the degree to which the adjective
represents their attitude toward an object, group, or concept.
Figure 1 shows a bipolar adjective scale designed to measure attitude toward school. Notice
that the respondent checked the extreme right position for item a and the extreme left position
for item d. The adjective pairs making up a scale are listed in both directions; on some pairs the
rightmost position is the most positive response, and on other pairs the leftmost position is the
most positive. This is done to minimize a response set or a tendency to favor certain positions
in a list of options. An individual might have a tendency to choose the extreme right end and
would check that position for each item. However, if the direction of the scale is changed in a
random way so that the right end is not always the more favorable response, the individual must
Research
read each item and respond in terms of its content rather than in terms of a positional preference.
The responses are scored by converting the positions checked into ratings (1 to 7). Seven
represents the most positive and 1 the least positive response on each scale. The weights on
each item would then be summed and averaged. In Figure 1, item weights are 7 + 6 + 6 + 7 + 3
+ 7 + 6 + 4 + 5 = 51/9 = 5.67. The score of 5.67 indicates a very positive attitude toward school.
a. bad  good
b. fast  slow
c. dull  sharp
d. pleasant  unpleasant
e. light  heavy
f. passive  active
g. worthless  valuable
h. strong  weak
i. still  moving
Figure 1: Bipolar Adjective Scale Showing Responses of One Subject toward the Concept
“School”
RATING SCALES
Rating scales present a number of statements about a behavior, an activity, or a phenomenon
with an accompanying scale of categories. Observers or respondents are asked to indicate
their assessment or judgment about the behavior or activity on the rating scale. For
example, a teacher might be asked to rate the leadership ability of a student. The teacher would
indicate his or her assessment of the student’s characteristic leadership behavior by checking a
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point on a continuum or choosing a response category. It is assumed that raters are familiar with
the behavior they are asked to assess. A numeric value may be attached to the points or
categories so that an overall score could be obtained.
Rating scales are of three major types: Graphic Scales, Category Scales, and Comparative
Rating Scales.
Graphic Scales
One of the most widely used rating scales is the graphic scale, in which the respondent
indicates the rating by placing a check at the appropriate point on a horizontal line that runs
from one extreme of the behavior in question to the other. Figure 2 is an example of a graphic
scale.
Low Medium High
Personal appearance ____________________________________________
Social acceptability ____________________________________________
Speaking skills ____________________________________________
Figure 2: Example of a Graphic Scale
The rater can check any point on the continuous line. Graphic scales usually assign numeric
values to the descriptive points. Such scales are referred to as numeric rating scales. The
speaking skills item in Figure 2 could look like this in a numeric scale (Figure 3):
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7
one of an one of
the average the
poorest speaker very best
speakers speakers
Figure 3: Example of a Graphic Scale
Category Scales
The category scale consists of a number of categories that are arranged in an ordered series.
Five to seven categories are most frequently used. The rater picks the one that best characterizes
the behavior of the person being rated. Suppose a student’s abilities are being rated and one of
the characteristics being rated is creativity. The following might be one category item:
How creative is this person? (check one)

exceptionally creative ______________
very creative ______________
not creative ______________
not at all creative ______________
Figure 4: Example of a Category Scale
To provide greater meaning, brief descriptive phrases are sometimes used to comprise the
categories in this type of scale. Clearly defined categories contribute to the accuracy of the
ratings. For example,
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How creative is this person? (check one)

always has creative ideas ______________
has many creative ideas ______________
sometimes has creative ideas ______________
rarely has creative ideas ______________
Figure 5: Example of a Category Scale
Comparative Rating Scales

In using the graphic and category scales, raters make their judgments without directly
comparing the person being rated to other individuals or groups. In comparative rating scales,
in contrast, raters are instructed to make their judgment with direct reference to the
positions of others with whom the individual might be compared. The positions on the
rating scale are defined in terms of a given population with known characteristics. A
comparative rating scale is shown in Figure 6. Such a scale might be used in selecting applicants
for admission to graduate school. Raters are asked to judge the applicant’s ability to do graduate
work compared with that of all the students the rater has known. If the rating is to be valid, the
judge must understand the range and distribution of abilities in the total group of graduate
students.
Not able to judge

Poorer than most
Better than most

among students
Really superior
About average
Usually low
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students
Area of Competency (to be rated)

1. Does this person show evidence
of clear-cut and worthy
professional goals?
2. Does this person attack problems
in a constructive manner?
3. Does he or she take well-meant
criticism and use it
constructively?
Figure 6: Example of a Comparative Rating Scale
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 225, 232)
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33. Which of the following options is NOT necessarily involved in generalizing from a
sample of teachers selected from among all teachers in a school district to the body of
teachers throughout the country?
1) Inferential judgment
2) Random sampling
3) Replication
4) The use of inferential statistics
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Answer: 3
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Explanation:
An important characteristic of inferential statistics is the process of going from the part to the
whole. “The part” is called a sample, and “the whole” is called the population. In doing research,
we are not able to study the whole population; therefore, we try to select a part of the population
which has the same characteristics as the whole population. When a sample has the same
characteristics as the whole population, it is said to be a representative sample. And when a
sample is representative of the population, we can generalize the findings to the whole
population with more certainty using inferential statistics. To increase the probability of
selecting a representative sample, it is suggested that the sample be drawn randomly so that no
sampling bias is involved and that we can generalize the findings with more certainty.
In other words, after making observations of a sample, researchers employ induction or

inference to generalize findings to the entire population from which the sample was drawn. To
do this, they need techniques that enable them to make credible inferences from samples to
whole populations. These techniques are provided by the inferential statistics.
Statistical inference is a procedure by means of which you estimate parameters

(characteristics of populations) from statistics (characteristics of samples). Such estimations are
based on the laws of probability and are best estimates rather than absolute facts. In making
any such inferences, a certain degree of error is involved. Inferential statistics can be used to
test hypotheses about populations on the basis of observations of a sample drawn from the
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population.
Replication: Scientists investigate questions concerning the relationships among natural

phenomena. Their findings are regarded as tentative, however, and are not accepted by
themselves or other scientists unless further investigations can verify them. Verification occurs
when repeated observations yield the same or similar results. Verification thus requires
scientists to make their research measurements and procedures known so that others may
replicate the study and verify, or fail to verify, the findings.
Thus, Choice (3) is not necessarily involved in generalizing from a sample to the
population.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 13, 161-162)
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34. A researcher studied the differential effects of two methods for teaching participial
formation on 28 field-dependent and 28 field-independent students. The design and
the statistical procedure used were -----------.
1) simple factorial design and one-way ANOVA
2) complex factorial design and two-way ANOVA
3) complex factorial design and ANCOVA
4) simple factorial design and factorial ANOVA
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Experimental designs based on the number of independent variables and dependent variable
(where the DV or DVs are continuous):
1. Large samples
(when σ is known Z-test
and n ≥ 30)
1. Two
means
1. Between-subjects t-test /
Independent samples t-test
1. Small samples:
Student’s t-test 2. Within-subjects t-test /
(when σ is not Dependent samples t-test/Repeated t-test
known and Paired-samples t-test / Matched t-test
1. Single-variable n < 30)
designs (i.e.
3. Single sample t-test
Unifactor designs)
1. One-way between-subjects ANOVA
2. Three 2. One-way within-subjects ANOVA /

or more Repeated-measures ANOVA /
means F-test / time-series ANOVA
1. Univariate 3. One-way within-and-between-subjects ANOVA
(i.e. one Mixed (or split-plot) Designs
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score/DV)
1. Two-way within-subjects ANOVA

1. Simple factorial designs:
Two-way ANOVA (or two- 2. Two-way between-subjects ANOVA
factor factorial ANOVA)
2. Factorial 3. Two-way split-plot ANOVA
ANOVA/designs (i.e.
Multifactor designs)
with two or more IVs 1. Multiple-way within-subjects ANOVA
2. Complex factorial designs:
/Three-way ANOVA + / 2. Multiple-way between-subjects ANOVA
Multi-factor factorial design
3. Multiple-way split-plot ANOVA
2. Bivariate (i.e. two scores/DVs

are analyzed at a time)
1. One-way MANOVA: one IV and two or

more DVs are analyzed at a time
3. Multivariate (i.e. three or more
scores/DVs are analyzed at a time)
2. Factorial MANOVA: two or more IVs 1. Simple factorial MANOVA
and two or more DVs are analyzed at a time
2. Complex factorial MANOVA
Note: This is not an all-inclusive list. Other classifications are also possible.
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Experimental designs may be classified according to the number of independent variables:

single-variable designs and factorial designs. A single-variable design (i.e. t test and one-way
ANOVA) has one manipulated independent variable; factorial designs have two or more
independent variables (e.g. two-way ANOVA, three-way ANOVA), at least one of which is
manipulated.
Notes:
1. Univariate statistics is used when we have just one dependent variable.
2. Bivariate statistics is used when we have two dependent variables.
3. Multivariate statistics is used when we have three or more dependent variables.
4. A z-test is used when the population mean and standard deviation are known, and when the
sample size is more than 30 (which is called a large sample size), and when the data are
normally distributed – which is usually the case for large samples based on the central limit
theorem. But rarely do we have the standard deviation of the population. Therefore, most
often we use a t-test.
5. In SPSS, there is no analysis for a z-test. Hence, either a t-test is used instead or a set of
syntactic codes can be used (http://www.how2stats.net/2014/03/one-sample-z-test.html).
Also, when the sample size is more than 30, the t-test and z-test will yield almost the same
results.
6. “Factor” is another name given to an “independent variable.”
7. Factorial designs can be randomized or non-randomized. Hence, when they are randomized,
factorial designs are classified as true experimental and when they are non-randomized, they
are classified as quasi-experimental designs.
8. One-way ANOVA is also known as “One-Way Analysis of Variance”, “one-factor
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ANOVA”, and “single-factor ANOVA”.
Multifactor Analysis of Variance

In the complex world we live in, it often is not the case that an independent variable has a
consistent influence on a dependent variable. Often, X influences Y in certain circumstances but
not in others. For instance, phonics instruction is useful in teaching reading with children with
normal hearing but worthless with the deaf. The independent variable, method of teaching
reading, does not have the same effect on the dependent variable, reading proficiency, when the
variable normal hearing versus deaf is taken into account.
In the language of research we say, “Is there an interaction between the independent
variable method of teaching reading (X1) and the independent variable normal hearing vs. deaf
(X2) and the dependent variable reading proficiency (Y)?”
You may want to investigate the combined effect of stress level and need for achievement
on performance in a problem-solving task. To investigate this problem, you will vary both the
level of stress and the achievement need. The layout for an experiment investigating the
combined effects of two or more independent variables is called a factorial design, and the
results are analyzed by means of a multifactor analysis of variance. If two independent
variables are investigated, we call the analysis a two-way analysis of variance. The null
hypothesis for a two-way ANOVA is that the population means are equal.
Let us assume that you have carried out this experiment using five subjects in each group
and that the data shown in Table 1 represent a summary of your observations of the performance
of the subjects.
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Table 1: Measures on Problem-Solving Tasks of Subjects with Low and High Achievement
Need under High and Low Conditions of Stress
Stress
High Low
20 Group 1 23 Group 3 ΣXr1 = 200
20 X̅ = 19 22 X̅ = 21 X̅ r1 = 20.0
High 19 21
Achicement need
19 20
17 19
ΣX = 95 ΣX = 105
22 Group 2 18 Group 4 ΣXr2 = 175
21 X̅ = 20 16 X̅ = 15 X̅ r2 = 17.5
Low 20 15
19 14
18 12
ΣX = 100 ΣX = 75
ΣXc1 = 195 ΣXc2 = 180 ΣX Total= 375
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X̅ c1 = 19.5 X̅ c2 = 18.0 X̿ (grand mean)= 18.75
Applying multifactor ANOVA will enable you to learn (1) whether there is a significant
difference between the performance of all the subjects under a high-stress condition and all
those under a low-stress condition, (2) whether there is a significant difference between the
performance of all the subjects with high achievement need and all those with low achievement
need, and (3) whether the difference between performance under high- and low-stress
conditions is the same for both subjects with high need for achievement and subjects with low
need for achievement. The effects of each independent variable (stress and motivation level) on
the dependent variable are called main effects, whereas the effect of different combinations of
the two independent variables on the dependent variable is referred to as an interaction effect.
The end products of these analyses will be three F ratios, two of which indicate the significance
of the two main effects and the third indicates that of the interaction effect.
Simple Factorial Design (also known as Two-Factor-Factorial Design)

Factorial designs have been developed at varying levels of complexity. The simplest factorial
design is the 2 × 2, which is read as “2 by 2.” This design has two factors (i.e. independent
variables), and each factor has two levels.
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Table 2: Simple Factorial Design
Variable 1 (X1)
Variable 2 (X2) Treatment A Treatment B
Level 1 Cell 1 Cell 3
Level 2 Cell 2 Cell 4
To illustrate, let us assume that an experimenter is interested in comparing the effectiveness of

two types of teaching methods—methods A and B—on the achievement of ninth-grade science
students, believing there may be a differential effect of these methods based on the students’
level of science aptitude. Table 3 shows the 2 × 2 factorial design. The aptitude factor has two
levels—high and low; the other factor (instructional method) also has two levels (A and B).
The researcher randomly selects 60 Ss from the high-aptitude group and assigns 30 Ss to
method A and 30 Ss to method B. This process is repeated for the low-aptitude group. Teachers
are also randomly assigned to the groups. Note that a 2 × 2 design requires four groups of
subjects; each group represents a combination of a level of one factor and a level of the other
factor.
Table 2: Example of a Factorial Design
Instructional Method (X1)
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Aptitude (X2) Method A Method B Mean
High 75.0 73.0 74
Low 60.0 64.0 62
Mean 67.5 68.5
The scores in the four cells represent the mean scores of the four groups on the dependent
variable, the science achievement test. In addition to the four cell scores representing the various
combinations of treatments and levels, there are four marginal mean scores: two for the columns
and two for the rows. The marginal column means are for the two methods, or treatments, and
the marginal row means are for the two levels of aptitude.
From the data given, you can first determine the main effects for the two independent
variables. The main effect for treatments refers to the treatment mean scores without regard to
aptitude level. If you compare the mean score of the two method A groups, 67.5, with that of
the two method B groups, 68.5, you find that the difference between these means is only 1
point. Therefore, you might be tempted to conclude that the method used has little effect on the
achievement scores, the dependent variable.
Now examine the mean scores for the levels to determine the main effect of X2, aptitude
level, on achievement scores. The main effect for levels does not take into account any
differential effect caused by treatments. The mean score for the two high-aptitude groups is 74,
and the mean score for the two low-aptitude groups is 62; this difference, 12 points, is the effect
attributable to aptitude level.
The high-aptitude group has a markedly higher mean score; thus, regardless of treatment,
the high-aptitude groups perform better than the low-aptitude groups. Note that the term main
effects does not mean the most important effect but, rather, the effect of one independent
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variable (factor) ignoring the other factor. In the example, main effect for teaching method
refers to the difference between method A and method B (column means) for all students
regardless of aptitude. The main effect for aptitude is the difference between all high- and low-
aptitude students (row means) regardless of teaching method.
A factorial design also permits the investigator to assess the interaction between the two
independent variables—that is, the different effects of one of them at different levels of the other.
If there is an interaction, the effect that the treatment has on learning will differ for the two
aptitude levels. If there is no interaction, the effect of the treatment will be the same for both levels
of aptitude. Looking at Table 3, you can see that the method A mean is higher than the method B
mean for the high-aptitude group, and the method B mean is higher for the low-aptitude group.
Thus, some particular combinations of treatment and level of aptitude interact to produce greater
gains than do some other combinations. This interaction effect between method and aptitude
levels is shown graphically in Figure 1. If this interaction is statistically significant, you conclude
that the effectiveness of the method depends on aptitude. Method A is more effective with the
high-aptitude students; method B is more effective with the low-aptitude group.
80
A
75
Mean achievement scores
70
5
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Method B
65
5
Method A
60
55
Low High
Aptitude
Figure 1: Illustration of Interaction between Method and Aptitude Level
Complex Factorial Design (also known as Higher Order Factorial Design)

In brief, a complex factorial design involves more than two independent variables. For example,
when we have three independent variables and one dependent variable, the appropriate
statistical test is a three-way ANOVA. When we have four independent variables and one
dependent variable, the appropriate statistical test is a four-way ANOVA
Concluding remarks
In the study provided in this question item, we have two independent variables: (1) method of
teaching, and (2) field-(in)dependence, each with two levels. Therefore, as stated above the
simplest factorial design is the 2 × 2. So, the design of this study is simple factorial design.
(see Hatch and Lazaraton, 1991, p. 373).
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Note 1: A 2 × 2 design has two independent variables. A 2 × 2 × 2 design has three independent
variables. A 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 design has four independent variables. A 3 × 3 design has two
independent variables, and each factor has three levels.
Note 2: Multifactor analysis is different from multivariate analysis. “Factor” means cause or
independent variable. Thus multifactor analysis is carried out on studies with more than one
independent variable. In statistics, “variate” is another term for a “dependent variable”. Hence,
multivariate analysis is run when the study has more than one dependent variable.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 197-198, 325, 334-338); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, p. 373)
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1) Stimulated recall is a technique in which the researcher records and transcribes part of
a lesson and then gets the participant to comment on what was happening at that time.
2) The think-aloud technique is a retrospective method of gathering research data.
3) Conversation and interaction analyses are both concerned exclusively with spoken
language.
4) A high-inference behavior requires observers to interpret the behavior they observe.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Stimulated Recall
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Stimulated recall is usually viewed as a subset of introspective measures. It is a means by which
a researcher, in an effort to explore a learner's thought processes or strategies, can prompt the
leaner to recall and report thoughts that she or he had while performing a task or participating
in an event. Stimulated recalls are conducted with some degree of support; for example, learners
may be shown a videotape so that they can watch themselves carrying out the task, or they may
be given their second language written product so that they can follow the changes they made,
commenting on their motivations and thought processes along the way (Mackey & Gass, 2012,
p. 87).
Think-Alouds or Online Tasks

In think-aloud tasks, also known as online tasks, individuals are asked what is going through
their minds as they are solving a problem or completing a task. Through this procedure, a
researcher can gather information about the way people approach a problem-solving activity
(Mackey & Gass, 2012, p. 89).
Online tasks are contrasted with offline tasks. Online tasks are carried out while the
participant is processing the input, such as pressing a response button immediately on hearing
a target word in a monitoring task. Thus, think-alouds are online tasks in that the respondent
states what happens in his or her mind while doing the task. On the other hand, offline tasks are
carried out ‘after the event’ and usually without time pressure, such as an experiment where the
participant makes a grammaticality judgement after the end of a sentence. Therefore, we can
say that “introspective tasks” are “online tasks” and “retrospective tasks” are “offline tasks”.
Comparing Discourse Analysis, Interaction Analysis, and Conversation Analysis

In comparing discourse analysis, interaction analysis, and conversation analysis in terms of the
mode of language, David Nunan (1992, p. 160) states that discourse analysis is carried out on
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both written and spoken language, but conversation and interaction analysis are both concerned
exclusively with spoken language.
High-Inference vs. Low-Inference

Ary et al. (2014, p. 233) states that the behaviors observed in quantitative studies may be
categorized as high inference and low inference. High-inference behaviors such as teacher
warmth or creativity require more judgment on the part of the observer. Low-inference
behaviors require less judgment by the observer.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, p. 233); Dörnyei (2007, pp. 147-151); Mackey and Gass (2016,
pp. 87-89); Nunan (1992, p. 160)
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36. Participant/Informant selection bias is considered to be a threat to -----------.

1) internal reliability
2) external reliability
3) internal validity
4) external validity
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Ary et al. (2014, pp. 293-305) state 11 threats to the internal validity of research. For a brief
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explanation on these threats, please refer to Year 91, Item 55.
For more information and similar items on internal validity and threats to internal validity,
please refer to Year 91, Item 55; Year 96, Items 41, 42, and 43; and Year 97, Items 41, 42, and
55.
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37. Which of the following sentences is FALSE?

1) The Levene test is used to check for equality of variances in independent-samples t-
tests.
2) Non-parametric statistical procedures are more conservative than parametric ones.
3) In a study with two groups and a pre- and post-test, a maximum of 3 t-tests are allowed.
4) Type II errors take place when the null hypothesis is mistakenly rejected.
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Major Assumptions of the Independent Samples t Test
1. Your dependent variable should be measured on a continuous scale (i.e., it is
measured at the interval or ratio level).
2. Your independent variable should consist of two categorical, independent groups.
Example independent variables that meet this criterion include gender (2 groups: male
or female), employment status (2 groups: employed or unemployed), smoker (2 groups:
yes or no), and so forth.
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3. You should have independence of observations, which means that there is no

relationship between the observations in each group or between the groups themselves.
4. There should be no significant outliers. Outliers are simply single data points within
your data that do not follow the usual pattern
5. Your dependent variable should be approximately normally distributed for each
group of the independent variable.
6. There needs to be homogeneity/equality of variances. You can test this assumption in
SPSS Statistics using Levene’s test for homogeneity of variances.
Major ANOVA Assumptions

1. Random sampling: Each condition contains a random sample of the population of such
scores
2. Normal distribution: The scores in each condition are distributed normally
3. Independence of observations: The scores in each condition are independent of each
other.
4. Homogeneity/equality of variances: The variances of the scores in each experimental
condition are homogeneous/of equal variances. You can test this assumption in SPSS
Statistics using Levene’s test for homogeneity of variances
Thus, choice (1) is not false, and thus not the choice to be selected.
Conservativeness of Non-parametric Statistical Tests

Statistical methods are commonly divided into two broad categories: parametric and
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nonparametric. Historically, researchers have recognized three primary differences between
parametric and nonparametric statistics:
1. Nonparametric statistics are appropriate with only nominal and ordinal data. Parametric
statistics are appropriate for interval and ratio data.
2. Nonparametric results cannot be generalized to the population. Generalization is possible
only with parametric statistics.
3. Nonparametric statistics make no assumption about normally distributed data, whereas
parametric statistics assume normality. Nonparametric statistics are said to be
“distribution-free.” In other words, nonparametric statistical procedures rely on few or no
assumptions about the shape or parameters of the population distribution from which the
sample was taken
Regarding the first difference, parametric tests use more information in their analysis. That
is, interval data provide us with ‘distinctiveness’, ‘ordering’, and ‘equal intervals’; and ratio
data provide us with ‘distinctiveness’, ‘ordering’, ‘equal intervals’, and a ‘true zero point’.
However, Nominal data gives us only ‘distinctiveness’ of data, and ordinal data provide us with
‘distinctiveness’ and ‘ordering’. Therefore, parametric statistics use more information than
nonparametric statistics and are, in turn, more robust. In contrast, nonparametric statistics use
less information and therefore are more conservative than their parametric alternatives.
Number of t-tests
Choice (3) says that “In a study with two groups and a pre- and post-test, a maximum of 3 t-
tests are allowed.” Thus, in this study we have “a pre-test”, “a post-test”, and “a proficiency
test” – which totally make 3 t-tests.
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Type I and Type II errors

 Type I error, also known as a “false positive”: the error of rejecting a null hypothesis
when it is actually true. In other words, this is the error of accepting an alternative
hypothesis (the real hypothesis of interest) when the results can be attributed to chance.
Plainly speaking, it occurs when we are observing a difference when in truth there is
none (or more specifically - no statistically significant difference).
 Type II error, also known as a "false negative": the error of not rejecting a null
hypothesis when the alternative hypothesis is the true state of nature. In other words,
this is the error of failing to accept an alternative hypothesis when you don’t have
adequate power. Plainly speaking, it occurs when we are failing to observe a difference
when in truth there is one.
For elaboration on Type I and Type II errors, please refer to Year 96, Item 54.
Thus, Choice (4) is the false option, and hence the answer.
For explanation and for similar items, please refer to Year 91, Item 52; Year 94, Item 60;
Year 96, Item 54; Year 97, Item 46.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 176-181); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, pp. 263-264, 328-
329)
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38. How would you describe the following distribution?
1) Leptokurtic, positively skewed

2) Platykurtic, negatively skewed
3) Leptokurtic, negatively skewed
4) Platykurtic, positively skewed
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Frequency distributions can have a variety of shapes. A distribution is symmetrical when the
two halves are mirror images of each other. In a symmetrical distribution, the values of the
mean and the median coincide. If such a distribution has a single mode, rather than two or more
modes, the three indexes of central tendency will coincide. A distribution can also be
asymmetrical: A distribution is asymmetrical when the two halves are not mirror images of
each other as in skewed distributions. If a distribution is not symmetrical, it is described as
skewed, pulled out to one end or the other by the presence of extreme scores.
Also based on the kurtosis of the distribution, a distribution can be leptokurtic (i.e. peaked),
platykurtic (i.e. flat), or mesokurtic. In the figures below, you can see some examples of these
types of distributions.
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A symmetrical, mesokurtic distribution A symmetrical, platykurtic distribution
A symmetrical, leptokurtic distribution A uniform/flat distribution
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A negatively skewed, mesokurtic distribution A positively skewed, mesokurtic distribution
A negatively skewed, leptokurtic distribution A positively skewed, leptokurtic distribution
A symmetrical, bimodal distribution A non-symmetrical, bimodal distribution
For similar items on “skewedness”, refer to Year 92, Items 40 and 52; Year 93, Item 55; Year
94, Item 44; Year 96, Item 45; and Year 97, Items 45 and 58.
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39. Which of the following statements about qualitative research is FALSE?

1) Axial coding is when the researcher makes connections between categories, thereby
attempting to integrate them and group them into more encompassing concepts.
2) Saturation is defined as the point when additional data do not seem to develop the
concepts any further.
3) Selective coding is the primary stage in grounded theory analysis, in which we need to
select a core category to concentrate on in the rest of the analysis.
4) Iteration refers to the cyclical process of moving back and forth between data collection
and analysis.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Dörnyei (2007, pp. 126-127) defines iteration and saturation in qualitative research as
follows: Researchers are in agreement that the participant selection process should remain open
in a qualitative study as long as possible so that after initial accounts are gathered and analyzed,
additional participants can be added who can fill gaps in the initial description or can expand
or even challenge it. This cyclical process of moving back and forth between data collection
and analysis is often referred to as 'iteration'.
Although iteration is a key process in qualitative sampling, it cannot go on forever. When
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do we stop it? There are no rigid guidelines, but scholars agree that ideally the iterative process
should go on until we reach saturation. Glaser and Strauss (1967) defined this as the point
when additional data do not seem to develop the concepts any further but simply repeat what
previous informants have already revealed. In other words, saturation is the point when the
researcher becomes 'empirically confident' (p. 61) that he/she has all the data needed to answer
the research question. In practice, however, researchers usually decide when to stop adding
cases to a study based on a combination of theoretical saturation and pragmatic considerations
such as available time and money (Eisenhardt, 1989).
Dörnyei (2007, pp. 260-261) describes phases of data coding in grounded theory as
follows: The best-known aspect of grounded theory is the distinctions between different phases
of coding the data. (See Strauss and Corbin 1998.) Coding in qualitative research is a multi-
level procedure, and grounded theory describes a logical, three-level system: first we break up
the data into chunks and assign conceptual categories to the data segments ('open coding').
Second, we identify interrelationships between these categories ('axial coding'). Third, we
explain these relationships at a higher level of abstraction ('selective coding'). Thus, the process
appears to be sequential, moving from the descriptive to the abstract, but given the inherently
iterative nature of qualitative research it should come as no surprise that the three phases occur
recursively.
Open coding
'Open coding' constitutes the first level of conceptual analysis of the data. The textual data is
'broken open' into chunks whose length usually varies between a long phrase, a line, a sentence,
or even a short paragraph. Each of these segments is assigned a category label, but in line with
the theory-building emphasis of the method, the emphasis already at this stage is on stimulating
new ideas and therefore the categories are abstract and conceptual rather than descriptive. This
practice is different from other forms of qualitative analysis which usually start out with
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descriptive or interpretive categories; in open coding the main questions the researcher asks
about each segment are of the following type: what is this piece of data an example of? What
is going on? What principles underlie these actions/statements? What do they actually mean?
Thus, each data segment is thoroughly 'interrogated' before assigning meaning to it, resulting
in what we can call an abstracting process from data to first-order concepts (see Dörnyei, 2007,
pp. 261-262).
Axial (or theoretical) coding

'Axial coding' extends the abstracting process from first-order concepts to higher-order
concepts. The researcher makes connections between categories, thereby attempting to
integrate them and group them into more encompassing concepts that subsume several
subcategories. The word 'axial' was used by Strauss and Corbin (1998) to signify that a
metaphorical axis is placed through the data to relate the categories to each other. Glaser (1992)
'used the more general term 'theoretical coding' to describe this stage. The relationships between
the categories can be manifold, referring for example to causal conditions, consequences, and
similarities as well as contextual, procedural, or strategic interdependence (see Dörnyei, 2007,
p. 262).
Selective coding
'Selective coding' is the final stage in grounded theory analysis, in which, as the term suggests,
we need to select a 'core category' (or as Richards 2003 puts it, 'explanatory concept') to
concentrate on in the rest of the analysis and the writing tip of the study. This core category will
be the centerpiece of the proposed new theory. Because ultimately we want to integrate much
of our processed data, the central category/theme needs to be of a sufficiently high level-of
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abstraction to be able to subsume other categories (see Dörnyei, 2007, p. 262).
For more information and similar items on grounded theory, refer to Year 91, item 58; Year 93,
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 492-495); Dörnyei (2007, pp. 126-127, 260-261)
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40. Which of the following would indicate that our distribution is NOT normal?
1) There are no scores more than 1.5 box lengths away from the 25th or 75th percentile in
a boxplot.
2) The mean and 5% trimmed mean of the distribution are exactly the same.
3) The one-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test has a significance level of less than 0.05
4) The skewness and kurtosis both approximate zero.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Boxplots
Boxplots can be used to illustrate graphically how our data are distributed used the famous five
number summaries: (1) minimum value, (2) Q1 value, (3) Q2 value, (4) Q3 value, and (5)
maximum value. For example, to draw the boxplot of the following set of data, we follow the
following steps:
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1. Data ordering: We arrange our data in order from the lowest to the highest value,
2. Minimum and Maximum values: When we arrange our data set, the minimum and
maximum values can clearly be distinguished
3. Q2 value: We calculate the median of each data set,
4. Q1 value: We calculate the median of the lower half of our data set,
5. Q3 value: We calculate the median of the upper half of our data set.
Data set A:
Unordered: 3, 2, 5, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 6, 6, 6
Step 1: Ordered: 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8
Step 2: Q2 = 6
Lower half Upper half
2, 3, 5, 5, 5 6 6, 6, 7, 7, 8
Step 3: Q1 = 5
Step 3: Q3 = 7
Thus, the five number summaries of data set A are:

Min. = 2
Q1= 5
Q2= 6
Q3= 7
Max. = 8
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Then we draw its boxplot.
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
The Interquartile Range and Boxplot

The interquartile range (IQR) is often used to find outliers in data. Outliers here are defined as
observations that fall below Q1 − 1.5 IQR or above Q3 + 1.5 IQR. In a boxplot, the highest and
lowest occurring value within this limit are indicated by whiskers of the box (frequently with
an additional bar at the end of the whisker) and any outliers as individual points. When there
are no scores more than 1.5 box lengths away from the 25th (Q 1 value) or 75th (Q3 value)
percentile in a boxplot, we may have a normal distribution, as illustrated in the following
figure:
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Trimmed Means: a strategy to exclude outliers

In statistics, a trimmed mean is an estimator derived by excluding some of the extreme values,
a process called truncation. This is generally done to obtain a more robust statistic, and the
extreme values are considered outliers.
The trimmed mean is computed just as an ordinary mean. . .except. . .first a pre-specified
percentage of the extremes is omitted. Consider the 5% trimmed mean. The left-most (lowest)
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5% and right-most (highest) 5% of the data are excluded; from the remaining observations the
mean is found. So, the 10% most "extreme" data (5% on either side) is omitted before
computing the mean.
For instance, consider the data set (N = 40) below
45.8 19.8 23.1 13.8 16.3 21.3 25.2 17.1 21.4 18.6
15.2 18.8 21.0 20.4 16.9 23.7 21.4 24.6 18.6 19.6
26.9 20.7 21.6 19.6 20.8 25.2 26.3 20.5 23.7 13.3
23.2 18.7 24.1 16.0 30.2 24.6 15.8 22.6 27.0 20.5
Here's a histogram. What's notable?
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Sorting the data we have what's below

13.3 13.8 15.2 15.8 16.0 16.3 16.9 17.1 18.6 18.6
18.7 18.8 19.6 19.6 19.8 20.4 20.5 20.5 20.7 20.8
21.0 21.3 21.4 21.4 21.6 22.6 23.1 23.2 23.7 23.7
24.1 24.6 24.6 25.2 25.2 26.3 26.9 27.0 30.2 45.8
5% of 40 is 2. So, in computing the trimmed mean the two smallest and two largest 2
observations ignored.
15.2 15.8 16.0 16.3 16.9 17.1 18.6 18.6
18.7 18.8 19.6 19.6 19.8 20.4 20.5 20.5 20.7 20.8
21.0 21.3 21.4 21.4 21.6 22.6 23.1 23.2 23.7 23.7
24.1 24.6 24.6 25.2 25.2 26.3 26.9 27.0
Now, compute the mean. The mean of the remaining 36 observations is 21.133. This is
the trimmed mean. Contrast it with the mean, which is 21.598.
The trimmed mean has the advantage of being relatively resistant to outliers. Unless there
are more than 5% outlying values in a given direction, outliers will not be included in the
computation of the trimmed mean. Here the trimmed mean is right in the center of the
distribution (ignoring the outlier). The (untrimmed) mean is pulled a bit to the right by the
extreme of 45.8.
There are other trimmed means. Pick any percentage P% and you can find the P% trimmed
mean. In fact, the median is essentially the 50% trimmed mean.
In brief, we follow the steps below to find a trimmed mean. Example: Find the trimmed
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20% mean for the following test scores: 60, 81, 83, 91, 99.
 Step 1: Trim the top and bottom 20% from the data. That leaves us with the middle three
values: 60, 81, 83, 91, 99.
 Step 2: Find the mean with the remaining values. The mean is (81 + 83 + 91) / 3) = 85.
One-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test
There are several methods of assessing whether data are normally distributed or not. They fall
into two broad categories: graphical and statistical
1. Graphical
• Q-Q probability plots
• Cumulative frequency (P-P) plots
2. Statistical
• W/S test
• Jarque-Bera test
• Shapiro-Wilks test
• Kolmogorov-Smirnov test
• D’Agostino test
Our concern here is Kolmogorov-Smirnov test: Typically, we are interested in finding a

difference between groups. But when testing normality, we are not ‘looking’ for a difference.
In effect, we want our data set to be NO DIFFERENT than normal. In other words, we want to
accept the null hypothesis. Thus, when we run the statistical test, we ‘look’ for small
probabilities.
• If the probability of finding an event is rare (less than 5%) is of interest.
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So when testing for normality:

• Probabilities > 0.05 mean the data are normal.
• Probabilities < 0.05 mean the data are NOT normal.
Remember that LARGE probabilities denote normally distributed data. Below are examples
taken from SPSS
Normally Distributed Data

Kolmogorov-Sminova Shapiro-Wilk
Statistic df Sig. Statistic df Sig.
Asthma Cases .069 72 .200* .988 72 .721
*. This is a lower bound of the true significance
a. Liliefors Significance Correction
Non-Normally Distributed Data

Kolmogorov-Sminova Shapiro-Wilk
Statistic df Sig. Statistic df Sig.
Asthma Cases .142 72 .001 .841 72 .000
a. Liliefors Significance Correction
Skewness
In statistics, skewness is a measure of the “tailedness” or “asymmetry” of the distribution. The
skewness value can be positive or negative. Skewness reflects the existence of extreme scores
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at one end of the distribution. A skewness of zero means that the distribution is symmetrical.
Using the z-table it is possible to get an exact measure of skewness and to assess the probability
that the distribution is symmetrical. Whilst SPSS will produce this value it is important to
understand how it was obtained so that its significance can be interpreted. Skewness is
computed by employing the following formula:
∑ 𝑧3
Skewness =
𝑛
The larger the value obtained from this calculation the greater the skewness.
Negatively skewed Positively skewed

Normal distribution
distribution or Skewed to distribution or Skewed to
Symmetrical
the left the right
Skewness = 0
Skewness <0 Skewness > 0
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Kurtosis
Kurtosis refers to the “peakedness” of the curve: that is, is it a flat curve or does it have a sharp
point? A distribution can be leptokurtic (i.e. peaked), platykurtic (i.e. flat), or mesokurtic. The
procedure for working out the kurtosis is very similar to that employed when working out
skewness. The formula is as follows:
∑ 𝑧4
Kurtosis = ( 𝑛 ) – 3
Note that here z is raised to the power of 4. This means that, once again, extreme scores will be
greatly increased, but this time the signs will all be positive. For example, −1 raised to the power
of 4 is 1, −2 raised to the power of 4 is 16, and 3 raised to the power of 4 is 81. The −3 is
included in the above kurtosis equation because without it, if there were no kurtosis, this
formula would produce a value of 3. Therefore, 3 is subtracted so that if there is no kurtosis a
value of zero is produced. Thus, if the peakedness of the distribution is zero, we may have a
normal distribution. (For more information see the explanation section of question No. 38)
Platykurtic distribution Normal distribution Leptokurtic distribution
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Thinner tails Mesokurtic distribution Fatter tails
Kurtosis < 0 Kurtosis = 0 Kurtosis > 0
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 124-125); Kerr, Hall, and Kozub (2002, pp. 50-52)
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41. Which of the following scenarios involves a ratio scale of measurement?

1) Both weight and temperature
2) Temperature
3) Weight
4) Neither weight nor temperature
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Nominal Scale
The most primitive scale of measurement is the nominal scale. Nominal measurement involves
placing objects or individuals into mutually exclusive categories. Numbers are arbitrarily
assigned to the categories for identification purposes only. The numbers do not indicate any
value or amount; thus, one category does not represent “more or less” of a characteristic.
Ordinal Scale
An ordinal scale ranks objects or individuals according to how much of an attribute they
possess. Thus, the numbers in an ordinal scale indicate only the order/rank of the categories.
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Neither the difference between the numbers nor their ratio has meaning. For example, in an
untimed footrace, we know who came in first, second, and third, but we do not know how much
faster one runner was than another. A ranking of students in a music contest is an ordinal scale.
We would know who got first place, second place, and so on, but we would not know the extent
of difference between them.
Interval Scale
An interval scale not only places objects or events in order but also is marked in equal
intervals. Equal differences between the units of measurement represent equal differences in
the attribute being measured. Fahrenheit and Celsius thermometers are examples of interval
scales. We can say that the difference between 60° and 70° is the same as the distance between
30° and 40°, but we cannot say that 60° is twice as warm as 30° because there is no true zero
on an interval scale. Zero on an interval scale is an arbitrary point and does not indicate an
absence of the variable being measured. Zero on the Celsius scale is arbitrarily set at the
temperature water freezes at sea level.
Ratio Scale
A ratio scale, the highest level of measurement scale, has a true zero point as well as equal
intervals. Ratios can be reported between any two given values on the scale. A yardstick used
to measure length in units of inches or feet is a ratio scale because the origin on the scale is an
absolute zero corresponding to no length at all. Thus, it is possible to state that a stick 6 feet
long is twice as long as a stick 3 feet long. Other examples of ratio scales are weight, money,
and distance.
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For more information on scales of measurement, refer to Year 96, Item 50; Year 97, Item 48.
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1) When several cells in a Chi-square have an expected frequency of less than five, we
should use Fisher’s exact test.
2) Effect size is used for comparisons across a range of different studies, provided the
sample size is kept constant.
3) Kruskal-Wallis is a nonparametric statistical procedure used with more than 2
independent samples.
4) Eta squared (ƞ2) and omega squared (ω2) give us an indication of how much of the
variability is due to our independent variable.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Fisher’s exact test

The chi-square procedure computes Fisher’s exact test for 2 × 2 tables when one or more of
the four cells has an expected frequency of less than 5. Fisher’s exact test would be computed
for the data in the Table below.
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Table: Photographic Memory and Gender

Photographic memory No photographic memory
Males 2 7
Females 4 1
More specifically, chi-square required a relatively large sample size and/or a relatively even
split of the subjects among the levels because the expected counts/frequencies in 80% of the
cells should be greater than 5. Fisher’s exact tests for 2 × 2 crosstabs should be reported instead
of chi-square for small samples and when more than 20% of cells have an expected frequency
count of less than 5 (Howitt & Cramer, 2011b, pp. 163-164).
Thus, choice (1) is correct and should not be selected.
Meta-analysis
Having formulated the concept of effect size, Smith and Glass (1977) proceeded to develop
meta-analysis, a statistical technique that combines the effect sizes reported in the results of
studies with the same (or similar) independent and dependent variables. The result of a
meta-analysis provides an overall summary of the outcomes of a number of studies by
calculating a weighted average of their effect sizes. Meta-analysis gives a better estimate of the
relationship among variables than do single studies alone. It is important that the group of
studies included in a meta-analysis focus on the same hypothesis or research questions with
the same variables (Ary et al., 2014, p. 151-152).
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Thus choice (2) is the false option and should be selected.
Kruskal−Wallis
Ary et al. (2014, p. 197) state the equivalent statistical test for One-way ANOVA for
nonparametric data is the Kruskal-Wallis test. They say “If the dependent variable is in the form
of ranks, the Kruskal−Wallis one-way analysis by ranks test can assess the statistical
significance of differences among groups.”
The Kruskal–Wallis test by ranks, Kruskal–Wallis H test (named after William Kruskal
and W. Allen Wallis), or One-way ANOVA on ranks is a non-parametric method for testing
whether samples originate from the same distribution. It is used for comparing two or more
independent samples of equal or different sample sizes. The parametric equivalent of the
Kruskal-Wallis test is the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA).
In other words, The Kruskal-Wallis test is a nonparametric (distribution free) test, and is
used when the assumptions of one-way ANOVA are not met. Both the Kruskal-Wallis test and
one-way ANOVA assess for significant differences on a continuous dependent variable by a
categorical independent variable (with two or more groups). In the ANOVA, we assume that
the dependent variable is normally distributed and there is approximately equal variance on
the scores across groups. However, when using the Kruskal-Wallis Test, we do not have to
make any of these assumptions. Therefore, the Kruskal-Wallis test can be used for both
continuous and ordinal-level dependent variables. However, like most non-parametric tests,
the Kruskal-Wallis Test is not as powerful as the ANOVA.
Thus choice (3) is correct and should not be selected.
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Effect size
Ary et al. (2014, pp. 149-151) state that Smith and Glass (1977) originated the concept of effect
size, a statistic that also has universal meaning to assess both the direction and the strength of
a difference between two means. They also add that in experimental studies, effect size can be
used to compare the direction and the relative strength of different independent variables
(intervention) on the same dependent variable. Effect sizes are interpreted in the same way that
z scores are interpreted.
Effect size can be used to compare the direction and the relative magnitude of the
relationships that various independent variables have with a common dependent variable. In
addition, it can be used to help decide whether the difference an independent variable makes on
the dependent variable is strong enough to recommend its implementation in practice.
One strategy to calculate effect size is the use of r 2 (r square) which is also called the
coefficient of determination: The coefficient of determination is the square of the correlation
coefficient. It gives the percentage of variance in one variable that is associated with the
variance in the other (i.e. the percentage of variance that can be accounted for by the other
variable). For example, if you find a correlation of +.80 between achievement and intelligence,
64 percent of the variance in achievement is associated with variance in intelligence test scores
(Ary et al., 2014, p. 148).
Other statistical procedures to calculate effect size which are used in ANOVA include Eta
squared (ƞ2) omega square (ω2), adjusted R square (R2-adj.), epsilon square (ε2) (Ary et al.,
2014, p. 197).
In brief, in a correlation, effect size procedures give us an indication of how much of the
variability in one variable can be accounted for by the other variable. And in a study which
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involves an independent and a dependent variable, effect size procedures give us an indication
of how much of the variability in the dependent variable can be accounted for by the
independent variable.
Thus, Choice (4) is correct and should not be selected as the answer.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 148-152, 197) ; Howitt and Cramer (2011b, pp. 163-164)
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43. In a particular study, the obtained correlation between the score on an adjustment
inventory and personality questionnaire were found to be low. The researcher,
however, concluded that this did not necessarily mean low relationship between these
variables as -------------.
1) the responses were on different scales and thus not comparable
2) the reliability of adjustment inventory was found to be low
3) no previous study has reported such a result
4) the respondents were too heterogeneous in terms of age and education
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, pp. 446-447) review the factors that can influence the value of r:
1. If you have a restricted range of scores on either of the variables, this will reduce the
value of r. For example, if you wanted to correlate age with success on an exam, and the
age range of your subjects was from 18 to 20, you have a very restricted range for one of
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the variables. If a full range of scores is used, the correlation coefficient will be more
“interpretable”.
In this regard, Ary et al. (2014, p. 148) state that the size of a correlation is in part a
function of the variability of the two distributions to be correlated. Restricting the range
of the scores to be correlated reduces the observed degree of relationship between two
variables. For example, people have observed that success in playing basketball is related
to height: The taller an individual is, the more probable that he or she will do well in this
sport. This statement is true about the population at large, where there is a wide range of
heights. However, within a basketball team whose members are all tall, there may be little
or no correlation between height and success because the range of heights is restricted.
For a college that accepts students with a wide range of scores on a scholastic aptitude
test, you would expect a correlation between the test scores and college grades. For a
college that accepts only students with very high scholastic aptitude scores, you would
expect very little correlation between the test scores and grades because of the restricted
range of the test scores in this situation.
If we correlate shoe size and reading vocabulary scores for a single grade level, we would
expect a correlation of approximately zero. However, if we correlated this variable for all
elementary students, we would get a high correlation because as children mature their feet
get larger and their vocabulary increases.
2. A second factor that might influence the value of r is the existence of scores which do not
“belong” – that is, “extreme outliers” in the data. If you can justify removing an outlier
and doing a case study on that particular subject, then it is best to do so because that one
extreme case can change the value of r. Again, you cannot just throw out data when they
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do not fit. You must explain why certain responses are exceptional in order to justify their
removal.
3. A third factor which can influence the value of r is the presence of extremely high and
extremely low scores on a variable with little in the middle. That is, if the data are not
normally distributed throughout the range, this will throw the correlation coefficient off.
The data need to be normally distributed in the sample. You might, however, reconstitute
the data as nominal (high vs. low) and do a different type of correlation (point biserial of
phi).
4. A fourth factor that can affect the value of the correlation is the reliability of the data.
Statistical test assume that data is reliable. In the case of correlation, it is important that
the reliability of measurement actually be checked. If the measurement of each
variable is not of comparable reliability, the correlation must be corrected using the
correction for attenuation formula.
Goodwin, Laura D. & Leech, Nancy L. (2006) state some other factors affecting the correlation
coefficient are:
5. Lack of linearity: The correlation measures the extent and direction of the linear
relationship between X and Y. If the actual relationship between X and Y is not linear—
rather, if it is a curvilinear or nonlinear relationship—the value of r will be very low and
might even be zero. In this regard, Ary et al. (2014, p. 147) assert that if the relationship
between variables is curvilinear, the computation of the Pearson r will result in a
misleading underestimation of the degree of relationship. In this case, another index, such
as the correlation ration (∆), should be applied.
Thus, a low Pearson correlation coefficient does not mean that no relationship exists
between the variables. The variables may have a nonlinear relationship. To check for
nonlinear relationships graphically, create a scatterplot or use simple regression
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6. Characteristics of the sample: there are situations when the correlation is different for
one group versus another group because of the nature of the participants studied. For
example, we expect that the relationship between shoe size and spelling ability would be
fairly large and positive when calculated on a sample of children aged 4 through 10 years
but would be negligible when calculated on a sample of college freshmen. Combining
different sub-groups into one group prior to calculating a correlation also can produce
some interesting results. Glenberg (1996) showed how the correlation between the age of
widowers and their desire to remarry was positive for two separate subgroups: one group
of fairly young widowers and one group of fairly old widowers. When the two subgroups
were combined into a total group, however, the relationship between the two variables
actually became negative. Also, sample selection can affect the strength of relationships
calculated with correlations. “Sometimes misguided researchers select only the extreme
cases in their samples and attempt to look at the relationship between the two variables”
(Runyon, Haber, & Coleman, 1994, p. 136). The example presented by Runyon et al.
dealt with the relationship between scores on a depression test and performance on a
short-term memory task. A researcher might administer a depression measure to a group
of patients and then select only those patients who scored in the top 25% and the bottom
25%. The calculated correlation between the two variables would be artificially enhanced
by the inclusion of only the two extreme groups, providing an erroneous impression of
the true relationship between depression and short-term memory.
Choice (2) is the answer since a factor that can affect the value of the correlation is the
reliability of the data gathered by each instrument.
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 See also: Ary et al. (pp. 147, 148); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, pp. 446-447)
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44. With regard to the factors relevant to statistical hypothesis testing, -------------.
1) it is easier to reject H0 with a higher degree of freedom
2) we can reject H0 when observed value exceeds that of critical
3) significance level depends on the sample size
4) the observed value can be determined by calculating alpha and degree of freedom
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
As for Choice (1), a higher degree of freedom means a greater sample size. Sample size
does not result in rejecting a null hypothesis when it is true, but it leads to rejecting a null
hypothesis when it is false. This latter case is referred to as “power” (See Ary et al., 2014, p.
183).
Concerning Choice (2), when the observed value exceeds the critical value, we can reject
the null hypothesis. On the contrary, when the observed value does not exceed the critical value,
that is, when the observed value remains in the null hypothesis region, we cannot reject the null
hypothesis.
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When observed
value exceeds the
critical value
Null Hypothesis
Region
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
Critical value
With regard to Choice (3), the level of (statistical significance) is set by the researcher and
it does not depend on sample size or anything else. It is under the control of the researcher (See
Ary et al., 2014, pp. 178-179).
Regarding Choice (4), the observed value can be determined by analyzing sample statistics.
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45. A good specimen of research in interpretive paradigm can be characterized as having
the following features -------------.
1) objectivity, thick description, critical approach
2) triangulation, idealization, interventionist approach
3) triangulation, thick description, naturalistic approach
4) subjectivity, etic approach, rich description.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Keith Richards (2012, pp. 15-16) discusses some key concepts of the qualitative research. The
terms emic and etic, derived from anthropology, are sometimes used to refer – rather crudely –
to an insider’s perspective on events (emic) as opposed to an outsider’s (etic). The terms are
sometimes illegitimately used with evaluative force, implying that an insider’s view is
somehow ‘better’ than an outsider’s, when in fact both are potentially important. Ethnographers
try to establish different perspectives on the situation they are studying and will use different
theories, methods, techniques, and so on in order to avoid a one-sided view. The idea of getting
a fix on things in this way is often described as triangulation, though there is no implication
that only three sources need be used. You may also occasionally hear people referring to thick
description, an expression coined by Clifford Geertz to refer to an account that is rich in detail,
embracing different perspectives. The idea behind this is that it is possible to learn a great deal
from narrowly focused observation, provided that the observation is sufficiently penetrating
and comprehensive.
Also, Ary et al. (2014, pp. 531-532) assert that a number of methods have been identified
in the literature for enhancing the credibility (internal validity) of qualitative studies. These
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methods may be categorized according to five types of evidence: structural corroboration,

consensus, referential or interpretive adequacy, theoretical adequacy, and control of bias.
Evidence Based on Structural Corroboration

Eisner (1998) defines structural corroboration as a “means through which multiple types of
data are related to each other to support or contradict the interpretation and evaluation of a state
of affairs” (p. 110). The use of multiple sources of data, multiple observers, and/or multiple
methods is referred to as triangulation. Structural corroboration uses different sources of data
(data triangulation) and different methods (methods triangulation).
Thick Description
With regard to thick description, Ary et al. (2014, p. 527) assert that writing is extremely
important in qualitative research. Qualitative reports are generally heavily narrative in form
and contain rich descriptions of setting and context. This “thick description” is intended to
place readers vividly in the research setting so that they can follow the logical processes that
the researcher went through in collecting the data. The role of the writer is to “tell the story the
data tell.” In contrast to the more technical and structured style of quantitative reports, a
qualitative report is more like a story and may have very little, if any, technical language. A
qualitative report may not follow a conventional organizational format. Literature may not be
found in a separate section of the report but may be woven into the findings with the themes
identified from the current study connected to the work of others.
Methods of Qualitative Research
Quantitative methods use empirical approaches, experimental designs, and often statistical
Research
testing compared to the more naturalistic, emergent, and field-based methods typical of
qualitative research. The primary instrument used for data collection in qualitative research is
the researcher him- or herself, often collecting data through direct observation or interviews.
Quantitative research more typically relies on measurement tools such as scales, tests,
observation checklists, and questionnaires. The selection of subjects for study also differs. The
ideal selection in quantitative research is random sampling, which allows for control of
variables that may influence findings. Qualitative studies more typically use nonrandom or
purposive selection techniques based on particular criteria Ary et al. (2014, p. 448).
Note: Interpretive paradigm is another name for qualitative paradigm.

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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 448, 527, 531-532); Keith Richards (2012, pp. 15-16)
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46. For a measurement procedure to be valid, the attribute measured does NOT play the
role of a ------------.
1) moderator that homogenizes a set of response processes
2) rationale for which instructional interventions might be needed
3) composite of distinct attributes, which causes differences in test scores
4) parameter in a homogeneous response process
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Response processes and validity
Leighton and Gierl (2007, p. 93) state that for a measurement procedure to be valid, the attribute
measured must play a role in determining what value the measurement outcomes will take.
There are at least three ways in which this may occur. First, the attribute may play the role of a
Testing
parameter in a homogeneous response process. Second, the attribute may act as a moderator
that homogenizes a set of response processes. Third, the attribute may exist as a composite
of distinct attributes, which causes differences in test scores because these sample from the
universe of the distinct attributes that comprise the composite.
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 See also: Leighton and Gierl (2007, p. 93)
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47. Poehner defines---------------- as the model in which the assessors follow a highly
scripted approach to mediation in which all prompts, hints and leading questions have
been arranged in advance in a hierarchical manner, from implicit to explicit.
1) the regulatory scale
2) interventionist DA
3) interactionist DA
4) Mediated Learning Experience (MLE)
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
The Regulatory scale
Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994) developed a ‘regulatory scale’ to reflect the extent to which the
oral feedback provided by a writing tutor was implicit or explicit. For example, asking learners
to find and correct their own errors constitutes an implicit strategy, while providing examples
of the correct pattern is a highly explicit strategy. An intermediate level occurs when the tutor
indicates the nature of an error without identifying it for the learner. The complete scale is
shown in Table 1. This scale was developed within the framework of sociocultural theory to
investigate the role that corrective feedback can play in scaffolding learners’ zones of proximal
development. The underlying assumption was that corrective feedback would be effective if it
was fine-tuned to the learner’s development (i.e. provided the minimal assistance needed to
induce a self-correction).
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Table 1: Regulatory scale – implicit to explicit (Aljaafreh and Lantolf, 1994: 471)
0. Tutor asks the learner to read, find the errors, and correct them independently, prior to
the tutorial.
1. Construction of a ‘collaborative frame’ prompted by the presence of the tutor as a
potential dialogic partner.
2. Prompted or focused reading of the sentence that contains the error by the learner or
the tutor.
3. Tutor indicates that something may be wrong in a segment (for example, sentence,
clause, line) – ‘Is there anything wrong in this sentence?’
4. Tutor rejects unsuccessful attempts at recognizing the error.
5. Tutor narrows down the location of the error (for example, tutor repeats or points to
the specific segment which contains the error).
6. Tutor indicates the nature of the error, but does not identify the error (for example,
‘There is something wrong with the tense marking here’).
7. Tutor identifies the error (‘You can’t use an auxiliary here’).
8. Tutor rejects learner’s unsuccessful attempts at correcting error.
Testing
9. Tutor provides clues to help the learner arrive at the correct form (for example, ‘It is
not really past but something that is still going on’).
10. Tutor provides the correct form.
11. Tutor provides some explanation for use of the correct form.
12. Tutor provides examples of the correct pattern when other forms of help fail to
produce an appropriate responsive action.
Source: Based on Aljaafreh, A., and J. Lantolf. 1994. “Negative Feedback as Regulation
and Second Language Learning in the Zone of Proximal Development.” The Modern
Language Journal, 78: 465–83.
Lantolf and Poehner (2004)

Lantolf and Poehner (2004) define Dynamic Assessment and the two approaches of
Interventionist and interactionist approaches to DA as follows:
Dynamic assessment: (DA) is grounded in Vygotsky’s writings on the zone of proximal
development (ZPD) and has been widely researched in psychology and education. DA
distinguishes itself from other approaches to assessment by insisting that mediation of the
examinee’s performance prompts, hints, leading questions etc. – during the assessment
procedure is crucial to understanding his/her abilities and for promoting development during
the assessment process itself.
Interventionist versus interactionist approaches to DA: In this section we elaborate on
the differences between the two primary approaches to DA – interventionist and interactionist.
In the latter, assistance emerges from the interaction between the examiner and the learner, and
is therefore highly sensitive to the learner’s ZPD. In the former, forms of assistance are
standardized, therefore emphasizing the psychometric properties of the assessment procedure.
Interventionist DA is concerned with quantifying, as an ‘index of speed of learning’ (Brown &
Ferrara, 1985: 300), the amount of help required for a learner to quickly and efficiently reach a
pre-specified end point. Interactionist DA, on the other hand, focuses on the development of an
individual learner or even a group of learners, regardless of the effort required and without
concern for a predetermined endpoint. Using the train metaphor proposed by Elkonin (1998:
300), we might argue that those interested in speed and efficiency of learning, (i.e.,
interventionist DA), focus on how quickly a train moves toward the final station along a set of
200
tracks. Interactionist DA, following Vygotsky more closely, is not as interested in the speed of
the train along the already constructed track as with helping the person lay down new track
leading toward a station that is potentially always relocating (see Newman & Holzman, 1993,
on development as creativity and transformation).
Poehner (2008)
Interventionist DA: Poehner (2008, pp. 44-45) states that the defining characteristic of
interventionist approaches to DA is that the mediation offered to learners is standardized.
Mediators are not free to respond to learners’ needs as these become apparent during the
procedure but must instead follow a highly scripted approach to mediation in which
all prompts, hints, and leading questions have been arranged in a hierarchical manner, from
implicit to explicit, and usually assigned a numerical value. This move is motivated by a
desire to maximize the assessment’s objectivity, defined in traditional psychometric terms and
not as the concept was understood by Vygotsky.
Interactionist DA: Feuerstein’s Mediated Learning Experience (MLE)

Although Feuerstein’s approach to DA was developed independently from Vygotsky’s work,
Testing
the similarities are such that in many ways the research and instruction being done at
Feuerstein’s International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential in Israel are a
continuation of the defectology work begun by Vygotsky and Luria more than 70 years ago.
There are basic commonalities of course between Feuerstein’s model and those we have
considered thus far. However, Feuerstein differs from other DA researchers in important ways.
He has expended considerable effort to articulate a view of human abilities that, as we will see,
is closely aligned with Vygotskian theory. In addition, Feuerstein’s model is the most
comprehensive approach to DA in that it includes similar innovations to those proposed by
other DA practitioners, such as Carlson and Wiedl’s emphasis on learner verbalization and
Brown’s concept of transfer. Most importantly, Feuerstein fully integrates assessment and
instruction so that the one does not exist apart – and, indeed, is indistinguishable from – the
other. Although he does not employ Vygotsky’s terminology, I argue below that Feuerstein
realizes Vygotsky’s vision of creating a single educational activity that involves co-constructing
a ZPD with learners in order to promote development. For this reason, I also argue that
Feuerstein’s approach holds the most promise to transform classroom activity (Poehner, 2008,
pp. 52-53).
34; Year 96, Item 34; and Year 97, Item 40.
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 See also: Poehner (2008, pp. 44-45, 52-53)
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48. Which of the following statements about reliability is FALSE?
1) The greater the differences between the cut-off score and the mean score, the greater
criterion-referenced reliability will be.
2) In the split-half approach, reliability is underestimated to the extent that the halves are
not equivalent.
3) The Guttman split-half estimate of reliability does not assume equivalence of the halves.
4) In cases where we are not sure that the items are measuring the same ability, internal
consistency estimates are more suitable than test-retest or parallel forms methods.
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Bachman (1990, p. 221) states that Criterion-referenced (CR) agreement indices are sensitive
to differences in cut-off scores. That is, these coefficients will have different values for different
cut-off scores. In general, the greater the differences between the cut-off score and the mean
score, the greater will be the CR reliability. This is because differences between individuals
are likely to be minimal around the mean score, even for a CR test, so that decisions made
on the basis of such minimal differences are more likely to be in error. In the limiting case,
with the cut-off score equal to the mean, CR reliability will be minimal, and will be entirely
a function of the amount of score variance. Livingston (1972) has argued that in NR tests
we in effect use the mean as a cut-off score, and that NR reliability is thus a special case of CR
reliability, in which we impose the most rigorous standard for judging reliability. Setting the
cut-off far from the mean in CR tests, then, has the same effect – increasing reliability – as does
maximizing the variance of NR test scores.
Bachman (1990, pp. 177-178) asserts that the reliability of a set of test scores can be
estimated on the basis of a single test administration only if certain assumptions about the
characteristics of the parts of the test are satisfied. In using the Spearman-Brown split-half
approach, we must assume that the two halves are equivalent and independent of each other,
Testing
while with the Guttman split-half, we need only assume that the halves are independent
of each other. In the Spearman-Brown approach the reliability is underestimated to the
extent that the halves are not equivalent. For both, the reliability is overestimated to the
extent that the halves are not independent of each other. The Kuder-Richardson estimates based
on item variances assume that the items in the test are equivalent and independent of each other.
As with the split-half estimates, the Kuder-Richardson formulae underestimate reliability when
the items are not are not equivalent, and overestimate when the items are not independent of
each other. The assumptions that must be satisfied in applying these estimates of internal
consistency and the effects of violating these assumptions are summarized in the following
table. In cases where either of the assumptions is violated, as may be true for cloze and dictation
tests, one of the other approaches (parallel forms or test-retest) to reliability discussed below
should be used.’
Table: Assumptions for internal consistency reliability estimates and effect of violating
assumptions
Assumption Effect if assumption is violated
Estimate Equivalence Independence Equivalence Independence
Spearman-Brown Yes Yes Underestimate Overestimate
Guttman No Yes ------- Overestimate
Kuder-Richardson Yes Yes Underestimate Overestimate
Bachman (1990, p. 174) states that in cases where we are not sure that the items are
measuring the same ability or that they are independent of each other, the test-retest and parallel
forms methods are more appropriate for estimating reliability.
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 See also: Bachman (1990, pp. 174, 177-178, 221)
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202
49. Which of the following statements is TRUE about the 3 items displayed in the
following ICCs (i.e., item characteristic curves)?
1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
P (θ) 0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
θ
–3 –2 –1 0 1 2 3
ABILITY
Testing
1) The items have the same level of difficulty but different levels of discrimination.
2) The items all discriminate ideally at levels below the mean.
3) The items all discriminate ideally at levels above the mean.
4) The items have the same level of discrimination but different levels of difficulty.
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Baker (2001, p. 10) states the above figure as an example of three item characteristic curves
with the same difficulty but with different levels of discrimination
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Baker (2001, p. 10)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
50. It is NOT true about a G-study that ---------------.

1) the generalizability coefficient is defined as the proportion of observed score variance
that is universe score variance
2) a large random variance component would necessitate another G-study
3) a large variance component for raters would indicate biased raters
4) the number of measures needed for each person will be equal to the product of the
number of conditions in the different facets.
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Regarding Choice (1), Bachman (1990, p. 192) asserts that the G-theory analog of the CTS-
theory reliability coefficient is the generalizability coefficient, which is defined as the
proportion of observed score variance that is universe score variance.
Concerning Choice (2), Bachman (1990, p. 195) states that we could also compute a
generalizability coefficient for the residual variance component, but since this is considered to
be random, it will be of little practical use in helping us design our interview, except if the
203
random variance component turns out to be very large, in which case we may have to design
another G-study to help us identify what the major source of error is.
With regard to Choice (3), Bachman (1990, p. 193) asserts that There are thus several
sources of variance, or variance components, in G-study. Using ANOVA, we could obtain
estimates for all the variance components in the design: (1) the main effects for persons, raters,
and forms; (2) the two-way interactions between persons and raters, persons and forms, and
forms and raters, and (3) a component that contains the three-way interaction among persons,
raters, and forms, as well as for the residual, or random variance. This analysis would enable
us to estimate the relative effects of the different variance components in which we are
interested. If we found that the variance component for persons by forms (s2pf) was significantly
large, this would indicate that at least one question form was biased for or against individuals
of either high or low ability. Likewise, a significant variance component for persons by raters
(s2pr) would indicate biased raters. If the variance component for forms by raters (s2fr) was
significant, this would suggest that the raters rated more highly with some question forms than
with others. We would probably regard these as sources of error that need to be examined so as
to eliminate them from the interview.
Regarding Choice (4), Bachman (1990, p. 192) asserts that the number of measures needed
Testing
per person will be equal to the product of the number of conditions in the different facets.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Bachman (1990, pp. 192, 193, 195)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
51. Bachman and Palmer (2010) present a conceptual framework, i.e. assessment use
argument (AUA). Which of the following sentences about this framework is FALSE?
1) The claim resulting from one inferential link becomes the data that serve as the basis
for the next inference in the chain.
2) The concept of AUA builds upon the idea of evidentiary reasoning, proposed by
Mislevy.
3) The arguments employed in an AUA make use of a Toulmin argument structure.
4) Any AUA will consist of 3 general claims referring in turn to the consequences, the
interpretations, and the assessment records.
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Assessment Use Argument (AUA) is a conceptual framework which can be used both for
justifying the use of an assessment and for designing an assessment.
Regarding Choice (1), Bachman and Palmer (2010, p. 99) assert that Two elements of an
AUA are claims and data. Claims are statements about the inferences to be made on the basis
of data and the qualities of those inferences. A claim thus include two parts: (1) an outcome of
the assessment process, and (2) one or more qualities of that outcome. Data consist of the
information on which a claim is based Bachman (2006b) has proposed that the basic “building
block” of an AUA is a data-claim inferential link that is structured as described by Toulmin
(2003). In other words, the claims resulting from one inferential link becomes the data that
serve as the basis for the next inference in the chain. The figure below shows that an AUA
includes several data-claim links.
204
Consequences
CLAIM (Qualities)
Inference
DATA Decisions
CLAIM (Qualities)
Inference
DATA Interpretations
(Qualities)
CLAIM
Inference
Testing
Assessment
DATA
Record
(Qualities)
CLAIM
Inference
Test taker’s
performance
DATA Assessment
Task
Figure: Data-claim inferential links in an Assessment Use Argument
Chapelle (2012, p. 30) asserts that like in their previous book, Bachman and Palmer (2010)
aim to emphasize that what is needed is evidence that justifies test use, and they therefore lay
out how the test developer can present a chain of argumentation in an “assessment use
argument.” The chain in an assessment use argument specifies the connections from the
performance of a test taker, to the records resulting from a scoring process, to the interpretations
made of those records, to the decisions that will be made on the basis of the interpretations, and
finally to the consequences that will result from the decisions. In other words, the aim is to fill
in the middle part of what happens between the test takers’ responses and the positive
consequences that are intended to happen as a result.
With regard to Choice (2), Mislevy and Yin (2012, pp. 218-219) assert that Assessment
Use Argument (AUA; Bachman, 2005; Bachman and Palmer, 2010) extends the argument-
based approach beyond the Evidence-centered Design (ECD) design phase, to assessment use
and validation. ECD was proposed by Mislevy et al. (2003). AUA addresses the social context
in which an assessment is meant to be used. Claims in an AUA concern intended uses of an
assessment and are justified in terms of beneficence of consequences and equitability and value
205
sensitivity of decisions made based on assessment results. For example, results of foreign
language proficiency assessment can be an indication of whether language benchmarks have
been met, and consequently can be used for purposes such as evaluating outcomes of instruction
and program effectiveness. A coherent chain of reasoning connects essential elements in the
assessment design argument and AUA. Examples of AUAs for actual assessments can be found
in Llosa (2008) and Chapelle et al. (2008).
Concerning Choice (3), Bachman and Palmer (2010, pp. 96-98) introduce Toulmin’s
argument structure, and (p. 99) state that following Toulmin’s structure of practical reasoning,
an AUA will include the following elements: data, claims, warrants, backing, rebuttals, and
rebuttal backing.
With regard to Choice (4), Bachman and Palmer (2010, pp. 103) present four types of
claims in an AUA. Thus, Choice (4) is the incorrect option that must be selected.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Bachman and Palmer (2010, pp. 96-98, 99, 103); Fulcher and Davidson (2012,
pp. 30, 218-219)
Testing
-----------------------------------------------------------------
52. Which of the following statements about criterion-referenced tests is FALSE?

1) Distributions of criterion-referenced scores typically have little variance and are
negatively skewed.
2) Criterion-referenced tests are typically designed to provide the most information at the
criterion level of mastery.
3) Norm-referenced approaches to estimating reliability typically underestimate the
reliability of criterion-referenced scores.
4) Criterion-referenced test scores are typically not used to classify test takers into groups.
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
As for Choice (1), J.D. Brown (2012, p. 132) asserts that CRT decisions are labeled absolute
because they focus not on the student’s position relative to other students but rather on the
percent of material that each student knows, largely without reference to the other students.
Thus, at the beginning of a course, the distribution of scores on a CRT is likely to be positively
skewed if the students actually need to learn the material covered in the course. However, at
the end of the course, if the test actually reflects the course objectives, the teacher hopes the
students will all score fairly high. In other words, the distribution of scores at the end of
instruction will be negatively skewed on a good CRT if reasonably efficient language teaching
and learning are taking place.
With regard to Choice (2), Bachman (2004, pp. 192-193) provides a brief explanation on
CR tests (or CRTs). Unlike NR scores, which are intended for use in making relative decisions,
CR tests are intended for situations in which the decisions to be made are absolute. NR scores
are thus interpreted with reference to the relative standing of individuals within a particular
group, whereas scores from CR tests are interpreted with reference to an absolute criterion that
is independent of the groups or individuals taking the test. This criterion may be defined in
terms of levels of ability (e.g. novice – expert, beginning – advanced) or in terms of a well
specified domain of content, such as the content of a course syllabus. NR reliability estimates
are based on the variance component for relative error, and provide estimates of how
206
consistently test scores distinguish among different test takers. NR reliability estimates thus do
not provide direct information about how dependable the test scores are as indicators of test
takers’ levels of ability with respect to criterion ability levels, or their degrees of mastery of the
criterion content/ability domain.
With CR tests, we typically indicate one or more criterion levels of performance or ability
that indicate degrees of mastery and that can be used to classify test takers into groups. When
such classification decisions are to be made, we typically identify a test score – a ‘cut score’ –
as an indicator of mastery or of levels of mastery. NR reliability estimates do not indicate how
dependable classification decisions based on cut scores are.
Finally, because of the way CR tests are designed, CR test scores are typically not normally
distributed. That is, CR tests are typically designed to provide the most information at the
criterion level of mastery, or cut score, and for this reason, distributions of CR scores typically
have relatively little variance and are negatively skewed. Because NR approaches to estimating
reliability are heavily dependent on large variance in score distributions, these estimates
typically underestimate the reliability of CR scores.
Concerning Choice (3), Bachman (1990, pp. 210-211) states that in many situations where
CR tests are used, we find very little variation in test scores. Suppose, for example, that we
Testing
have developed an achievement test based on specific course objectives. If we give this test to
beginning language learners at the start of the course, we would expect them to obtain uniformly
low scores, while it is likely, if instruction has been effective, that most students would obtain
slightly higher scores, with little variation among them, if we gave them the test again after a
period of, say, two weeks. By the end of the course, if instruction had been equal effective for
all students, we would expect students to obtain uniformly high scores, again with little
variation among them. If we estimated the internal consistency of each set of scores using KR-
20, we would probably obtain disappointingly low reliability coefficients. And if we computed
the correlations between the first two sets of scores, this would probably give a very low
estimate of stability, since there is likely to be very little variance in either the test or the retest
scores. At the same time, it is intuitively obvious that in this example, the achievement test
scores may accurately reflect changes in the students’ relative mastery of the content objectives.
Thus, the problem with using classical NR estimates of reliability with CR test scores is that
such estimates are sensitive primarily to inter-individual variations, which are of little interest
in CR interpretation.
Regarding Choice (4), Bachman (1990, p. 214) asserts that in many language testing
contexts, it may be necessary or desirable to distinguish individuals who are minimally
competent in or at a ‘mastery’ level of a given language ability from those who are In such
contexts, ‘mastery/non-mastery’ classification decisions about individuals are often made in
terms of a predetermined level of ‘mastery’, or ‘minimum competence’, which may correspond
to an observed ‘cut-off‘ score on a CR test. Thus, in CRT, test scores are typically used to
classify test takers into groups (i.e. mastery and non-mastery groups).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: See also: Bachman (1990, pp. 210-211, 214); Bachman (2004, pp. 192-193); J.
D. Brown (2005, p. 132)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
207
53. Which of the following aspects of test fairness are directly related to the issue of test
bias?
1) Unequal learning opportunities and geographical access.
2) Financial difficulties and affordability issues.
3) Unequal equipment and testing conditions.
4) Items being unduly influenced by test-taker background factors.
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
McNamara and Roever (2006, pp. 81-83) assert that test fairness is a broad area, encompassing
quality management in test design, administration and scoring, adequate coverage of relevant
content, sufficient construct validation work, equal learning opportunities and access to testing,
and items measuring only the skill or ability under investigation without being unduly influenced
by construct-irrelevant variance introduced through test-taker background factors.
They add that test-inherent bias distorts measurement of the construct of interest by allowing
other test-taker characteristics to influence scores systematically, thereby introducing
multidimensionality into the measurement. Characteristics that are commonly investigated
Testing
include race, gender, socioeconomic status, and first language (L1) background, but,
theoretically, any background characteristic that some test takers possess and others do not (or
not to the same degree) can introduce systematic construct-irrelevant variance and lead to bias.
For assessment, bias can be seen in traditional validity terms as construct-irrelevant
variance that distorts the test results and therefore makes conclusions based on scores less valid.
Specifically, a test or an item is biased if test takers of equal ability but from different groups
score differently on the item depending on their group membership (Angoff, 1993). In this case,
group membership introduces systematic construct-irrelevant variance, which has a consistent
effect on scores. Another way to look at this is to consider bias a factor that makes a
unidimensional test multidimensional: The test measures something in addition to what it is
intended to measure, and the result is a confound of two measurements.
Whereas any construct-irrelevant variance is harmful to valid interpretations, bias
systematically harms one group (Shepard, Camilli, & Averill, 1981) by inflating one group’s
scores and depressing the other group’s scores. In a broader sense, biased tests harm all
stakeholders because students might get exempted from language programs although they
would benefit from them, others do not get admitted to a program in which they would excel,
universities or employers reject perfectly qualified applicants and accept less qualified ones,
and society is deprived of potentially excellent doctors, lawyers, language teachers, or
electricians and must make do with mediocre ones.
For similar items, refer to Year 91, Items 32 and 42; Year 93, Items 51 and 52; Year 97, Item 21.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: McNamara and Roever (2006, pp. 81-83)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) Classical true score measurement treats error variance as random and homogeneous in
origin.
2) Domain score is a kind of observed score whereas cut-off score is a kind of true score.
3) The standard deviation of error scores is called the standard error of measurement
(SEM).
4) G-theory can be used to provide comparable reliability estimates for test of different
lengths with differing numbers of raters.
208
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Bachman (1990, p. 207) states some problems concerning the precision of measurement of both
CTS theory and G-theory: There are a number of limitations on both CTS theory and G-theory
with respect to estimating the precision of measurement, only two of which will be discussed
here. First, estimators of both reliability and generalizability, and the standard errors of
measurement associated with them, are sample dependent, so that scores from the same test
administered to different groups of test takers may differ in their reliabilities. A second
limitation is that error variance is treated as homogeneous across individuals, so that
estimates of reliability or generalizability are based on group, rather than individual
performance. That is, measurement error is assumed to be the same for individuals whose test
performance is excellent, poor, or average, so that a low score on a test is regarded as just as
reliable an indicator of ability as an average score.
Bachman (1990, p. 212) asserts that one approach to CR test development is to specify a
well-defined set of tasks or items that constitute a domain, with any given test viewed as a
sample of items or tasks from that particular domain. In this approach to CR test development,
Testing
the analogue to CTS theory ‘true score’ and the G-theory ‘universe score’, is the ‘domain
score’, which is an individual’s level of mastery of the given domain, or the score he could be
expected to obtain if he were tested on all the items in the domain. Thus, Choice (2) is false.
With regard to cut-off score, Bachman (1990, p. 215) makes a distinction between mastery
level and cut-off score: Mastery level for a given language ability can be understood as the
domain score that is considered to be indicative of minimal competence (for a given purpose) in
that ability. This distinction between the domain score that corresponds to minimum competency,
or mastery, and its corresponding observed, cut-off score is important, since the cut-off score, as
with any observed score, will be subject to measurement error as an indicator of the domain score
at mastery level, and this measurement error will be associated with errors in mastery/nonmastery
classifications that are made on the basis of the cut-off score. Thus, Choice (2) is false.
As for Choice (3), Bachman (1990, p. 199) states that because of its importance in the
interpretation of test scores, the standard deviation of the error scores has a name: the standard
error of measurement (SEM). If we could give a test to an individual hundreds of times, we could
compute both her expected true score – the mean of the observed scores – and the SEM.
With regard to Choice (4), Bachman (1990, pp. 196-197) asserts that G-theory can provide
comparable reliability estimates for tests of differing lengths with differing numbers of raters.
Thus, Choice (4) is correct and it must not be selected as the answer.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Bachman (1990, pp. 196-197, 199, 207, 212, 215)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
55. Which of the following claims about different types of validity has NOT been made
by Bachman (1990)?
1) One problem with examining predictive validity is that it can largely ignore the question
of what abilities are being measured.
2) A potential weakness of construct validity is that it makes use of counterhypotheses and
falsification.
3) The primary limitation of content validity is that it focuses on tests, rather than test scores.
4) The most serious limitation to examining concurrent criterion relevance is that it ignores
the extent to which scores on the test are different from indicators of different abilities.
209
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
As for Choice (1), Bachman (1990, p. 250-251) asserts that one potential problem with
examining predictive utility alone is that it can largely ignore the question of what abilities are
being measured. We might find, for example, that scores on a test of signed number problems
in mathematics are excellent predictors of performance in language courses. Regardless of such
a finding, however, we would not seriously consider using this test as a predictor, because of
the obvious mismatch between the ability the test appears to measure and the performance we
are trying to predict. That is, in this case we would probably reject predictive utility as evidence
supporting the validity of this test use.
Regarding Choice (2), Bachman (1990, p. 256) explains that construct validity is thus seen
as a unifying concept, and construct validation as a process that incorporates all the evidential
bases for validity discussed thus far:
Construct validity is indeed the unifying concept that integrates criterion and
content considerations into a common framework for testing rational hypotheses
Testing
about theoretically relevant relationships. (Messick 1980: 1015)
Thus, Bachman believes that all the traditional types of validity alone have their own
limitations, but they are considered as evidential bases for the unifying concept of construct
validity. So, construct validity has no limitations and no weaknesses. Therefore, Bachman does
not make the claim posed in Choice (2).
With regard to Choice (3), Bachman (1990, p. 247) asserts that the primary limitation of
content validity, then, is that it focuses on tests, rather than test scores. This limitation has
been characterized by Messick in an extended simile:
content validity is like the barker outside a circus tent touting two bowing aerialists,
a waving clown, and a poster of a lady riding a unicorn as a sample of the show you
will see inside. It is not just that the sample is not representative of the variety of
individuals and animals inside or even an accurate portrayal of them, it is that you
do not see any performances.
(Messick 1975: 961)
Concerning Choice (4), Bachman (1990, p. 250) states that the most serious limitation to
examining concurrent criterion relevance is that it only considers the extent to which measures
of the same ability tend to agree. It ignores the equally important question of the extent to which
scores on the test are different from indicators of different abilities. That is, we would not expect
scores from measures of language ability to be highly correlated with, say, speed in
mathematical computation or knowledge of important dates in history. Thus, if we want to
demonstrate that our test scores are valid indicators of a given language ability, we must show
not only that they are related to other indicators of that same ability, but also that they are not
related to measures of other abilities. This suggests that in the validation of language tests we
also need to look at the relationships between our language tests and measures of other abilities,
such as mathematical computation or knowledge of history. When we look for this sort of
divergence, we are in fact embarking on the voyage to construct validation, which will be
discussed in greater detail below.
210
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Bachman (1990, p. 247, 250-251, 256)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
56. The multitrait-multimethod design ---------------.

1) is primarily used to move from observation to observed scores
2) is the best way to collect reliability-related evidence
3) is based on a kind of correlation
4) is used to overcome the limitations of confirmatory factor analysis
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) design
Testing
The classic approach to designing correlational studies for construct validation is the
multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) matrix, described by Campbell and Fiske (1959). In this
approach, each measure is considered to be a combination of trait and method, and tests are
included in the design so as to combine multiple traits with multiple methods. One advantage
of the MTMM design is that it permits the investigator to examine patterns of both convergence
and discrimination among correlations. Convergence is essentially what has been referred to
above (pp. 248-50) as concurrent criterion relatedness, and is the extent to which different
measures of the same trait tend to agree, or converge. Discrimination is the extent to which
measures of different traits, using either the same or different test methods, tend to produce
different results. In the example above, convergence would be indicated by high positive
correlations between the different measures of the same traits (for textual competence, the tests
of cohesion and organization, and for sociolinguistic competence, the tests of register and
naturalness). Discrimination, on the other hand, would be indicated by low or zero correlations
between measures of different traits using different test methods (for example, between a
writing test of organization and a multiple-choice test of naturalness). Discrimination would
also be demonstrated if tests of different traits using the same test method (for example, a
multiple-choice test of cohesion and a multiple-choice test of naturalness) were not correlated
with each other.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
57. By “interpretative argument” Kane means ---------------.

1) the interpretation of test scores in terms of a scoring rubric
2) chain of inferences from the observed performance to decision
3) arguments concerning the reliability of test scores
4) the relationship between language ability and language construct
211
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Kane’s Approach to Test Score Validation
Kane has also developed a systematic approach to thinking through the process of drawing valid
inferences from test scores. Kane points out that we interpret scores as having meaning. The
same score might have different interpretations. For example, scores on a test consisting of
reading comprehension passages might be interpreted in very different ways, such as “a
measure of skill at answering passage-related questions,” “a measure of reading comprehension
defined more broadly,” “one indicator of verbal aptitude,” or “an indicator of some more
general construct, such as intelligence” (Kane, 1992, p. 533). Whatever the interpretation we
choose, Kane argues, we need an argument to defend the relationship of the score to that
interpretation. He calls this an interpretative argument, defined as a “chain of inferences from
the observed performances to conclusions and decisions included in the interpretation”
(italics added) (Kane, Crooks, & Cohen, 1999, p. 6). The general character of an interpretative
argument is illustrated in Figure 1.
Testing
Figure 1: Kane: Steps in an interpretative argument
Kane proposes four types of inference in the chain of inferences constituting the
interpretative argument. He uses the metaphor of bridges for each of these inferences; all
bridges need to be intact and crossed safely for the final interpretations to be reached. The
ultimate decisions are vulnerable to weaknesses in any of the preceding steps; in this way, Kane
is clear about the dependency of valid interpretations on the reliability of scores. Let us go
through the types of inference in turn and consider the issues that they raise.
The first inference is from observation to observed score. In order for assessment to be
possible, an instance of learner behavior needs to be observable. This could be the production
of a spoken or written text resulting from participation in a communicative event, making marks
on a page indicating the choice of answer in a forced choice test, and so on. This behavior is
then scored. The first type of inference is that the observed score is a reflection of the observed
behavior (i.e., that there is a clear scoring procedure and that it has been applied in the way
intended: that criteria are clear and are understood, that the correct scoring key has been used,
that scorers conform to the required scoring procedure, and so on).
212
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Bachman (2004, p. 262); McNamara and Roever (2006, pp. 24-25)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
58. A test of ESL pragmalinguistic competence most probably includes the following
components EXCEPT ---------------.
1) recognition of situational routine formulas
2) knowledge of speech act production strategies
3) comprehension of implicature
4) knowledge of social norms and conventions
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
McNamara and Roever (2006, pp. 54-56) elaborate on pragmatic competence.
Second Language Pragmatics
Testing
Pragmatics is the study of language use in a social context, and language users’ pragmatic
competence is their “ability to act and interact by means of language” (Kasper & Roever, 2005,
p. 317). Pragmatics is a broad field, covering such diverse areas as implicature, deixis, speech
acts, conversational management, situational routines, and others (Leech, 1983; Levinson,
1983; Mey, 2001). Pragmatic ability in an L2 requires offline knowledge and online control of
the linguistic and the sociocultural aspects of pragmatics; following Leech, “sociopragmatic”
knowledge describes knowledge of the target language community’s social rules,
appropriateness norms, discourse practices, and accepted behaviors, whereas
“pragmalinguistic” knowledge encompasses the linguistic tools necessary to “do things with
words” (Austin, 1962)—for example, produce comprehensible discourse, make requests,
surrender a turn in a conversation, and so forth. Both components of pragmatic competence are
equally necessary: language users who know target language sociopragmatic norms but have
no pragmalinguistic tools at their disposal are prevented from even participating in interaction.
Conversely, users who command a range of pragmalinguistic tools but use them unconstrained
by sociopragmatic rules may unwittingly give offense, index roles and stances they do not
intend to convey, or be entirely incomprehensible. Because of the connection between
sociopragmatics and pragmalinguistics, it is often difficult in practice to determine whether a
given error was due to pragmalinguistic or sociopragmatic deficits. For example, if an utterance
is missing requisite politeness markers, this might be because the learner does not know these
markers (pragmalinguistic deficit) or they might know the markers but not be aware that those
markers need to be used in the given situation (sociopragmatic deficit). The situation is
complicated further by learners’ subjective choice: They might choose not to follow L2
discourse norms in order to assert their identity. For example, Siegal (1994) presents the case
of her learner Mary, who asserts topic control in communicating with her professor in Japanese,
which is normally the prerogative of the higher status interlocutor. Mary seems to want to
establish a more equal relationship and be recognized as a fellow researcher, being an
established high school teacher and a postgraduate student in her native New Zealand, rather
than be viewed as simply another international student.
Because of the close connection between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics, it is
difficult to design a test that tests pragmalinguistics to the exclusion of sociopragmatics or vice
versa. Still, most tests of pragmatics have focused on one or the other aspect of pragmatic
competence and can be classified as oriented more toward the sociopragmatic end (testing
213
appropriateness in the context of social relationships) or the pragmalinguistic end (testing

linguistic forms necessary to achieve communicative ends). The area that has been tested the
most is speech acts, and there has been some assessment of implicatures, routines, and
judgment of appropriateness.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
59. A shortcoming of classical analysis is that ---------------.

1) it looks at many aspects of the measurement procedure at the same time
2) tests are tailored to the ability levels of individual test takers
3) score statistics are sample-based
4) items have the same statistical characteristics if they are administered to different groups
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Testing
Choice (1) is a feature of G-theory (see Bachman, 1990, pp. 226, 239).
Choice (2) is a feature of IRT (see Bachman, 1990, pp. 206, 209).
Choice (4) is features of IRT (see Bachman, 1990, pp. 206).
Bachman (1990, p. 207) states some problems concerning the precision of measurement of
both CTS theory and G-theory: There are a number of limitations on both CTS theory and G-
theory with respect to estimating the precision of measurement, only two of which will be
discussed here. First, estimators of both reliability and generalizability, and the standard errors
of measurement associated with them, are sample dependent, so that scores from the same test
administered to different groups of test takers may differ in their reliabilities. A second
limitation is that error variance is treated as homogeneous across individuals, so that estimates
of reliability or generalizability are based on group, rather than individual performance. That
is, measurement error is assumed to be the same for individuals whose test performance is
excellent, poor, or average, so that a low score on a test is regarded as just as reliable an indicator
of ability as an average score.
As for choice (4), Bachamn (1990, p. 206) asserts that if the general IRT assumptions are
met and if the particular IRT model fits the data, three major advantages accrue from the use of
IRT models. First, assuming a large number of items that measure the same trait, an individual’s
ability estimate is independent of the particular set of items that are taken. Second, assuming a
large population of test takers, the item parameter estimates are independent of the particular
sample of test takers upon whose responses they are based. Thus, we can say that in IRT items
have the same statistical characteristics if they are administered to different groups because they
are sample independent.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Bachman (1990, pp. 206, 207, 209, 226, 239)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
60. In contrast to multiple linear regression analysis, path analysis can ---------------.
1) predict values for more than one dependent variable
2) explain variation on one variable in terms of another
3) involve many predictors
4) explain the relative importance of different components in a total score
214
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Bachman (2004, p. 111) explains the difference between multiple linear regression analysis
and path analysis.
Path analysis
Multiple linear regression analysis enables us to predict values of a single dependent variable
on the basis of multiple independent variables. However, in many situations we may want to
predict values for more than one dependent variable. For example, we might want to investigate
the extent to which we can predict future knowledge of second language (L2) vocabulary and
reading ability on the basis of first language (L1) literacy, level of education, the amount of
time spent reading L2 materials and the type of L2 materials read. We might operationalize
these constructs as the following variables: two dependent variables – L2 vocabulary test score
and L2 reading test score – and four independent variables – L1 literacy test score, self-reported
level of education, L2 reading frequency and types of L2 reading material. In this case, an
appropriate statistical procedure would be path analysis, which is an extension of multivariate
linear regression analysis, in which we can predict values for multiple observed dependent
Testing
variables on the basis of multiple independent variables. The characteristic feature of this
approach is a path diagram, in which the observed variables are represented by rectangles and
the relationships, or ‘paths’, among the variables are represented by arrowed lines.
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215
Teaching Language Skills (Questions 61 – 70)
61. The statement that “partial explanation of a rule is more likely to result in learning
the exceptions to that rule if learners are corrected at the moment the
overgeneralization error is made” is based on ---------------.
1) input-flooding strategy
2) garden path strategy
3) given-to-new principle
4) real-operating conditions principle
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
An option for promoting students’ awareness involves using a ‘garden path’ strategy
(Tomasello & Herron 1988, 1989). As applied to grammar teaching, this means giving students
information about structure without giving them the full picture, thus making it seem easier
than it is, or in other words, “leading them down the garden path.” If ESL/EFL students were
told that the English past tense is formed with -ed, for example, this would be leading students
down the garden path as there are many irregular verbs in English where this rule will not work
to produce the past tense. The reason for giving students only a partial explanation of a rule is
more likely to result in learning the exceptions to that rule if learners are corrected at the
moment the overgeneralization error is made than if they are given a long list of “exceptions to
the rule” to memorize in advance.
For the explanation of other choices, refer to Year 93, Item 84.
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62. One can fill gaps in his/her competence by intelligent attempts to use whatever clues
are available through ---------------.
1) skimming the test
2) semantic mapping
3) compensation strategy
Skills
4) distinguishing between literal and implied meanings
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Strategies for reading comprehension
For most second language learners who are already literate in a previous language, reading
comprehension is primarily a matter of developing appropriate, efficient comprehension
strategies. Some strategies are related to bottom-up procedures, and others enhance the top-
down processes. Following are ten such strategies, each of which can be practically applied to
your classroom techniques.
1. Identify the purpose in reading.
2. Use graphemic rules and patterns to aid in bottom-up decoding (especially for
beginning level learners).
216
3. Use efficient silent reading techniques for relatively rapid comprehension (for
intermediate to advanced levels).
4. Skim the text for main ideas.
5. Scan the text for specific information.
6. Use semantic mapping or clustering.
7. Guess when you aren't certain.
This is an extremely broad category. Learners can use guessing to their advantage to
• guess the meaning of a word
• guess a grammatical relationship (e.g., a pronoun reference)
• guess a discourse relationship
• infer implied meaning ("between the lines")
• guess about a cultural reference
• guess content messages.
Now, you of course don't want to encourage your learners to become haphazard readers! They
should utilize all their skills and put forth as much effort as possible to be on target with their
hypotheses. But the point here is that reading is, after all, a guessing game of sorts, and the
sooner learners understand this game, the better off they are. The key to successful guessing is
to make it reasonably accurate.
You can help learners to become accurate guessers by encouraging them to use effective
compensation strategies in which they fill gaps in their competence by intelligent attempts to
use whatever clues are available to them. Language-based clues include word analysis, word
associations, and textual structure. Nonlinguistic clues come from context, situation, and other
schemata.
8. Analyze vocabulary.
9. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings.
10. Capitalize on discourse markers to process relationships.
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63. All of the following are among different types of classroom speaking performance
EXCEPT ---------------.
Skills
1) interpersonal and extensive activities
2) imitative and intensive activities
3) responsive and transactional activities
4) clustering and reduced-forms activities
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Types of Classroom Speaking Performance
1. Imitative
2. Intensive
3. Responsive
4. Transactional (dialogue)
5. Interpersonal (dialogue)
6. Extensive (monologue)
217
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64. The following are principles for designing interactive reading techniques EXCEPT -
-----------------.
1) including intrinsically motivating techniques
2) following the SQ3R sequence
3) following either bottom-up or top-down techniques
4) subdividing reading into pre-reading, during-reading, and after reading phases
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Principles for Designing Interactive Reading Techniques
1. In an interactive curriculum, make sure that you don't overlook the importance of
specific instruction in reading skills.
2. Use techniques that are intrinsically motivating.
3. Balance authenticity and readability in choosing texts.
4. Encourage the development of reading strategies.
5. Include both bottom-up and top-down techniques.
6. Follow the "SQ3R" sequence.
7. Subdivide your techniques into pre-reading, during-reading, and after-reading phases.
8. Build in some evaluative aspect to your techniques
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65. All of the following match communicative treatment of vocabulary learning EXCEPT
---------------.
1) engaging learners in “planned” vocabulary teaching
2) playing down the role of bilingual dictionaries
3) allocating specific class time to vocabulary use
4) encouraging learners to develop strategies for determining the meaning of words
Answer: 1 Skills
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Explanation:
Below are some guidelines for the communicative treatment of vocabulary instruction.
1. Allocate specific class time to vocabulary learning.
2. Help students to learn vocabulary in context.
3. Play down the role of bilingual dictionaries.
4. Encourage students to develop strategies for determining the meaning of words.
5. Engage in "unplanned" vocabulary teaching.
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218
66. Output Hypothesis claims that output stimulates learners to ---------------.

1) enhance their ability to provide recast
2) notice syntactic deficiency
3) move from acquisition to comprehension
4) move from syntactic to semantic awareness
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
In short, pushed output leads the learners to notice the gap between what they already know
and the target language syntactic system (i.e. it results in noticing their linguistic problems).
This will eventually push the learners to learn produce more complex syntactic structures.
Output Hypothesis
Doubts about the validity of the Input Hypothesis stressing the importance of comprehensible
input as the cause of language acquisition were raised after a thorough analysis of the outcomes
of immersion projects. It turned out that, despite the fact that immersion students were exposed
to copious quantities of comprehensible input, they displayed considerable difficulties in the
area of language production concerning accuracy and appropriacy. Commenting on the results
of the French immersion programme in Canada, Swain (1985) pointed out that lower scores of
immersion students stemmed from the fact that they did not speak as much French as English.
What is more, their French teachers, concentrating on message conveyance, did not require or
“push” them to use the language that would be accurate, appropriate and coherent. In the light
of the fact that Krashen’s (1985) views on the role of comprehensible input in language learning
were not able to account for the weaknesses of immersion projects, alternative explanations
were sought. One such attempt was the Output Hypothesis formulated by Swain (1985)
following informal and formal observations conducted in immersion classrooms. The main
tenet of the Output Hypothesis (OH) is the assumption that, under certain conditions, language
production (i.e. speaking or writing) is a part of the process of language learning. According to
Swain (1995), output plays the following functions in the acquisition of the target language:
1. Noticing/Triggering Function. This function is manifested if learners, in the course of vocal

or subvocal language production, discover that they do not know how to express the intended
meaning. As Swain (2005, p. 474) puts it, “(…) the activity of producing the target language
may prompt second language learners to recognize consciously some of their linguistic Skills
problems.” The importance of this function lies in the fact that such awareness triggers
cognitive processes responsible for generating and consolidating linguistic knowledge. While
producing the language, learners not only notice that they are not able to express what they
want, but they may also notice differences between the target language form and the form they
produce themselves. However, it needs to be remembered that attention to a given form may
differ in its length and depth. For successful acquisition, it is necessary both to pay attention to
forms and also the relationships that exist among them and regulate the ways in which these
forms make a unified whole. On the basis of his study on relativization, Izumi (2002, p. 571)
concluded that it was output processing that enabled learners to conceive the underlying
structure of the form in question, which was accomplished in the course of grammatical
encoding operations. Such operations, whose function is to stimulate integrative processes and
connect separate elements, are performed during the production, not the comprehension
process. The effects of grammatical encoding are quite different from those of grammatical
219
decoding since the latter do not result in reorganizing of the form-meaning mappings learners
have established. As Swain (1995, p. 128) states, “Output may stimulate learners to move
from the semantic, open-ended non-deterministic, strategic processing prevalent in
comprehension to the complete grammatical processing needed for accurate production.
Output, thus, would seem to have potentially significant role in the development of syntax
and morphology.”
2. Hypothesis Testing Function. Corder (1981) proposed that learners formulate hypotheses
concerning the structural features of the target language on the basis of the data derived from
the input they are exposed to. The newly formed hypotheses are confirmed if the forms
produced on their basis are accepted and do not lead to a breach of communication. They are
disconfirmed, in turn, if the message is misunderstood or the utterance corrected (Ellis 1994, p.
352). The proponents of the Output Hypothesis (Pica et al. 1989; Swain 1995; Loewen 2002;
Mackey 2002) observe that changes in the output result from different forms of feedback:
clarification requests, confirmation checks, or incidental focus on form. The key assumption
underlying the utility of output restructuring is that it constitutes part of the language learning
process. Swain (2005) cites the findings included in the unpublished dissertations of Mackey
(2002) and Storch (2001) who attempted to establish whether the production of modified output
facilitates L2 learning. In the analysis she presents, the learning effect of output production is
explained by the fact that output stimulates processes involved in language learning and that
modified output has priming effects on subsequent output. Since priming leads to the repetition
of a syntactic form, it may result in automatic retrieval of that form.
3. Metalinguistic/Reflective Function. The principal assumption here is that second language

learning can be mediated by the language used to reflect on the language produced by the self
and others. At the beginning, language is regulated by others and only at a later time do the
regulatory mechanisms become internalized by an individual. Thus, engagement in a
conversation, which entails internalization of operations on language data into one’s own
mental activity, becomes an act of learning. The problem-solving dialogue performed by
learners collaboratively in an attempt to solve a linguistic problem becomes a part of an
individual student’s mental reality and helps them deal with problems on their own. As Swain
(2005, p. 478) states “Collaborative dialogue is thus dialogue in which speakers are engaged in
problem solving and knowledge building—in the case of second language learners, solving
linguistic problems and building knowledge about language.” The very act of articulation or
Skills
verbalization of thought is believed to reshape experience. What is more, the newly formulated
idea is now available for further reflection by others or the self. The questions or doubts it raises
allow elimination of possible inconsistencies and gradual refinement of ideas. Language
production thus becomes a potent cognitive tool that enables internalization and mediates
thinking (Swain, 2005, p. 478).
For more explanation, refer to Year 92, Items 81 and 82.

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 See also: Mystkowska-Wiertelak and Pawlak (2012, pp. 54-55); VanPatten and Williams
(2015, pp. 184, 186)
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220
67. The principle that does NOT work for designing writing techniques is “--------------”.
1) balance process and product
2) separate reading and writing
3) incorporate practice of good writers
4) account for cultural and literary background
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Principles for Designing Writing Techniques
1. Incorporate practices of "good" writers.
2. Balance process and product.
3. Account for cultural/literary backgrounds.
4. Connect reading and writing.
5. Provide as much authentic writing as possible.
6. Frame your techniques in terms of prewriting, drafting, and revising stages.
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68. The interpersonal form of conversation in a classroom ---------------.

1) includes the purpose of exchanging specific information
2) is designed to practice some phonological or grammatical aspects of language
3) is focused on short replies to teacher questions
4) carries the purpose of maintaining social relationships
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Interpersonal (dialogue)
The other form of conversation is interpersonal dialogue carried out more for the purpose of
maintaining social relationships than for the transmission of facts and information. These
conversations are a little trickier for learners because they can involve some or all of the
following factors:
• a casual register
• colloquial language
• emotionally charged language Skills
• slang
• ellipsis
• sarcasm
• a covert "agenda"
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69. As to teachers’ decision making, the maxim of conformity (Richards, 1996) reveals
the point that the teacher ---------------.
1) maintains order and principle through the lesson
2) plans his teaching and tries to follow his plan
3) makes sure that his teaching follows the prescribed method
4) follows learner’s interests to maintain learner involvement
221
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Teaching Maxims
The Maxim of Involvement: follow the learners' interests to maintain student involvement.
The Maxim of Relevance: make the lesson relevant to students' needs.
The Maxim of Order: follow the lesson plan
The Maxim of Empowerment: Give the Learners Control
The Maxim of Accuracy: work for accurate student output.
The Maxim of Conformity: make sure your teaching follows the prescribed method.
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 See also: Richards (1996, pp. 53-58)
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70. As far as speaking skill is concerned, it is NOT true that ---------------.

1) in NNS conversations, there is a willingness to change the topic abruptly
2) in a conversation exchange, negative evidence causes detrimental influences
3) compared with NS conversations, NNS use more negotiations in their conversation
4) more advanced learners receive more benefit from recast in comparison with less
proficient ones
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Gass and Selinker (2008) refer to different empirical studies carried out in SLA within the
“Interaction, Input, and Output” domain. Here, parts of the results of such studies which are
relevant to this question are presented.
Choice 1: Interaction in SLA, Empirical Studies (p. 321)

… There are other, perhaps more subtle, differences between conversations involving only NSs
and those involving at least one non-proficient NNS. For example, in conversations with NNSs,
there is frequently a willingness on the part of everyone to change topics, often abruptly.
(1) Topic shift
NNS1: Are you going to attend today’s party?
NNS2: I don’t know yet, but probably I’ll attend. (long pause, with intermittent
“hm”s). So when will you go back to Japan? … Skills
Choice 2: Feedback (corresponding pages)
… there is some empirical evidence that negative evidence is in some instances necessary for
second language acquisition … (p. 330)
Furthermore, it may be the case that negative evidence is a necessary condition for adult second
language learning … (p. 346). Therefore, negative evidence is NOT detrimental.
Choice 3: Interaction (p. 318)

… In conversations involving NNSs, negotiations are frequent, at times occupying a major
portion of the conversation …
Choice 4: Recast in Interactionist Approaches: Empirical Studies (corresponding pages)
222
… The results of a study by Ammar and Spada (2006) are similar to those of Lyster (2004).
Their study took place in intensive English classes (L1 French) in Montreal with Grade 6 pupils.
The target grammatical area was possessive determiners (his/her), a structure notably difficult
for French learners of English. Prompts turned out to be more effective than recasts. The
effectiveness of recasts depended, in part, on proficiency level, with more advanced learners
receiving more benefit than learners of lower proficiency … (For more information, see Gass
& Selinker, 2008, pp. 334-341).
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Skills
223
71. Swain’s work on collaborative dialog is informed by ---------------.

1) Pienemann’s processibility theory
2) Krashen’s input hypothesis
3) Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory
4) Johnson and Johnson’s research on cooperative learning
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
The socio-cultural view of (language) learning
Like the cognitive perspectives, socio-cultural theorists assume that the same general learning
mechanisms will apply to language, as apply to other forms of knowledge and skill. However,
all learning is seen as first social, then individual; first inter-mental, then intra-mental. Also,
learners are seen as active constructors of their own learning environment, which they shape
through their choice of goals and operations. So, this tradition has a good deal to say about the
processes of learning, and has invested considerable empirical effort in describing these in
action. Ohta in particular has developed a very full account of language learning that integrates
a range of socio-cultural concepts with cognitive ideas about learning processes (Ohta, 2001).
She sees private speech as giving rich opportunities for repetition and rehearsal of new
language items, hypothesis testing, the manipulation of target structures during language play,
and the private rehearsal of interactional routines prior to use. All this can be related to ideas of
automatization and proceduralization of new knowledge.
Similarly, she sees peer interaction and co-construction as providing learners with increased
opportunities for noticing, selective attention to different aspects of target language production
and increasing the capacity of working memory. Her classroom data provides rich
exemplification in support of these detailed claims. What counts as evidence of 'learning' in
this tradition, however, is not uncontroversial. In much socio-cultural discussion, the co-
construction of new language and its immediate use in discourse, is equated with learning:
SLA
Unlike the claim that comprehensible input leads to learning, we wish to suggest
that what occurs in collaborative dialogues is learning. That is, learning does not
happen outside performance; it occurs in performance. Furthermore, learning is
cumulative, emergent and ongoing . . .
(Swain and Lapkin, 1998, p. 321)
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 See also: Mitchell and Myles (2004, pp. 221); VanPatten and Williams (2015, pp. 212-
213)
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72. All of the following are among the principles of input processing EXCEPT -----------.
1) learners prefer processing lexical items to grammatical items for semantic processing
2) learners process input for meaning before they process it for form
3) there is a tendency in learners to process the first noun or pronoun they encounter in a
sentence as the subject
4) grammatical processing has access to temporary memory store that can hold
grammatical information
Answer: 4
224
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Explanation:
Input Processing (IP) (VanPatten 1996, 2004, 2007) is concerned with explaining (a) under
what conditions learners make initial form-meaning connections (b) why learners make some
form-meaning connections and not others, and (c) what internal strategies learners use to
comprehend sentences. To explain these three conditions, VanPatten has outlined several
principles that L2 learners use when processing input. The table below presents these principles
in their most recent form (VanPatten, 2007).
Principles of Input Processing (VanPatten, 2007)

The Primacy of Content Words Principle Learners process content words in the input
before anything else.
The Lexical Preference Principle Leaners will process lexical items for
meaning before grammatical forms when
both encode the same semantic information.
The Preference for Non-redundancy Learners are more likely to process non-
Principle redundant meaningful grammatical markers
before they process redundant meaningful
markers.
The Meaning before Non-meaning Principle Learners are more likely to process
meaningful grammatical markers before
non-meaningful grammatical markers.
The First Noun Principle Learners tend to process the first noun or
pronoun they encounter in a sentence as the
subject.
The L1 Transfer Principle Learners begin acquisition with L1 parsing
procedures.
The Event Probability Principle Learners may rely on event probabilities,
where possible, instead of the First Noun
Principle to interpret sentences.
SLA
The Lexical Semantics Principle Learners may rely on lexical semantics,
where possible, instead of the First Noun
Principle (or an L1 parsing procedure) to
interpret sentences.
The Contextual Constraint Principle Learners may rely less on the First Noun
Principle (or L1 transfer) if preceding
context constrains the possible interpretation
of a clause or sentence.
The Sentence Location Principle Learners tend to process items in sentence
initial position before those in final position
and those in medial position.
For similar items on “input processing”, refer to Year 93, Items 61 and 89; Year 94, Item 74;
and Year 96, Item 64.
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 See also: VanPatten and Williams (2015, pp. 113-134)
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225
73. A connectionist theory of SLA claims that ---------------.

1) language is rule-governed behavior
2) representation emerges rather than being innately pre-specified
3) the language module in the brain is unidimensional
4) the connection between input and intake is made through feedback
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
For explanation, please refer to Year 91, Items 63 and 73.
For similar items, refer to Year 91, Items 63 and 73; Year 93, Item 82; and Year 94, Item 76.
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74. According to Krashen’s monitor model, automaticity ---------------.

1) comes about as result of consistent i+1 production
2) is a feature of acquired knowledge
3) applies only to prefabricated patterns and routines
4) arises out of interface between learning and acquisition
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Krashen's Monitor Model
Krashen's theory evolved in the late 1970s in a series of articles (Krashen, 1977a, 1977b, 1978),
as a result of the findings of the morpheme studies in the 1970s. Krashen thereafter refined and
expanded his ideas in the early 1980s in a series of books (Krashen, 1981, 1982, 1985). As it
was previously mentioned, Krashen based his general theory around a set of five basic
hypotheses:
SLA
1. the Acquisition-Learning hypothesis
2. the Monitor hypothesis
3. the Natural Order hypothesis
4. the Input hypothesis
5. the Affective Filter hypothesis.
Hypotheses 1 and 2 are relevant here to answer this question.
The Acquisition-Learning hypothesis

This hypothesis has been highly influential, and, albeit in a different form, still remains the
source of much debate today. The basic premise is that language acquisition, on the one hand,
and learning, on the other, are separate processes. Acquisition refers to the 'subconscious
process identical in all important ways to the process children utilize in acquiring their first
language' (Krashen, 1985, p. 1) and learning refers to the 'conscious process that results in
"knowing about" language' (Krashen, 1985, p. 1). In other words, acquisition is the result of
natural interaction with the language via meaningful communication, which sets in motion
developmental processes akin to those outlined in first language acquisition, and learning is the
result of classroom experience, in which the learner is made to focus on form and to learn about
the linguistic rules of the target language. The contrast between the naturalistic environment
226
and the classroom environment is not the crucial issue, however. What is claimed to be
important is the difference between meaningful communication, on the one hand, which can
very well take place in the language classroom, and which will trigger subconscious processes,
and conscious attention to form, on the other, which can also take place in naturalistic settings,
especially with older learners who might explicitly request grammatical information from
people around them.
What is very problematic in this distinction is Krashen's claim that learning cannot turn
into acquisition, that is, that language knowledge acquired or learnt by these different routes
cannot eventually become integrated into a unified whole (no-interface position, therefore
Choice 4 is wrong) (Krashen and Scarcella, 1978).
The Monitor hypothesis

According to Krashen, 'learning' and 'acquisition' are used in very specific ways in
second-language performance. The Monitor Hypothesis states that 'learning has only one
function, and that is as a Monitor or editor' and that learning comes into play only to 'make
changes in the form of our utterance, after it has been "produced" by the acquired system'
(1982, 15). Acquisition 'initiates' the speaker's utterances and is responsible for fluency
(automaticity). Thus the Monitor is thought to alter the output of the acquired system
before or after the utterance is actually written or spoken, but the utterance is initiated
entirely by the acquired system.
(McLaughlin, 1987, p. 24)
It is quite clear from the above that the Monitor does not operate all the time. Given enough
time, when a focus on form is important for learners, and when learners know the grammatical
rule needed, they might make use of the Monitor in order to consciously modify the output
produced by the acquired system. Needless to say, the pressures and demands of conversing in
the second language in real time do not often allow for such monitoring to take place.
There is no such a concept as i + 1 production mentioned in Choice 1.

Also Krashen has not claimed that automaticity applies only to prefabricated patterns and
SLA
routines.
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 See also: Mitchell and Myles (2004, pp. 44-46); VanPatten and Benati (2015, pp. 89-90,
141-42)
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75. High levels of mutuality and equality characterize the pattern of interaction between
learners which is ---------------.
1) collaborative
2) scaffolded
3) expert-novice
4) dominant-dominant
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
The importance of the quality of the talk between learners, emphasized by Swain (in her notion
of collaborative dialogue), is also demonstrated in Storch (2002). This study reported an
analysis of the patterns of dyadic interaction found in ESL students' performance of a range of
tasks. It identified four basic patterns as shown in the figure below. This is based on two
227
intersecting dimensions involving (1) mutuality (i.e. ‘the level of engagement with each other's
contribution') and (2) equality (i.e. 'the degree of control or authority over a task') (p. 127). The
study then went on to report the relationship between the different patterns of dyadic interaction
and language development. Development was measured in accordance with SCT by examining
the extent to which 'learning', as evidenced in the interactions, led to 'development', as
evidenced in subsequent tasks. Storch reported that the collaborative dyad (i.e. the dyad
manifesting high mutuality and high equality) manifested more instances suggesting evidence
of a transfer of knowledge than both the dominant/passive and the dominant/dominant dyads,
with the expert/novice group intermediate.
High
mutuality
4 1
Expert / Novice Collaborative
Low equality High equality

3 2
Dominant / Passive Dominant / Dominant
Low mutuality
A Model of Dyadic Interaction (Storch, 2002)

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 See also: Ellis (2008, pp. 538-540)
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SLA
76. The property theories of SLA ---------------.
1) vary in terms of the nature of L2 representation
2) aim for a robust process explanation
3) are mainly concerned with the role of input
4) causal processes that affect changes in L2 learners’ cognitive states
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
We can only pursue a better understanding of SLL in an organized and productive way if our
efforts are guided by some form of theory. A theory is a more or less abstract set of claims
about the units that are significant within the phenomenon under study, the relationships that
exist between them and the processes that bring about change. Thus, a theory aims not just at
description but also at explanation. Theories may be embryonic and restricted in scope, or more
elaborate, explicit and comprehensive. They may deal with different areas of interest to us; thus,
a property theory will be primarily concerned with modelling the nature of the language
system that is to be acquired, whereas a transition theory will be primarily concerned with
modelling the change or developmental processes of language acquisition.
228
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 See also: Mitchell and Myles (2004, p. 7)
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77. Within UG, the existence of wild L2 grammars ---------------.

1) is due to the possibility of parameter resetting
2) results from parametric variation across languages
3) shows the distinction between competence and performance
4) indicates learner’s recourse to general learning mechanisms
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
For similar items, please refer to Year 91, Item 67; and Year 93, Item 80.
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78. The main focus of Bialystok’s two-dimensional model is to explain ---------------.

1) initial input selection and noticing
2) social and psychological distance
3) analyzed representation and control of processing
4) the relationship between recast and uptake
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Representing L2 knowledge as two intersecting continua
A distinction was drawn by Bialystok and Sharwood Smith (1985)—one between knowledge
SLA
and control. Knowledge was defined as “the way in which the language system is represented
in the mind of the learner (the categories and relationships in long-term memory),” whereas
control was defined as “the processing system for controlling that system during actual
performance” (p. 104). The authors made an analogy to a library. The knowledge is in the books
and in the way they are organized, and control is in the way the books are accessed. With regard
to the latter, the library user/language user needs to know how to determine which books are in
the library and how to locate the books. The first time one uses a library, it is difficult to find
one’s way around, but with repeated use, access gets easier and more efficient. The distinction
made between knowledge and control is particularly useful with regard to vocabulary because
it is not bound to just reception or production. Rather, both production and reception include
information regarding knowledge and control.
More Explanation
Bialystok's Theory of L2 learning
Bialystok's (1978) Theory of L2 Learning was based on the distinction between implicit and
explicit knowledge but allows for an interface between explicit and implicit knowledge.
Bialystok proposed that implicit knowledge is developed through exposure to communicative
language use and is facilitated by the strategy of functional practicing (attempts by the learner
to maximize exposure to language through communication). In contrast, explicit knowledge
229
arises when learners focus on the language code, and is facilitated by 'formal practicing', which
involves either conscious study of the L2 or attempts to automatize already learnt explicit
knowledge. There is an interaction between the two types of knowledge. Formal practicing
enables explicit knowledge to become implicit, while inferencing allows explicit knowledge to
be derived from implicit. The model also distinguishes two types of output. Type I output is
'spontaneous and immediate', while Type II is 'deliberate and occurs after a delay' (Bialystok
1978, p. 74). As might be expected, Type I relies entirely on implicit knowledge, whereas Type
II involves both implicit and explicit. A feedback loop from both types allows for continual
modification of a response. Thus, Bialystok's theory is premised on an interface between the
two types of knowledge.
Whereas Krashen's position has remained more or less immutable over the years,
Bialystok's has undergone considerable revision (see Bialystok1981a, 1982, 1990, 1991, and
also Hulstijn, 1990). The development that concerns us most here is her reconceptualization of
L2 knowledge. In the early model this was represented as a dichotomy-knowledge was either
implicit or explicit-but in subsequent formulations it is represented in terms of two intersecting
continua reflecting the extent to which rules and items are controlled or analyzed. Again,
Bialystok's definition of 'control' has shifted somewhat. Whereas initially it concerned the ease
and rapidity with which knowledge can be accessed in differing types of language use, in later
formulations (for example, Bialystok and Ryan 1985) it refers to three different functions: the
selection of items of knowledge, their coordination, and the extent to which selection and
coordination can be carried out automatically.
By 'analysis', Bialystok refers to the extent to which the learner has abstracted an account
of some linguistic phenomenon:
Analysis of knowledge is the process by which mental representations of this

knowledge are built up, structured, and made explicit for the learner.
(Bialystok, 1991, p. 65)
One way in which this can take place is by analyzing formulas (i.e. discovering the parts that
make them up). It is tempting to see this 'analysis' dimension as equivalent to the
SLA
explicit/implicit distinction, with analyzed knowledge corresponding to explicit knowledge and
unanalyzed to implicit. Bialystok, in fact, did equate analysis with the development of an
explicit representation of knowledge, but she emphasized that analyzed knowledge need not
involve consciousness. As she put it 'a criterion of consciousness seriously underestimates the
level of analysis with which linguistic knowledge is represented'(1991, p. 68).
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 See also: Ellis (2008, pp. 421-422); Gass and Selinker (2008, p. 453)
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79. Based on the sentence “the manager will have fired Bekham,” we have the following
question: have the manager will fired Bekham?
Which principle of UG has not been applied in the above question?
1) Locality principle
2) Wh-island
3) Structure independency
4) Subject-auxiliary movement
Answer: 1
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230
Explanation:
The Principle of Locality
To show what is meant by a grammatical principle we can develop the idea of movement. As
might be expected, movement has limits; many possible movements result in a structure that is
ungrammatical. One of the first limitations to be noticed is that movements has to be short, i.e.
not span too much of the sentence. Much work on movement since the late 1960s has tried to
account for this observation by proposing different principles. One of these limitations can be
called the Locality Principle: movements must be within a local' part of the sentence from
which the moved element originates. Some examples will serve to put the idea across. To form
a yes-no question in English (i.e. one that can be answered with either a 'yes' or a 'no') an
auxiliary verb, such as will, can, may, have or be moves from its normal position behind the
subject to a position in front of the subject:
(21) The manager will fire Beckham.
(22) Will the manager fire Beckham?
This is known as subject-auxiliary inversion. This example is simple as there is just one
auxiliary verb which moves to form the question. However, other sentences have more than one
auxiliary verb:
(23) The manager will have fired Beckham.
The issue is whether either of the two auxiliaries will and have may move to form the question:
(24) a. Will the manager have fired Beckham?
b. Have the manager will fired Beckham?
In this case the first auxiliary can move, but the second cannot, due to the Locality Principle.
Comparing the distances that the two auxiliaries must move in these examples, moving the first
auxiliary will clearly involves a shorter movement than moving the other auxiliary have
(25) a. Will the manager -have fired Beckham?
b. Have the manager will - fired Beckham?
SLA
In other words, the shorter movement is grammatical and the longer ungrammatical.
The Locality Principle extends to other linguistic phenomena as well as movements. For more
information refer to Cook and Newson (2007, pp. 36-41).
Wh-island
Consider the following example, from de Villiers, Roeper, and Vainikka (1990) and Roeper
and de Villiers (1992). Imagine a scenario where a boy climbs a tree in the afternoon and falls
out of it and hurts himself. In the evening, he tells his father about what happened. Now consider
the questions in (1), uttered in this context.
(1)
a. When did the boy say (that) he got a bruise?
b. When did the boy say how he got a bruise?
In this context, a question like (1a) is ambiguous: It can be a question about the time that he got
hurt (in the afternoon) or the time that he told his father about the incident (in the evening).
Question (1b), conversely, is not ambiguous. Even though it differs by only one word (the
embedded clause being introduced by how), this question can only have an answer that related
231
to the time of telling, such as in the evening or when he was in the bath. In other words, it must
be construed as a question about the main clause; the embedded clause interpretation is
ungrammatical, even though it is perfectly acceptable and available in the case of (1a). De
Villiers and colleagues conducted a series of experiments using such scenarios and found that
young children acquiring English as their mother tongue are highly sensitive to the difference
between these two sentence types, allowing both interpretations in the case of (1a) but only one
interpretation (the matrix clause one) in the case of (1b).
How do children know this? It is most unlikely that children are explicitly told that certain
sentences are ambiguous, while others (which are superficially very similar) are not. Nor does
this kind of information seem to be inducible from the language that children hear, given that
children will be exposed to a range of grammatical wh - questions, involving simple and
embedded clauses. In other words, the input underdetermines the child’s linguistic competence.
Hence, it is argued, children must bring innate, built-in knowledge to bear on the task of first
language acquisition. In this case, a principle of UG, one of a number of so-called island
constraints (Ross, 1967), restricts wh- movement in particular ways. Effectively, these
constraints state that certain constituents form islands, from which phrases cannot escape. The
embedded clause in (1b) is a wh- island, headed by a question phrase (how), whereas the
embedded clause in (1a) is not. The wh- phrase when can ‘escape’ only in the case of (1a),
passing through a position which is not available in the case of (1b), since it is already filled by
how. The alternative interpretation is possible in both cases because when is construed with the
main clause, no extraction from an embedded clause (island or otherwise) being involved.
A related effect of island constraints is that sentences involving wh- movement out of islands
are ungrammatical in English, as shown in (2a). Here, what has been extracted out of an
embedded wh- clause, an extraction that is impossible for the same reason that the embedded
clause interpretation of (1b) is impossible. In contrast, (2b) is acceptable because the embedded
clause is not an island: there is a position for the wh -phrase to ‘escape’ through, indicated by
the intermediate t in (2b).
SLA
(2)
a. *What i does John wonder [who bought t i ]?
b. What i does John think [t i that Mary bought t i ]?
Once again, on learnability grounds, it is implausible to suppose that L1 acquirers of English

arrive at knowledge of the ungrammaticality of sentences like (2a) on the basis of English input
alone. Instead, constraints of this kind must derive from UG. In other words, acquisition of wh-
movement (and many other properties of language) is constrained by innate principles;
language is acquired presupposing such knowledge, with the consequence that L1 acquirers do
not have to learn when certain kinds of sentences are ungrammatical or when there can or cannot
be certain kinds of structural ambiguity.
As for Choice 3, in syntactic argumentation, we often talk about “structure dependency” rather
than "structure independency".
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 See also: Cook and Newson (2007, pp. 36-38); VanPatten and Williams (2015, pp. 34-36)
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232
80. Cognitive approaches to second language learning ---------------.

1) believe that we can understand SLA by understanding how the human brain processes
and learns information
2) emphasize language as a separate module in the mind that is discrete from other aspects
of cognition
3) put emphasis on the learning component of SLA that leads eventually to independent
language system in the mind
4) don’t focus on the learner but on the genetic heritage that helps him in the acquisition
of a first or a second language
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Cognitive Approaches
Cognitive approaches see the acquisition of a second language as the acquisition of a complex
skill, and here researchers believe that we can better understand the second language
acquisition process by investigating how the human brain processes and learns new
information, as well as how a learner’s individual makeup impacts on this process. The focus
is very much on the learning dimension of second language acquisition, rather than on the
formal properties of learners’ second languages. These approaches are generally classified as
transition theories, that is, theories which aim to understand how learners develop over time in
the L2 (Gregg, 2003; Schwartz, 1998) rather than as property theories, which describe and
explain learners’ linguistic systems. As we will see below, however, the boundary is not always
clear, and some cognitive approaches consider the language system and its acquisition as
one and the same thing.
Domain of inquiry
The domain of inquiry of cognitive approaches is varied, but as is the case with formal linguistic
approaches, they also focus on the individual and on what happens in the human mind.
However, rather than drawing hypotheses from the study of linguistic systems, cognitivists’
SLA
hypotheses originate from cognitive psychology and neurology, and from what we know about
the acquisition of complex skills generally. They view second language acquisition as one
instantiation of learning, relying on the same mechanisms as other types of learning, rather than
as language specific, as the UG approach does. Consequently, processing approaches have been
interested not so much in the formal properties of language, but on how learners gradually
expand their linguistic knowledge and learn to access it increasingly efficiently in online
production (Ellis, 2002; Harrington, 2001; Juffs, 2004; McLaughlin and Heredia, 1996; Myles,
1995; Pienemann, 2003, 2007). The primary focus on the individual mind of the learner,
regardless of context, also applies to a large extent to work on individual differences between
learners, for example their level of intelligence or working memory capacity; the way in which
constructs such as anxiety or motivation might be socially and culturally shaped has also played
some part in this subfield (Dörnyei, 2009; Dörnyei and Skehan, 2002, 2003; Dörnyei and
Ushioda, 2009, 2011; Robinson, 2002; Sawyer and Ranta, 2001; Skehan, 1989).
Given this focus, cognitive SLA theorists’ main focus of investigation has been the
development of processing skills in L2 learners and the way in which these contribute to
learning, and the role of individual differences, both in terms of cognitive factors such as
intelligence, working memory or aptitude, and in terms of (socio-)affective factors such as
motivation, anxiety, extroversion, learner beliefs, learning styles or learner strategies.
233
Views on the nature of language

The view of language within cognitive approaches is relatively underdeveloped, as the focus is
on the learning process. In fact, many SLA researchers working on these approaches do
NOT see language as a separate module in the human mind, but as just another form of
information which is processed through general cognitive mechanisms. This dichotomy,
between language being seen as a separate module or as an integral part of cognition, is of
course somewhat charicatural; there are researchers who believe that there is a language-
specific module for first language acquisition, but that the learning of second languages is
different and relies on general cognitive mechanisms (see for example Bley-Vroman, 1989).
Even within the context of L1 acquisition, some researchers believe that some aspects of
language acquisition are innate and other aspects not, and others leave the question open
(Butterworth and Harris, 1994; Harley, 1995). The question of the specificity and innateness of
the language faculty is far from resolved, in both the L1 and L2 acquisition fields, and the
opposition between cognitivists and innatists should be seen more in terms of two ends of a
continuum rather than a dichotomy. Even within frameworks concentrating firmly on the
processing component of language learning such as Processability theory (Pienemann, 1998,
2003, 2005, 2010), the possibility of an innate linguistic module is not rejected outright;
Pienemann does not take a stand on this, but deals exclusively with the growth of the
computational mechanisms required for the processing of second languages. Thus formal
versus cognitive approaches are increasingly seen as complementary rather than conflictual.
Cognitive theorists of SLA fall into two main groups:

(a) Processing approaches: researchers such as Pienemann (2005, 2010), Towell (2000,
2004) and Towell and Hawkins (1994, 2004), or VanPatten (2002, 2007) who believe that
language knowledge might be special in some way, but who are concerned to develop
transition/processing theories to complement property theories such as UG or, in the case
of Pienemann, another linguistic theory (Lexical Functional Grammar).
(b) Emergentist/constructionist approaches: theorists such as N. C. Ellis, MacWhinney,
Tomasello and others (N. C. Ellis, 2003, 2007, 2008; N. C. Ellis and Larsen-Freeman,
SLA
2006; N. C. Ellis and Schmidt, 1998; Goldschneider and DeKeyser, 2001; MacWhinney,
1999, 2001; O’Grady, Lee and Kwak, 2009; Tomasello, 2003), who do not think that the
separation between property and transition theories is legitimate, as they believe that one
can explain both the nature of language knowledge and how it is processed through general
cognitive principles. In fact, they do not make the distinction between competence and
performance, as they see these as being one and the same thing. In this view, the learner is
seen as operating a complex processing system which deals with linguistic information in
similar ways to other kinds of information.
Cognitive approaches to the role played by individual differences in facilitating or speeding up

learning focus exclusively on psychological variables, and the nature of language falls outside
their domain of inquiry.
View of the learning process

The learning process is the main focus of cognitive approaches, and in particular its
computational dimension. Information processing approaches investigate how different
memory stores (Short-Term Memory (STM); Long-Term Memory (LTM) – declarative and
procedural) deal with new L2 information, and how this information is automatized and
restructured through repeated activation. Processability theory looks more specifically at the
234
processing demands made by various formal aspects of the L2, and the implications for
learnability and teachability of L2 structures (Pienemann, 2003, 2005, 2010).
Constructivist/emergentist views of language learning share a usage-based view of
language development, which is driven by communicative needs, and they reject the need to
posit an innate, language-specific, acquisition device. These include approaches known as
emergentism, connectionism or associationism, constructivism, cognitivism and the
Competition Model. These approaches “emphasize the linguistic sign as a set of mappings
between phonological forms and conceptual meanings or communicative intentions” (N. C.
Ellis, 2003, p. 63). Learning in this view occurs on the basis of associative processes, rather
than the construction of abstract rules. Learning is seen as the analysis of patterns in the
language input, and language development is seen as resulting from the billions of associations
which are created during language use, and which lead to regular patterns in learner
performance which might look rule-like, but in fact are merely frequency-based asssociationist
preferences. These links become stronger as these associations keep recurring, and they also
become part of larger networks as connections between elements become more numerous.
Language in this view is seen as a set of probabilistic patterns which become strengthened in
the brain of the learner through repeated activation.
For theorists interested in individual differences, the learning process is not itself the object
of study, but rather how learner characteristics impact on this process.
View of the language learner

Cognitive approaches, like linguistic approaches, are concerned primarily with the
individual, and do not focus on the learner as a social being. But they are interested in the
learner’s mind as a processor of information, rather than in the specificity of the linguistic
information it contains.
Cognitive approaches view the learner as responding to the multitude of information
surrounding us, processing it, organizing it and storing it. They view the human mind as having
evolved a sophisticated cognitive makeup enabling it to deal with a wealth of information. A
working memory of limited capacity filters new information and selects which elements are
processed at any given time. Information is then stored and organized in short- and long-term
SLA
memory stores, both declarative and procedural, in order to be retrieved increasingly efficiently
through repeated activation, as learning occurs. As with formal linguistic approaches, the focus
is not only on the individual, but also on what is universal in the makeup of the human mind,
in this case in terms of the human mind’s characteristics as a processor, organizer and storer of
information.
The individual differences approach, on the other hand, focuses on individuals’ specific
characteristics rather than on what is universal, and on how these individual characteristics
interact with the learning process. These approaches therefore view the learner as a unique sum
of a range of psychological variables which will all impact on the rate and outcome of the
learning process.
Therefore, as for Choice (4), since cognitive theories are “transition” theories (NOT property
theories), they do not believe in the existence of a specialized module or a genetic module for
language acquisition.

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 See also: Herschensohn and Young-Scholten (2013, pp. 59-64); Mitchell and Myles
(2004, pp. 96-100)
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235
81. Which of the following statements regarding “output” CANNOT be supported by

interactionist theory?
1) Output is generally seen not as a way of creating knowledge but as a way of practicing
already existing knowledge.
2) Output seems to have a potentially significant role in the development of morphology
as well as syntax.
3) Output and production may force the learner to move from semantic processing to
syntactic processing.
4) Comprehensible output refers to the need for a learner to be pushed toward the delivery
of a message that is conveyed.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Swain's Comprehensible Output Hypothesis
Input alone is not sufficient for acquisition, because when one hears language one can often
interpret the meaning without the use of syntax. For example, if one hears only the words dog,
bit, girl, regardless of the order in which those words occur, it is likely that the meaning The
dog bit the girl is the one that will be assumed rather than the more unusual The girl bit the
dog. Similarly, if one hears a sentence such as This is bad story, one can easily fill in the missing
article. Little knowledge, other than knowing the meanings of the words and knowing
something about real-world events, is needed. This is not the case with language production or
output, because one is forced to put the words into some order. Production then “may force
the learner to move from semantic processing to syntactic processing” (Swain, 1985, p. 249).
In fact, the impetus for Swain’s original study was the lack of second language development by
immersion children even after years of academic study in that second language.
It is trivial to state that there is no better way to test the extent of one’s knowledge
(linguistic or otherwise) than to have to use that knowledge in some productive way—whether
it be explaining a concept to someone (i.e., teaching) or writing a computer program, or, in the
SLA
case of language learning, getting even a simple idea across. However, output has generally
been seen not as a way of creating knowledge, but as a way of practicing already existing
knowledge. In other words, output has traditionally (not from an Interactionist perspective to
which Swain's Output Hypothesis is closely related) been viewed as a way of practicing what
has previously been learned. This was certainly the thrust behind early methods of language
teaching in which the presentation-practice (i.e., drill and repetition) mode was in vogue. A
second traditional role assigned to output was that it was the way in which additional (and
perhaps richer) input could be elicited. The idea that output could be part of learning was not
seriously contemplated prior to Swain’s important paper in 1985, in which she introduced
the notion of comprehensible output or “pushed” output. What is meant by this concept is
that learners are “pushed” or “stretched” in their production as a necessary part of making
themselves understood. In so doing, they might modify a previous utterance or they might try
out forms that they had not used before. Comprehensible output refers to the need for a learner
to be “pushed toward the delivery of a message that is not only conveyed, but that is conveyed
precisely, coherently, and appropriately” (Swain, 1985, p. 249).
In a more recent explication of the concept, Swain claimed that “output may stimulate
learners to move from the semantic, open-ended, nondeterministic, strategic processing
prevalent in comprehension to the complete grammatical processing needed for accurate
236
production. Output, thus, would seem to have a potentially significant role in the
development of syntax and morphology” (Swain, 1995, p. 128).
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82. Based on output model, output is most likely to stimulate learners to move from -----
----------.
1) acquisition to comprehension
2) comprehension to acquisition
3) development of morphology to syntax
4) development of syntax to morphology
Answer: 2
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Explanation:

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- - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
83. The distinctive feature of the “information processing theorists” is that ---------------.
1) they believe that language must be special in some way
2) they claim that language is a separate innate module
3) they make a distinction between controlled and automatic processing
4) they do not focus on the computational component of language learning
Answer: 3
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SLA
Explanation:
As it was previously mentioned, two major information-processing models are McLaughlin's
Information-processing model and Anderson's ACT model. They both belong to the cognitive
approaches of second language acquisition. ACT model is not dissimilar from McLaughlin's. It
is more wide-ranging, and the terminology is different, but practice leading to automatization
(distinction between controlled and automatic processing) also plays a central role.
For more information and similar items, please refer to Year 91, Items 61 and 62; Year 92,
Items 80 and 82; Year 93, Items 72 and 78; and Year 94, Item 81.
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 See also: Mitchell and Myles (2004, pp. 102)
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84. Automatization within information processing occurs through ---------------.

1) conscious attention
2) practice and repeated activation
3) rule narrowing
4) restructuring
237
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
McLaughlin's information-processing model
Automatization (McLaughlin 1987, 1990; McLaughlin and Heredia 1996) is a notion based on
the work of psychologists such as Shiffrin and Schneider (1977), who claim that the way in
which we process information may be either controlled or automatic, and that learning involves
a shift from controlled towards automatic processing. Applied to SLL, such a model works as
follows. Learners first resort to controlled processing in the second language. This controlled
processing involves the temporary activation of a selection of information nodes in the memory,
in a new configuration. Such processing requires a lot of attentional control on the part of the
subject, and is constrained by the limitations of the short-term memory. For example, a
beginner learner wanting to greet someone in the second language might activate the following
words: good morning how are you? Initially, these words have to be put together in a piecemeal
fashion, one at a time (assuming they have not been memorized as an unanalyzed chunk).
Through repeated activation, sequences first produced by controlled processing become
automatic. Automatized sequences are stored as units in the long-term memory, which means
that they can be made available very rapidly whenever the situation requires it, with minimal
attentional control on the part of the subject. As a result, automatic processes can work in
parallel, activating clusters of complex cognitive skills simultaneously. So, in the above
example, once a learner has activated the sequence good morning how are you? a large number
of times, it becomes automatic, that is, it does not require attentional control. However, once
acquired, such automatized skills are difficult to delete or modify.
Learning in this view is seen as the movement from controlled to automatic processing
via practice (repeated activation). When this shift occurs, controlled processes are freed to
deal with higher levels of processing (i.e. the integration of more complex skill clusters), thus
explaining the incremental (step by step) nature of learning. It is necessary for simple sub-skills
and routines to become automatic before more complex ones can be tackled. Once our learner
has automatized good morning how are you?, he or she is free to deal with the learning of
more complex language, as the short-term memory is not taken up by the production of this
SLA
particular string.
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85. “L2 learners will not acquire a new structure until they are developmentally ready to
do so”. This is based on ---------------.
1) processability network
2) teachability hypothesis
3) Anderson’s learnability
4) Pienemann’s perceptual saliency
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Processability Theory
Processability Theory (PT) (e.g., Pienemann, 1998) is a theory of second language
development. The logic underlying PT is the following: At any stage of development the
learner can produce and comprehend only those second language (L2) linguistic forms
which the current state of the language processor can handle. It is therefore crucial to
238
understand the architecture of the language processor and the way in which it handles an L2.
This enables one to predict the course of development of L2 linguistic forms in language
production and comprehension across languages.
The architecture of the language processor accounts for language processing in real time
and within human psychological constraints such as word access and working memory. The
incorporation of the language processor in the study of L2 acquisition therefore brings to bear
a set of human psychological constraints that are crucial for the processing of languages. The
view on language production followed in PT is largely that described by Levelt (1989), which
overlaps to some extent with the computational model of Kempen and Hoenkamp (1987) and
Merrill Garrett’s work (e.g., Garrett, 1976, 1980, 1982). The basic premises of that view are the
following:
 Processing components operate largely automatically and are generally not consciously
controlled (i.e., the speaker does not need to be aware of the grammatical structures he/she
produces).
 Processing is incremental (i.e., the speaker can start producing an utterance without
having planned all of it).
 The output of the processor is linear, although it may not be mapped onto the underlying
meaning in a linear way (for instance, the idea produced first does not need to occur first
in natural events, e.g., ‘Before I drove off, I started the engine’).
 Grammatical processing has access to a temporary memory store that can hold
grammatical information (e.g., in the sentence ‘The little kid loves ice cream’, the
grammatical information “singular, third person” present in ‘the little kid’ is retained in
grammatical memory and it is used when the verb ‘loves’ is produced, which is marked
for third person) (see Pienemann, 1998, for details).
Perceptual Saliency
In his Processability Theory, Pienemann has relied on the principle of perceptual saliency, a
widely used concept in cognitive psychology. The feature of perceptual saliency that
Pienemann resorts to in the explanation of the stages of his theory, is that the beginning and end
SLA
of stimuli are easier to remember and therefore to manipulate. This means that learners will first
be able to move elements from inside to outside the sentence, that is, to sentence-initial or
sentence-final positions, then from outside to inside before being able to move elements within
the sentence.
For explanation on Choices (2) and (3), please refer to Year 91, Item 93.
For similar items, refer to Year 93, Items 9 and 79; and Year 96, Item 64.
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86. Which of the following beliefs marks the advent of Error Analysis as the systematic
investigation of second language learners’ errors?
1) the idea that all learners’ errors are rooted in their second language
2) developments in first language studies and disillusionment with contrastive analysis
3) the change in overall philosophy behind language learning in the 1990s
4) popularity of contrastive analysis and its usefulness.
Answer: 2
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239
Explanation:
Developments in first language acquisition and disillusionment with Contrastive Analysis
meant that researchers and teachers became increasingly interested in the language produced
by learners, rather than the target language or the mother tongue. This was the origin of Error
Analysis, the systematic investigation of second language learners' errors. The language
produced by learners began to be seen as a linguistic system in its own right, worthy of
description. Corder (1967) was the first to focus attention on the importance of studying
learners' errors, as it became evident that they did not all originate in the first language by any
means. The predictions of Contrastive Analysis, that all errors would be caused by interference
from the first language, were shown to be unfounded, as many studies showed convincingly
that the majority of errors could not be traced to the first language, and also that areas where
the first language should have prevented errors were not always error-free.
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87. Which of the following is NOT a concern in sociocultural theory?

1) The centrality of language as a tool of thought.
2) Interaction between novices and experts.
3) Interaction amongst group members while doing a task.
4) Interaction as a source of pushed input for internal learning mechanisms.
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Socio-cultural theory
Lev Semeonovich Vygotksy was born in 1896, the same year as the Swiss developmental
psychologist, Jean Piaget. Born in the Russian provinces, Vygotsky was active in Moscow
between 1925 and his early death in 1934. Like Piaget, he was a researcher and theorist of child
development; however, his work fell into disfavour within Soviet psychology, and the first of
SLA
his many writings to be translated into English, Thought and Language, appeared only in 1962.
Since that time his views on child development have become increasingly influential, having
been taken up and promoted by psychologists and child development theorists such as Jerome
Bruner (1985), James Wertsch (1985, 1998) and Barbara Rogoff (1990, 1995), and applied in
classroom studies by many educational researchers (Mercer, 1995, 2000; Wells, 1999). Parts of
his wide-ranging writings remain untranslated, and contemporary interpretations and
modifications to Vygotsky's original ideas mean that current socio-cultural theory is best
described as 'neo-Vygotskyan'. Here, we will outline a number of key ideas current in
contemporary interpretations or discussions of Vygotsky, which have recently been taken up
by SLL theorists.
Mediation and mediated learning
In a recent formulation, Lantolf explains that:
The central and distinguishing concept of sociocultural theory is that higher forms
of human mental activity are mediated. Vygotsky (1987) argued that just as
humans do not act directly on the physical world but rely, instead, on tools and
labour activity, we also use symbolic tools, or signs, to mediate and regulate our
relationships with others and with ourselves. Physical and symbolic tools are
artifacts created by human culture (s) over time and are made available to
succeeding generations, which often modify these artifacts before passing them
240
on to future generations. Included among symbolic tools are numbers and

arithmetic systems, music, art, and above all, language. As with physical tools,
humans use symbolic artifacts to establish an indirect, or mediated, relationship
between ourselves and the world. The task for psychology, in Vygotsky's view, is
to understand how human social and mental activity is organised through
culturally constructed artifacts and social relationships.
(Lantolf, 2000a, p. 80)
This quotation shows clearly the socio-cultural belief in the centrality of language as a 'tool
for thought', or a means of mediation, in mental activity. Through language, for example,
we can direct our own attention (or that of others) to significant features in the environment,
rehearse information to be learnt, formulate a plan or articulate the steps to be taken in solving
a problem. In turn, it is claimed that the nature of our available mental tools can itself shape our
thinking to some extent. For example, David Olson (1995) has argued that once writing systems
were invented, these 'mental tools' changed our understanding of the nature of language itself,
because they provided humanity with concepts and categories for thinking about language, such
as the 'word' the 'sentence', or the 'phoneme', which did not exist before the development of
literacy. Similarly, Lantolf (2000) quotes studies by Warschauer (1997) and Thome (2000),
which show how new forms of computer-mediated communication, such as the use of chat
rooms or text messaging, have new and distinctive characteristics different from those of
traditional written communication, and shaped by the technology itself.
From the socio-cultural point of view, learning is also a mediated process. It is mediated
partly through learners' developing use and control of mental tools (and once again, language
is the central tool for learning, though other semiotic modes of representation play a role (Wells,
1999, pp. 319-20). Importantly, learning is also seen as socially mediated, that is to say, it is
dependent on face-to-face interaction and shared processes, such as joint problem solving and
discussion.
Regulation, scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development

The mature, skilled individual is capable of autonomous functioning, that is of self-regulation.
However, the child or the unskilled individual learns by carrying out tasks and activities under
SLA
the guidance of other more skilled individuals (such as caregivers or teachers), initially through
a process of other-regulation, typically mediated through language. That is, the child or the
learner is inducted into a shared understanding of how to do things through collaborative talk,
until eventually they take over (or appropriate) new knowledge or skills into their own
individual consciousness. So, successful learning involves a shift from collaborative inter-
mental activity to autonomous intra-mental activity. The process of supportive dialogue which
directs the attention of the learner to key features of the environment, and which prompts them
through successive steps of a problem, has come to be known as scaffolding (Wood et al.,
1976).
The domain where learning can most productively take place is christened the Zone of
Proximal Development, that is, the domain of knowledge or skill where the learner is not yet
capable of independent functioning, but can achieve the desired outcome given relevant
scaffolded help. The Zone of Proximal Development was defined by Vygotsky as:
the difference between the child's developmental level as determined by
independent problem solving and the higher level of potential development as
determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with
more capable peers.
(Vygotsky, 1978, p. 85)
241
These ideas are illustrated in an example taken from the general educational literature (Mercer,
1996): You have a square sheet of card measuring 15 cm by IS cm and you want to use it to
make an open cuboid container by cutting out the corners. What is the maximum capacity the
container can have?
EMILY: This box is bigger than what it should be 'cos if you get 15 by 15 you get 225,
but if you times um 9 by 9 times 3 you still get 243 and I haven't got that much
space in my box.
A: You have.
EMILY: But the 15 by . . .
B: If can be, it can work, I think.
EMILY: But surely . . .
B: You cut off corners.
EMILY: Yeh but that surely should make it smaller.
B: I think that is right.
EMILY: (counting squares marked on the paper) Hang on, 1, 2, 3, 43 5 . . .
C: You're not going to get 243.
EMILY: I shouldn't get 243 'cos if the piece of paper had 225 then, um . . .
C: Hang on, look . . . 9 times 9 times how many was it up?
A: But, don't you remember Emily it's got all this space in the middle.
EMILY: Yeh, but. . .
A: It's got all that space in the middle.
EMILY: (sounding exasperated) No, it hasn't got anything to do with it. If my piece of
paper had only 225 squares on it, I can't get more out of the same piece of
paper.
A: You can because you're forgetting, things go up as well, not just the flat piece
of paper like that.
EMILY: Oh, yeh.
A: It's going up.
A: It's going up.
SLA
C: It's because, look, down here you've got 3 and it's going up.
A: You're going 3 up, it's getting more on it. Do you see it will be 243?
EMILY: Yeh.
C: It's right, it should be.
(Mercer, 1996, pp. 34-5)
Here, Emily is a secondary school student who is struggling to make sense of a mathematical
problem (which involves the relationship between area and volume). She is already proficient
in the necessary arithmetical skills, so that the problem is in principle accessible to her (in
Vygotskyan terms, it lies within her personal Zone of Proximal Development). Her peers direct
her attention to different aspects of the problem, and their activities illustrate the concepts of
other-regulation and scaffolding. Eventually the successive attempts of Emily's friends to direct
her attention to the three-dimensional nature of the problem seem to be successful, as evidenced
in her non-verbal reaction in Line 24, and her subsequent contributions.
The claim is that a qualitative change in Emily's understanding has occurred, so that she
could in future solve similar problems without help. In Vygotskyan terms, Emily has
appropriated the necessary concepts, and should be more capable of regulating her own
performance on another similar occasion.
242
The metaphor of scaffolding has been developed in neo-Vygotskyan discussions to capture

the qualities of the type of other-regulation within the Zone of Proximal Development which is
supposedly most helpful for the learning or appropriation of new concepts. According to Wood
et al. (1976), scaffolded help has the following functions:
• recruiting interest in the task
• simplifying the task
• maintaining pursuit of the goal
• marking critical features and discrepancies between what has been produced, and the
ideal solution
• controlling frustration during problem solving
• demonstrating an idealized version of the act to be performed.
As Donato (1994, p. 41) puts it, 'scaffolded performance is a dialogically constituted

interpsychological mechanism that promotes the novice's internalization of knowledge co-
constructed in shared activity'.
Microgenesis
For Vygotsky the general principles of socio-cultural learning theory apply on a range of
different timescales. They apply to the learning that the human race has passed through over
successive generations (phylogenesis), as well as to the learning that the individual human
infant passes through in the course of its early development (ontogenesis). For the entire human
race, as well as for the individual infant, learning is seen as first social, then individual.
Consciousness and conceptual development are seen firstly as inter-mental phenomena, shared
between individuals; later, individuals develop their own consciousness, which becomes an
intra-mental phenomenon. For the human race, and also for the individual infant, language is
the prime symbolic mediating tool for the development of consciousness. Throughout their life,
of course, human beings remain capable of learning; and the local learning process for more
mature individuals acquiring new knowledge or skills is viewed as essentially the same. That
is, new concepts continue to be acquired through social or interactional means, a process that
can sometimes be traced visibly in the course of talk between expert and novice. This local,
SLA
contextualized learning process is labelled microgenesis; it is central to socio-cultural accounts
of SLL.
Private and inner speech

Young children are well known to engage in private speech, talk apparently to and for
themselves rather than for any external conversational partners. From the point of view of
classic Piagetian theory of child development, this talk has been interpreted as evidence of
children's egocentrism, or inability to view the world from another's point of view. However,
private speech is interpreted very differently in socio-cultural theory. Here, it is seen as evidence
of children's growing ability to regulate their own behavior - when, for example, a child talks
to himself while painting a picture, or solving a puzzle. For Vygotsky, private speech eventually
becomes inner speech, a use of language to regulate internal thought, without any external
articulation. Thus, private speech reflects an advance on the earliest uses of language, which
are social and interpersonal. The fully autonomous individual has developed inner speech as a
tool of thought, and normally feels no further need to articulate external private speech.
However, when tackling a new task, even skilled adults may accompany and regulate their
efforts with a private monologue.
243
Activity theory
The last important idea that we need to consider is that of activity theory, primarily developed
by one of Vygotsky's successors, A. N. Leontiev (Leontiev, 1981; Lantolf and Appel, 1994;
Zinchenko, 1995). Sociocultural theorists are keen to study and make sense of both individual
and collaborative behaviour and motivation within its socio-cultural setting (see papers in
Wertsch et al., 1995). Activity theory thus comprises a series of proposals for conceptualizing
the social context within which individual learning takes place. A helpful account is offered by
Donato and McCormick:
Activity is defined in terms of sociocultural settings in which collaborative
interaction, intersubjectivity, and assisted performance occur . . . In his analysis,
Leontiev conceived activity as containing a subject, an object, actions, and
operations. To illustrate these constituents of activity we use the classroom as an
example. A student (a subject) is engaged in an activity, for example, learning a
new language. An object,' in the sense of a goal, is held by the student and
motivates his or her activity, giving is a specific direction. In the case of our
language learner, the object could range from full participation in a new culture
to receiving a passing grade required for graduation.
To achieve the objective, actions are taken by the student, and these actions are
always goal-directed . . . Different actions or strategies may be taken to achieve
the same goal, such as guessing meaning from context, reading foreign language
newspapers, or using a bilingual dictionary to improve reading comprehension …
Finally, the operational level of activity is the way an action is carried out and
depends on the conditions under which actions are executed. For example, how
one attends to driving a car depends in large part on the context of the activity
(e.g. weather conditions, purpose of trip, type of vehicle, etc.). These operational
aspects of actions can become routinized and automatic once the conscious goal
is no longer attended to. Returning to our example of the language learner, if the
goal of the learner was to become proficient in deriving meaning from context
SLA
rather than from the bilingual dictionary, contextual guessing during reading
becomes automatized once the learner becomes adept at this strategy … The
model of human activity depicted in activity theory is not static, however.
Routinized operations (automatic strategies) can become conscious goal-directed
actions if the conditions under which they are carried out change. In the case of
our second language reader who has operationalized at the unconscious level the
strategy of contextual guessing, it is quite conceivable that this strategy will be
reactivated at the conscious level if the learner is confronted with a difficult
passage beyond his or her strategic ability, i.e. if the conditions of strategy use
change.
(Donato & McCormick, 1994, p. 455)
What we see in such formulations are proposals for a research methodology that sees all human
actions (and 'mediated action' in particular) as configurations of influences, both social and
individual, within a dynamic system (Wertsch, 1995, p. 63). It is these dynamic systems that
must be investigated holistically, rather than their discrete parts.
Explanation for Choice (4)

The Roles of Output-based and Input-based Instruction in the Acquisition of L2 Implicit
and Explicit Knowledge (in Ellis et al., 2009, pp. 241-243)
244
The crucial role that input plays in second language acquisition is widely attested; as VanPatten
(2004) notes, any theory of acquisition is input-dependent in some way. There are, however,
conflicting views of the role that output plays in the language acquisition process. One of the
key questions is whether output is merely facilitative of acquisition or whether acquisition is
output-dependent. The latter position allows a much stronger role for output.
No Specific Role for Output in Language Acquisition

Interest in the debate as to what role, if any, output plays in language acquisition was perhaps
rekindled by findings from initial research on Processing Instruction, which did not specifically
set out to ask such a question. However, a range of studies (Benati, 2001; Cadierno, 1995;
Cheng, 1995; VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993; VanPatten & Sanz, 1995; VanPatten & Wong,
2004) raised the question as to whether output contributed in any way to acquisition. These
studies demonstrated that students who had received instruction consisting of input only did
better on interpretation tasks than students who had worked only at output activities. They also
showed that these same students, who had received input only, performed as well on production
tasks as the students who had worked only at output activities. The interest thus generated led
to a number of studies looking at the relative effects of input and output (e.g. DeKeyser &
Sokalski, 2003; Erlam, 2003; Salaberry, 1997).
According to VanPatten (2004), acquisition consists of three main processes:
(1) Input processing, by which process form-meaning connections (FMC) are made and
parsing takes place.
(2) Accommodation, entailing partial or complete incorporation of a surface feature into the
developing language system.
(3) Restructuring, i.e. changes in linguistic behavior as a result of accommodation.
A key aspect of this model is the crucial role that it allows for input as the primary component.
Input, VanPatten (2004) claims, is sufficient to cause change in learner competence. VanPatten
is, of course, not alone. Krashen (1989) and Schwartz (1993) were both early proponents of the
idea that input alone can directly affect acquisition. More recently, N. Ellis’s (2004)
connectionist accounts of language learning have also stressed the importance of input in
SLA
driving acquisition.
In such a model, one may wonder what role, if any, there is for output. VanPatten (2004)
claims that output can promote acquisition but that it does not appear to be necessary. Similar
to any other focus-on-form technique, output speeds up acquisition. Its role is one that is limited
to ‘access’ _ that is, through engaging in language output the learner is required to access a
FMC that has been incorporated into the learner’s developing system. This process of access
serves to strengthen the FMC and to thus develop fluency and accuracy. This ancillary role for
output is evident in the following statements with which Van Patten (2004, p. 43) concludes his
discussion of this issue:
We are currently unable to support any specific role for output in the creation of
an underlying competence that contains form-meaning connections. At best we
can say that input is necessary for acquisition, but input and output may be better
- we just don’t know how or under what circumstances.
Evidence in support of a position that claims that input drives acquisition and output has no
specific role has already been referred to above. A number of Processing Instruction studies
have had learners work with structured input tasks (or ‘pushed input’; Izumi, 2003) and
produced evidence to show that these students perform better on interpretation tasks and
as well as on production tasks as students who have worked solely on output tasks (Benati,
245
2001; Cadierno, 1995; Cheng, 1995; VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993; VanPatten & Sanz, 1995;
VanPatten & Wong, 2004).
However, this research tends to compare Processing Instruction with Traditional
Instruction, a form of output-based instruction (OI), which has students work at mechanical
drills and where there is not a consistent focus on meaning. Studies that have compared
Processing Instruction with meaning-based Output Instruction have produced conflicting
results (Allen, 2000; Collentine, 1998; DeKeyser & Sokalski, 1996; Erlam, 2003; Salaberry,
1997), demonstrating that students who engaged in language output made greater gains in
language production tasks following treatment than students who worked with language input.
In studies conducted by Farley (2001, 2004), students who had worked at meaning-oriented
output instruction (MOI) performed as well on both interpretation tasks and production tasks
as students who had engaged with language input only through structured input
tasks.VanPatten’s interpretation of results in the first case (Allen, 2000; Collentine, 1998;
DeKeyser & Sokalski, 1996; Erlam, 2003; Salaberry, 1997) is that Processing Instruction was
not administered correctly and in the second case (Farley, 2001, 2004), that gains made by the
groups who worked at output tasks were due to the fact that the output served as input for their
learning, a conclusion with which Farley, himself, concurs.
To conclude, proponents of this position claim that output benefits acquisition only at the
end of the language acquisition process (i.e. once a FMC has been established in interlanguage).
In other words, output only has a subsidiary role in strengthening FMC through ‘access’, of
which a byproduct is improved fluency and accuracy. Output can also serve to generate input
(one learner’s output can be another’s input), which, of course, proponents of this position claim
is the real driving force behind acquisition.
Concluding remarks
As for Choice (4), “pushed input” is more related to “cognitive perspective” than to
“sociocultural perspective.
For similar items, refer to Year 93, Items 71 and 75.
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SLA
 See also: Ellis et al. (2009, p. 242); Mitchell and Myles (2004, pp. 197-198); Mitchell,
Myles, and Marsden (2013, p. 221);
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88. According to “Interaction Hypothesis,” it can be assumed that ---------------.
1) comprehensible input is the only internal causative variable in SLA
2) comprehensible input is the result of modified interaction
3) L2 production is the only causative variable in the acquisition of language
4) L2 learners fail to negotiate meaning without comprehensible input
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Interaction Hypothesis
Long went on to propose his Interaction hypothesis as an extension of Krashen's original Input
hypothesis. For his own doctoral research (Long, 1980, 1981, 1983a), Long conducted a study
of 16 native speaker-native speaker and 16 native speaker-non-native speaker pairs, carrying
out the same set of face-to-face oral tasks (informal conversation, giving instructions for games,
playing the games, etc.). He showed that there was little linguistic difference between the talk
produced by native speaker-native speaker and native speaker-non-native speaker pairs, as
shown on measures of grammatical complexity. However, there were important differences
246
between the two sets of conversations when these were analysed from the point of view of
conversational management and language functions performed. Specifically, in order to solve
ongoing communication difficulties, the native speaker-non-native speaker pairs were much
more likely to make use of conversational tactics such as repetitions, confirmation checks,
comprehension checks or clarification.
As in child-directed speech, native speakers apparently resort to these tactics in order to

solve communication problems when talking with less fluent non-native speakers, and not with
any conscious motive to teach grammar (Long, 1983b). However, from the perspective of the
Interaction hypothesis, such collaborative efforts should be very useful for language learning.
As they struggle to maximize comprehension, and negotiate their way through trouble spots,
the native speaker-non-native speaker partner- ships are incidentally fine-tuning the second
language input so as to make it more relevant to the current state of learner development. That
is, they are collaborating to ensure that the learner is receiving i + 1, in Krashen's terms, rather
than i + 3, or indeed, i + 0. As Larsen-Freeman and Long put it:
Modification of the interactional structure of conversation ... is a better candidate for a
necessary (not sufficient) condition for acquisition. The role it plays in negotiation for
meaning helps to make input comprehensible while still containing unknown linguistic
elements, and, hence, potential intake for acquisition.
(Larsen-Freeman and Long, 1991, p. 144)
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89. In the minimal trees approach of UG, ---------------.

1) lexical and functional categories both appear initially by transferring from the first
language
2) functional categories are projected initially by transferring, lexical categories transfer
SLA
later
3) lexical categories appear initially by transferring from first language, functional
categories develop later
4) functional and lexical categories are both projected by transferring from the first
language, subsequently revised
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
One of the possibilities regarding access to UG is:
Full access/impaired early representations: several researchers also believe that learners can
reset parameters to the second language values, but that initially, learners are lacking functional
categories altogether. The Minimal Trees approach (Vainikka & Young-Scholten, 1996b,
1998) has been highly influential and forms the starting point for a number of recent accounts
of the development of syntax: only lexical categories are projected initially, which transfer from
the first language. Functional categories develop later, but are not transferred from the first
language.
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247
90. Based on Anderson’s ACT model, application of---------------.

1) procedural knowledge is necessary for all knowledge
2) declarative knowledge is necessary for all knowledge
3) procedural knowledge is necessary in instructional environments
4) declarative knowledge is necessary in instructional environments
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Anderson's (1983) application of his model to first language acquisition has been criticized for
insisting that all knowledge starts out in declarative form (DeKeyser, 1997). This is clearly
problematic in the case of first language learners, as Anderson has accepted in answering
some of these criticisms. With respect to language learning, Anderson does not claim that
all knowledge needs to start as declarative knowledge any longer (Anderson and Fincham,
1994; MacWhinney and Anderson, 1986). However, other applications, such as to the learning
of algebra, geometry or computer programming, have been very successful. Indeed, it is the
comparability of the teaching or learning of second languages in instructional environments
with the teaching or learning of complex skills such as algebra that has attracted the attention
of second language acquisition researchers. Because Anderson's model is a general cognitive
model of skill acquisition, it can be applied to those aspects of SLL that require
proceduralization and automatization (Raupach, 1987; O'Malley & Chamot, 1990; Schmidt,
1992; Towell & Hawkins, 1994; Johnson, 1996).
For similar items, refer to Year 91, Item 66; Year 92, Item 83.
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SLA
248
Discourse Analysis and Sociolinguistics (Questions 91 – 100)
91. As an approach to DA, conversation analysis is strongly rooted in ---------------.

1) van Dijk’s cognitive approach
2) the idea of interactional modification
3) Vygotsky’s interpsychological plane
4) Goffman’s perception of the ritual nature of face-to-face interaction
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Conversation analysis originated in the early 1960s at the University of California, Los Angeles.
It has its origins in the ethnomethodological tradition of sociology and, in particular, the work
of Garfinkel (e.g. 1967) and Goffman (e.g. 1967, 1981). Goffman’s book in which conversation
analysis is discussed is “Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to Face Behaviour”.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Paltridge (2012, p. 90)
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92. Critical discourse analysis is often criticized for all of the following EXCEPT --------.
1) being similar to earlier stylistic analysis
2) being rooted in critical theory
3) ignoring discussions with consumers of texts
4) providing insufficiently systematic analysis of text
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Criticisms of critical discourse analysis
Critical discourse analysis has not been without its critics. One argument against critical
discourse analysis has been that it is very similar to earlier stylistic analyses that took place in
the area of literary criticism. Widdowson (1998, 2004) for example, argues that a critical
analysis should include discussions with the producers and consumers of texts, and not just rest
on the analyst’s view of what a text might mean alone. Others have suggested that critical
discourse analysis does not always consider the role of the reader in the consumption and
DA & Sociolinguistics
interpretation of a text, sometimes mistaking themselves for a member of the audience the text
is aimed at (van Noppen, 2004). Critical discourse analysis has also been criticized for not
always providing sufficiently detailed, and systematic, analyses of the texts that it examines
(Schegloff, 1997).
There have been calls for critical discourse analysts to be more critical and demanding of
their tools of analysis, as well as aim for more thoroughness and strength of evidence for the
claims that they make (Toolan, 1997). Others, however, have come to the defense of critical
discourse analysis arguing that its agenda is important and of considerable social significance
but that there are important details and arguments that still need to be carefully worked out
(Stubbs, 1997).
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249
93. The interrelatedness of an editorial, a letter to the editor, and the editor’s response
can best be described by the concept of ---------------.
1) generic moves
2) genre chain
3) genre network
4) generic intertextuality
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
An example of a genre chain: Letters to the editor
Letters to the editor provide a useful example of genre chains in that they often refer to and
assume a knowledge of other genres and other preceding events. They may refer to another
instance of the same genre – that is, a previous letter to the editor – or to a range of different
genres.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Paltridge (2012, pp. 68-69)
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94. In the conversation below, what is achieved through the use of “so”?
A: That’s great to hear you’re still happy.
B: Oh yes very much so.
1) Discourse filler
2) Adjacency pair
3) Cohesion by substitution
4) Speech act realization strategy
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Substitution
With substitution, a substitute form is used for another language item, phrase or group. It can
involve substituting an item for a noun. In the following example, ‘one’ substitutes for the noun
‘book’:
Try reading this book. That one’s not very good.

It can involve substituting an item for a verb. In this example ‘done’ substitutes for ‘had dinner’:
A: Has he had dinner yet?

B: He must have done. There’s no food in the fridge.
An item may also substitute for a clause. In the following example, ‘so’ substitutes for the
clause ‘you’re still happy’:
A: That’s great to hear you’re still happy.

B: Oh yes very much so.
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250
95. The sentence “Because, of course, rationalism Descartes would defend”-----------.

1) includes multiple themes
2) lacks a textual theme
3) is an unmarked sentence
4) lacks a textual theme
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Theme
Theme is ‘the element which serves as the point of departure of the message’ (Halliday 1985,
p. 38). It also introduces ‘information prominence’ into the clause. For example, in the sentence
in Table 1 from A Dictionary of Sociolinguistics (Swann et al. 2004, p. 123), ‘genre’ is the
theme of the clause and the rest of the sentence is its rheme. The rheme is what the clause has
to say about the theme – what it has to say about genre. The theme in this sentence is a topical
theme, in contrast with a structural element such as a conjunction (such as ‘and’ or ‘but’), which
is a textual theme.
Table 1: Theme and rheme
Theme Rheme
Genre is a term in widespread use to indicate an approach to

communication which emphasizes social function and purpose.
An example of a textual theme can be seen in the final sentence of the text, shown in Table 2,
where ‘but’ joins two clauses together. The rest of the themes in this extract are topical
themes.
Table 2: Examples of theme and rheme
Theme Textual Topical Rheme

theme theme
Genre is a term in widespread use to indicate an approach to

communication which emphasizes social function and
purpose.
Significant surrounds the definition of genre, particularly the extent
debate to which it refers to texts or activities in which texts are
embedded.
It is often vaguely defined.
but several uses of can be identified which are illustrated in different types
the term of genre analysis.
Interpersonal theme
Interpersonal theme refers to an item that comes before the rheme which indicates the
relationship between participants in the text, or the position or point of view that is being taken
in the clause. The example in Table 3 from a student essay (North, 2005) shows an example of
251
a textual theme, an interpersonal theme and a topical theme. Here the interpersonal theme
expresses uncertainty about the proposition that follows:
Table 3: Examples of textual theme
Textual theme Interpersonal theme Topical theme Rheme
However … It seems unlikely that Descartes would deliberately challenge the church
An interpersonal theme can express probability (e.g. perhaps), usuality (e.g. sometimes),
typicality (e.g. generally) or obviousness (e.g. surely). It can also express opinion (e.g. to my
mind), admission (e.g. frankly), persuasion (e.g. believe me), entreaty (e.g. kindly),
presumption (e.g. no doubt), desirability (e.g. hopefully) or prediction (e.g. as expected)
(Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004).
Patterns of theme and rheme combine in a text to give it a sense of thematic development.
The theme of a clause, for example, may pick up, or repeat, the meaning from a preceding
theme. This leads to a pattern of theme reiteration, where the theme of each clause is the
same. Zigzag or linear theme is where the rheme of one clause is picked up in the theme of
the next clause. These patterns may also be combined into multiple/split rheme patterns.
Multiple theme
The extract in Table 4 from the review of He’s Just Not That into You shows a further example
of textual, interpersonal and topical themes. It is an example of multiple theme. That is, there is
more than a single thematic element in the Theme component of the clause.
Table 4: Multiple themes
Textual theme Interpersonal theme Topical theme Rheme
Because, of course, the dating game is a clumsy dance of blunders and

misunderstandings
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----------------------------------------------------------------- DA & Sociolinguistics
96. Both Labovian and Chomskian paradigms have the following as their points of
interest EXCEPT ---------------.
1) historical linguistics
2) nature of language
3) language as a complex system
4) search for theoretical explanations rather than for mere facts
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
The Labovian and Chomskyan paradigms are two contrasted positions. But they both have some
points of agreement. Their main interest is in the nature of language; Labov himself prefers to
252
describe his work not as sociolinguistics but just as plain linguistics (Labov, 1972a, pp. 182-
184). Moreover, they both see language as a complex system (with a grammar and a lexicon
whose structures can be investigated); indeed, at one time Labov accepted many of Chomsky’s
theories about language structure and used them in his own work (Labov, 1972a, 1972b). For
both of them, linguistics is a search for theoretical explanations rather than for mere facts, and
both expect theories to be sufficiently general to apply to all languages.
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 See also: Hudson (2001, p. 145)
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97. Unlike code-switching, code-mixing is a kind of alteration in which ---------------.

1) people choose languages according to circumstances
2) dialects and registers are included
3) situational code-switching takes place
4) language changes without any change in the situation
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
In code-switching the point at which the languages change correspond to a point where the
situation changes, wither on its own or precisely because the language changes. There are other
cases, however, where a fluent bilingual talking to another fluent bilingual changes language
without any change at all in the situation. This kind of alteration is called code-mixing (or
conversational code-switching, a rather unhelpful name).
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 See also: Hudson (2001, pp. 51-55)
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98. A variety of language ---------------.

1) can be defined as a set of linguistic items with similar social distribution
2) is primarily rooted in social mobility
3) is widely used to refer to variety according to regions
4) results from accent differences rather than grammar and vocabulary
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Varieties of language
If one thinks of ‘language’ as a phenomenon including all the languages of the world, the term
variety of language (or just variety for short) can be used to refer to different manifestations of
it, in just the same way as one might take ‘music’ as a general phenomenon and then distinguish
different ‘varieties of music’. What makes one variety of language different from another is the
linguistic items that it includes, so we may define a variety of language as a set of linguistic
items with similar social distribution. This definition allows us to call any of the following
‘varieties of langue’: English, French, London English, the English of football commentaries,
the languages used by the members of a particular long-house in the north-wets Amazon, the
languages or languages used by a particular person.
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253
99. From Halliday’s view point, ---------------.

1) textual function is divided into field and mode
2) tenor depends on the relations between participants
3) ideational function includes speech acts as its main component
4) the concept of mode is used to distinguish dialects from registers
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
The ‘dimensions’ on which an act of communication may be located are no less complex than
those relevant to the social location of the speaker. Michael Halliday (1978, p. 33) distinguishes
three general types of dimensions: ‘field’, ‘mode’, and ‘tenor’. Field is concerned with the
purpose and subject matter of the communication; mode refers to the means by whgich
communication takes place – notably, by speech or writing; and tenor depends on the relations
between participansts. Once again, a slogan may help: field refers to ‘why’ and ‘about what’ a
communication takes place; mode is about ‘how’; and tenor is about ‘to whom’ (i.e. how the
speaker views the person addressed).
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100. To save a person’s negative face as far as politeness is concerned, ---------------.

1) more direct strategies can be used
2) bald-on-record strategy is appropriate
3) off-record strategy can be used
4) positive words need to be used
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Politeness theory relies, in part, on the idea that there are different kinds of face: positive face
and negative face. Positive face reflects an individual's need for his or her wishes and desires
to be appreciated in a social context. This is the maintenance of a positive and consistent self-
image. Negative face reflects an individual's need for independence or freedom of action,
freedom from imposition, and the right to make one's own decisions. Together, these types of
face respect the face needs for autonomy and competence. This theory relies on the assumption
that most speech acts inherently threaten either the speaker or the hearer's face, and that
politeness is therefore a necessary component of inoffensive (i.e. non-face threatening)
communication and involves the redressing of positive and negative face.
Drawing from these assumptions, researchers have identified three main strategies for
performing speech acts: positive politeness, negative politeness, and off-record politeness.
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 See also: Brown and Levinson (1987, pp. 2-4); Yule (1996, pp. 61-66)
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254

‫سال ‪1393‬‬
Methodology
1. All of the following are examples of metacognitive strategies EXCEPT----------.
1) overviewing and linking with already known material
2) reasoning deductively
3) identifying the purpose of a language task
4) paying attention
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Oxford's (1990) Classification of Language Learning Strategies
Oxford (1990, p. 9) sees the aim of language learning strategies as being oriented towards the
development of communicative competence. She lists 12 features of language leaning
strategies:
Features of language learning strategies
language learning strategies:
1. contribute to the main goal, communicative competence
2. allow learners to become more self-directed
3. expand the role of teachers
4. are problem-oriented
5. are specific actions taken by the learner
6. involve may aspects of the learner, not just the cognitive
7. support learning both directly and indirectly
8. are not always observable
9. are often conscious
10. can be taught
11. are flexible
12. are influenced by a variety of factors
Oxford divides language learning strategies into two main classes, direct and indirect,
which are further subdivided into six groups.
Direct strategies: Language learning strategies that directly involve the target language
are called direct strategies. All direct strategies require mental processing of the language, but
the three groups of direct strategies (memory, cognitive, and compensation) do this processing
differently and for different purposes. Memory strategies have a highly specific function:
helping students store and retrieve new information. Cognitive strategies enable learners to
understand and produce new language by many different means. Compensation strategies allow
learners to use the language despite their often large gaps in knowledge. In other words,
memory strategies are those used for storage of information, cognitive strategies are the mental
strategies learners use to make sense of their learning, and compensation strategies help learners
to overcome knowledge gaps to continue the communication.
The difference between memory strategies and cognitive strategies can be schematically
represented as follows:
256
Storage and
Methodology
retrieval of
Input information
Short Long
Sensory
Term Term
Memory
Memory Memory
Cognitive Memory
strategies strategies
Therefore, if you just read over the list of cognitive strategies shown below, you will see that
cognitive strategies deal with input and output and their processing, while memory strategies
deal with the relation between short-term memory and long-term memory.
Indirect strategies: The three indirect strategies are metacognitive, affective, and social
strategies. Metacognitive strategies allow learners to control their own cognition – that is, to
coordinate the learning process by using functions such as centering, arranging, planning, and
evaluating. Affective strategies help to regulate emotions, motivations, and attitudes. Social
strategies help students learn through interaction with others.
In other words, metacognitive strategies help learners to regulate their learning. Affective
strategies are concerned with the learner's emotional requirements such as confidence, while
social strategies lead to increased interaction with the target language.
Oxford's (1990, p. 17) taxonomy of language learning strategies is shown in the following:
I. Memory Strategies
Direct Strategies II. Cognitive Strategies

III. Compensation Strategies
Learning Strategies
I. Metacognitive Strategies
Indirect Strategies II. Affective Strategies

III. Social Strategies
DIRECT STRATEGIES
1. Grouping
A. Creating mental
linkages 2. Associative/elaborating
3. Placing new words into a context
1. Using imagery
I. Memory 2. Semantic mapping
B. Applying images
Strategies and sounds 3. Using keywords
4. Representing sounds in memory
C. Reviewing well 1. Structured reviewing
1. Using physical response or sensation

D. Employing action
2. Using mechanical techniques
257
1. Repeating
Methodology
2. Formally practicing with sounds and writing systems
A. Practicing 3. Recognizing and using formulas and patterns
4. Recombining
5. Practicing naturalistically
B. Receiving and 1. Getting the idea quickly

II. Cognitive
sending messages 2. Using resources for receiving and sending messages
Strategies
1. Reasoning deductively
2. Analyzing expressions
C. Analyzing and
3. Analyzing contrastively (across languages)
reasoning
4. Translating
5. Transferring
D. Creating 1. Taking notes

structure for 2. Summarizing
input and output 3. Highlighting
A. Guessing 1. Using linguistics clues

intelligently 2. Using other clues
II. Cognitive 1. Switching to the mother tongue

Strategies 2. Getting help
3. Using mime or gesture
B. Overcoming
limitations in 4. Avoiding communication partially or totally
speaking and 5. Selecting a topic
writing
6. Adjusting or approximating the message
7. Coining words
8. Using a circumlocution of synonym
INDIRECT STRATEGIES
A. Centering your 1. Overviewing and linking with already known material
learning 2. Paying attention
3. Delaying speech production to focus on listening
I. Metacognitive
Strategies
1. Finding out about language learning
2. Organizing
B. Arranging and
3. Setting goals and objectives
planning your
learning 4. Identifying the purpose of a language task
(purposeful listening/reading/speaking/ writing)
5. Planning for a language task
6. Seeking practice opportunities
C. Evaluating 1. Self-monitoring
your learning
2. Self-evaluating
258
Methodology
1. Using progressive relaxation, deep breathing, or
A. Lowering your mediation
anxiety 2. Using music
3. Using laughter
1. Making positive statements

II. Affective B. Encouraging
2. Taking risks wisely
Strategies yourself
3. Rewarding yourself
1. Listening to your body

C. Taking your 2. Using a checklist
emotional
temperature 3. Writing a language learning diary
4. Discussing your feelings with someone else
1. Asking for clarification or verification

A. Asking questions
2. Asking for correction
III. Social B. Cooperating with 1. Cooperating with peers

Strategies others 2. Cooperating with proficient users of the new language
C. Empathizing 1. Developing cultural understanding

with others
2. Becoming aware others’ thoughts and feelings
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 See also: H. D. Brown (2001, 132-133); H. D. Brown (2007, pp. 141-142); Oxford (1990,
pp. 19-20)
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2. Nativists contend that----------.
1) conditioning can account for the acquisition of language
2) human beings are socio-programmed
3) language competency develops in predetermined steps
4) all linguistic categories are universal
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
With regard to Choice (1), the behaviorist school of learning states that learning happens through
conditioning and language learning is no exception.
As for Choice (2) which states that “human beings are socio-programmed”, we can say that
this is more in congruence with the sociocultural theory.
Regarding Choice (3), the term nativist is derived from the fundamental assertion that
language acquisition is innately determined, that we are born with a genetic capacity that
predisposes us to a systematic perception of language around us, resulting in the construction of
an internalized system of language. Hence, when language is innately determined, all humans go
through a series of pre-determined stages in language learning.
259
With respect to Choice (4), Chomsky states that all human beings are born with a Language
Methodology
Acquisition Device (LAD) which includes a Universal Grammar (UG). This UG is composed of
a set of principles and a set of parameters. The principles are universal and common in all
languages. And grammar of languages only differ in their parameters.
For more information on UG, see Year 91, item 16; Year 92, item 10; and Year 93, Item 21.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------
3. In Bachman’s model, functions of language are directly subsumed under ------------

competence.
1) sociolinguistic
2) pragmatic
3) illocutionary
4) textual
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Language
Competence
Organizational Competence Pragmatic Competence
Grammatical Textual Illocutionary Sociolinguistic

Competence Competence Competence Competence
 Vocabulary  Cohesion  Ideational Function  Sensitivity to

 Morphology  Rhetorical  Manipulative Function dialect variety
 Syntax Organization  Heuristic Function  Sensitivity to
 Phonology/  Imaginative Function register
Graphology  Sensitivity to nature
 Cultural references
& Figures of speech
Components of Language Competence (Bachman, 1990, p.87)
For related items, refer to Year 97, Items 28 and 39.

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 See also: Bachman (1990, p.87); H. D. Brown (2014, pp. 209-210);
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4. According to Schumann's acculturation theory, ----------.

1) a good learning situation is one in which the L2 learners’ group is non-cohesive
2) motivation is either integrative or instrumental
3) a dominant L2 learners' group can help language learning
4) Social distance is a metacognitive variable
260
Answer: 1
Methodology
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Social distance
Social distance is a term which refers to the cognitive and affective proximity of two cultures
that come into contact within an individual. Distance is obviously used in a metaphorical sense
to depict dissimilarity between two cultures. On a very superficial level one might observe, for
example, that people from the United States are culturally similar to Canadians, while US
natives and Chinese are, by comparison, relatively dissimilar. We could say that the social
distance of the latter case exceeds the former.
John Schumann described social distance as consisting of the following parameters:
1) Dominance. In relation to the target language (TL) group, is the L2 (second language
learning) group politically, culturally, technically, or economically dominant, non-
dominant, or subordinate?
2) Integration. Is the integration pattern of the L2 group assimilation, acculturation, or
preservation? What is the L2 group’s degree of enclosure—its identity separate from other
contiguous groups?
3) Cohesiveness. Is the L2 group cohesive? What is the size of the L2 group?
4) Congruence. Are the cultures of the two groups congruent—similar in their value and belief
systems? What are the attitudes of the two groups toward each other?
5) Permanence. What is the L2 group’s intended length of residence in the target language area?
Schumann used the above factors to describe hypothetically ‘good’ and ‘bad’ language
learning situations, and illustrated each situation with two actual cross-cultural contexts. His
two hypothetical ‘bad’ language learning situations:
1. The TL group views the L2 group as dominant and the L2 group views itself in the same
way. Both groups desire preservation and high enclosure for the L2 group, the L2 group is
both cohesive and large, the two cultures are not congruent, the two groups hold negative
attitudes toward each other, and the L2 group intends to remain in the TL area only for a
short time.
2. The second bad situation has all the characteristics of the first except that in this case, the
L2 group considers itself subordinate and is considered subordinate by the TL group.
The first situation, according to Schumann, is typical of Americans living in Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia. The second situation is descriptive of Navajo Indians living in the southwestern part of
the United States.
A ‘good’ language learning situation, according to Schumann’s model, is one in which the
L2 group is non-dominant in relation to the TL group, both groups desire assimilation (or at
least acculturation) for the L2 group, low enclosure is the goal of both groups, the two cultures
are congruent, the L2 group is small and non-cohesive, both groups have positive attitudes
toward each other, and the L2 group intends to remain in the target language area for a long
time. Under such conditions social distance would be minimal and acquisition of the target
language would be enhanced. Schumann cites as a specific example of a ‘good’ language
learning situation the case of American Jewish immigrants living in Israel.
Schumann’s hypothesis was that the greater the social distance between two cultures, the
greater the difficulty the learner will have in learning the second language, and conversely, the
smaller the social distance (the greater the social solidarity between two cultures), the better
will be the language learning situation.
For more information, see Year 91, Items 13 and 78; and Year 96, Item 88.
261
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 See also: H. D. Brown (2000, pp. 185-186); Ellis (1997a, p. 40); Ellis (2008, pp. 326-329)
Methodology
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5. A comprehensive theory of SLA, according to Long, should----------.

1) recognize acquisition as a regular intake of generalizations
2) be social constructivist by nature
3) mainly focus on subconscious acquisition
4) account for universals
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Michael Long (1990, pp. 659-660) tackled the problem of theory building in a number of
suggestions about “the least” a theory of SLA needs to explain. He offered eight criteria for a
comprehensive theory of SLA:
1. Account for universals.
2. Account for environmental factors.
3. Account for variability in age, acquisition rate, and proficiency level.
4. Explain both cognitive and affective factors.
5. Account for form-focused learning, not just subconscious acquisition.
6. Account for other variables besides exposure and input.
7. Account for cognitive/innate factors which explain interlanguage systematicity.
8. Recognize that acquisition is not a steady accumulation of generalizations.
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 See also: H. D. Brown (2000, p. 277); H. D. Brown (2014, p. 280)
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6. Halliday believes that ----------.

1) the linguistic aspect of language is illocutionary rather than locutionary
2) “Pronounce you guilty” has an instrumental function
3) functions of language are either personal or interpersonal
4) “The sun is hot” has a representational function
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Halliday's Seven Functions of Language
The functional approach to describing language is one that has its roots in the traditions of
British linguist J. R. Firth, who viewed language as interactive and interpersonal, "a way of
behaving and making others behave" (quoted by Berns, 1984, p. 5). Since then the term
"function" has been variously interpreted. Michael Halliday (1975), who provided one of the
best expositions of language functions, used the term to mean the purposive nature of
communication, and outlined seven different functions of language:
1. The instrumental function serves to manipulate the environment, to cause certain events to
happen. Sentences like "This court finds you guilty," "On your mark, get set, go!" or "Don't
touch the stove" have an instrumental function: they are communicative acts that have a specific
perlocutionary force; they bring about a particular condition.
262
2. The regulatory function of language is the control of events. While such control is
Methodology
sometimes difficult to distinguish from the instrumental function, regulatory functions of
language are not so much the "unleashing" of certain power as the maintenance of control. "I
pronounce you guilty and sentence you to three years in prison" serves an instrumental function,
but the sentence "Upon good behavior, you will be eligible for parole in 10 months" serves
more of a regulatory function, The regulations of encounters among people—approval,
disapproval, behavior control, setting laws and rules—are all regulatory features of language.
3. The representational function is the use of language to make statements, convey facts and
knowledge, explain, or report—that is, to "represent" reality as one sees it. "The sun is hot,"
"The president gave a speech last night," or even "The world is flat," all serve representational
functions, although the last representation may be highly disputed.
4. The interactional function of language serves to ensure social maintenance. "Phatic
communion," Malinowski's term referring to the communicative contact between and among
human beings that simply allows them to establish social contact and to keep channels of
communication open, is part of the interactional function of language. Successful interactional
communication requires knowledge of slang, jargon, jokes, folklore, cultural mores, politeness
and formality expectations, and other keys to social exchange.
5. The personal function allows a speaker to express feelings, emotions, personality, and “gut-
level" reactions. A person's individuality is usually characterized by his or her use of the
personal function of communication. In the personal nature of language, cognition, affect, and
culture all interact.
6. The heuristic function involves language used to acquire knowledge, to learn about the
environment. Heuristic functions are often conveyed in the form of questions that will lead to
answers. Children typically make good use of the heuristic function in their incessant "why"
questions about the world around them. Inquiry is a heuristic method of eliciting representations
of reality from others.
7. The imaginative function serves to create imaginary systems or ideas. Telling fairy tales,
joking, or writing a novel are all uses of the imaginative function. Poetry, tongue twisters, puns,
and other instances of the pleasurable uses of language also fall into the imaginative function.
Through the imaginative dimensions of language we are free to go beyond the real world to
soar to the heights of the beauty of language itself, and through that language to create
impossible dreams if we so desire.
For similar items, refer to Year 91, Item 11, and Year 92, Item 9.
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 See also: H. D. Brown (2000, pp. 250-251); H. D. Brown (2007, pp. 201-202); H. D. Brown
(2014, pp. 212-213)
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7. The current research on language learning strategies has already established all of the
following EXCEPT their----------.
1) transferability across languages
2) socio-cognitive nature
3) worldwide operational measures
4) teachability
Answer: 3
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263
Explanation:
Methodology
A learning strategy is a series of goal-oriented actions that can be used to achieve learning goals.
Learning strategies can help learners to learn new things or can allow them to get things done
faster, easier, and more enjoyably. In addition, these strategies allow for more self-directed
learning, make knowledge acquisition more effective, and make knowledge gained more
transferable to new contexts (Oxford, 1990). The use of learning strategies is critical for
successful language learning. Learning strategies are teachable and can make learners learn
autonomously (Maca, 2001). Oxford (1990) classified language learning strategies into two
main types: direct strategies and indirect strategies. Direct strategies (Oxford, 1990) are directly
related to the target language. Each of the direct strategies – memory or cognition, and
compensation – involves the "mental processing of the language" (1990, p. 37). Indirect
strategies (Oxford, 1990), while not directly relating to the language itself, benefit language
learning and learning management. The indirect strategies include metacognitive, affective, and
social strategies.
For more information, refer to Year 91, Item 15; and Year 93, Item 1.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Oxford (1990, pp. 7-22)
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8. All of the following themes refer to problematic areas in task-based language teaching
EXCEPT----------.
1) causing hindrance to learners' intrinsic motivation
2) task difficulty and sequencing
3) cultural resistance and curriculum mismatch
4) being too structured
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Fundamental problems with tasks
Skehan (1998) lists several major problems which exist where task-based language teaching is
concerned. First, although early empirical indications strongly support the use of task as an
effective way to conceptualize language teaching, the amount of research is still insufficient.
Second, and more worrisome, is the fact that no task-based program has been implemented and
subjected to rigorous evaluation. Until this has been accomplished and any positive results
replicated, the use of task-based courses will be open to doubts and criticisms. Moreover,
assessing task difficulty and sequencing tasks is problematic. Our understanding of the many
potential factors influencing task difficulty is quite limited; thus, teachers must generally fall
back on their intuition about how well their learners can deal with specific tasks. Third, little is
known about task “finiteness.” For instance, if examined carefully, a task such as the creation
of a questionnaire is composed of a large number of “microtasks” which must be successfully
accomplished in order to complete the larger task. There is probably no clearer explanation of
this than in the work of Anderson and his colleagues in the area of production rules (e.g.,
Anderson, 1993; Anderson & Lebiere, 1998). They have shown how one relatively “simple”
task, such as an addition problem, can only be completed if a large number of more basic
production rules are known and accurately applied. When the task is the communicative use of
language, the situation is far more complex. Skehan (1998) claims that task-based language
teaching may be too structured and preplanned and so slow down the rate of acquisition.
264
There is always some kind of resistance to innovations in language teaching. Part of this
Methodology
resistance to TBLT was attributed to cultural reasons, as illustrated in the statement that
“cultural background may pose a challenge: some students are not very fond of learner-centered
tasks and may be expecting the instructor to do all the teaching.” Students are perceived as
being “often unfamiliar with these kinds of projects,” and this can result in “student push-back
to be expected if they are used to more traditional teaching methods.” For example, “students
who are traditional ‘book learners’ don’t always see the learning that is involved with TBLT,”
and “some students always want the correct answer and [do] not want to learn from fellow
classmates.” As a result, “it takes some ‘selling’ to students who would rather be taught
grammar in a more traditional mode.”
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 See also: Ellis (2003, pp. 319-338); Richards and Renandya (2002, p. 102)
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9. All of the following hypotheses cast doubt on the psycholinguistic validity of ‘practice’
as the building block of a grammar teaching course EXCEPT----------.
1) transformational grammar
3) natural order hypothesis
4) input hypothesis
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
A number of empirical studies have investigated whether practice contributes to L2
acquisition (see Ellis, 1988, for a review). These studies are of two kinds: those that seek to
relate the amount of practice achieved by individual learners with general increases in
proficiency (e.g., Seliger, 1977; Day, 1984) and those that have examined whether practicing a
specific linguistic structure results in its acquisition (e.g., Ellis, 1984).
The results of both types of research are not encouraging for supporters of practice.
Correlational studies (i.e., the first kind just referred to) have produced mixed results. Some
studies have found a relationship between amount of practice and gains in proficiency, but
others have failed to do so. Even when a study does show a strong relationship, it does not
warrant claiming that practice causes learning. In order to say something about cause and effect,
we have to interpret a correlational relationship. It is perfectly possible to argue that it is the
learners’ proficiency that influences practice, rather than vice versa. Teachers may direct more
practice opportunities at those learners who they think are able to supply correct answers – thus,
the more proficient receive more practice. Indeed, one of the requirements of practice – that it
be success-oriented – would lead us to predict that this will happen. The detailed analysis of
classroom interactions that result from practice activities supports such an interpretation.
Studies which have investigated whether practicing a specific structure results in its acquisition
provide evidence to suggest that practice does not result in the autonomous ability to use the
structure. In other words, practicing a grammatical structure under controlled conditions does
not seem to enable the learner to use the structure freely. Ellis and Rathbone (1987) investigated
whether practicing a difficult word-order rule with learners of L2 German resulted in its
acquisition. It did not. There are also doubts that learners are able to transfer knowledge from
controlled to communicative practice. Once learners move into a meaning-focused activity,
they seem to fall back on their own resources and ignore the linguistic material they have
practiced previously in form-focused activity.
265
There are also strong theoretical grounds for questioning the effectiveness of practice.
Methodology
Pienemann (1985) has proposed that some structures are developmental in the sense that they
are acquired in a defined sequence. It is impossible for the learner to acquire a developmental
structure until the psycholinguistic processing operations associated with easier structures in
the acquisitional sequence have been acquired. According to Pienemann’s teachability
hypothesis, a structure cannot be successfully taught (in the sense that it will be used correctly
and spontaneously in communication) unless the learner is developmentally ready to acquire it.
In other words, the teaching syllabus has to match the learner’s developmental syllabus. For
practice to work, then, the teacher will have to find out what stage of development the learners
have reached. Although it is technically possible for the teacher to do this, it is impractical in
most teaching situations.
Of course, it does not follow from these arguments that practice is without any value at all.
Practice probably does help where pronunciation is concerned – it gives learners opportunities
to get their tongues around new words and phrases. Also, practice may be quite effective in
helping learners to remember new lexical material, including formulaic chunks such as ‘How
do you do?’, ‘Can I have a . . . ?’, and ‘I don’t understand’. Some learners – extroverts who
enjoy speaking in the classroom, for example – may respond positively to practice activities.
For these reasons, practice will always have a place in the classroom. It needs to be recognized,
however, that practice will often not lead to immediate procedural knowledge of grammatical
rules, irrespective of its quantity and quality.
Ellis (1997) has argued, the order of items in a structural syllabus do not have
psycholinguistic validity, in that as Bley-Vroman (1983) – an advocate of the
transformational grammar - has argued the categories of a structural syllabus do not
correspond to the categories which learners construct in the process of language learning.
The Natural Order Hypothesis is associated with Steven Krashen and forms part of his
Monitor Theory. According to the Natural Order Hypothesis, learners proceed in a
predictable order of acquisition of grammatical features of language, regardless of the L1 and
regardless of the context in which they acquire languages (e.g., classroom vs. nonclassroom,
foreign language vs. second language). In English, for example, progressive -ing is acquired
before regular past tense -ed, which is acquired before third-person -s. Although Monitor
Theory itself has fallen out of favor, the idea that learners follow predictable paths and
sequences is an accepted fact of SLA.
To sum up, there are strong grounds – empirical and theoretical – which lead us to doubt
the efficacy of practice. ‘Practice’ is essentially a pedagogical construct. It assumes that the
acquisition of grammatical structures involves a gradual automatization of production, from
controlled to automatic, and it ignores the very real constraints that exist on the ability of the
teacher to influence what goes on inside the learner’s head. Practice may have limited
psycholinguistic validity, that is, it does not lead to the kind of learning expected.
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 See also: Ellis (1997a); Richards and Renandya (2002, pp. 169-170); VanPatten and
Benati (2015, p. 148)
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10. The current principled approaches to language teaching build upon all of the following
EXCEPT----------.
1) meaningful learning and anticipation of reward
2) scientific quantification and universal generalization
3) interlanguage and communicative competence
4) autonomy and self-confidence
266
Answer: 2
Methodology
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
H. D. Brown suggests that viable current approaches to language teaching are “principled,” in
that there is perhaps a finite number of general research-based principles on which classroom
practice is grounded. He identifies twelve principles for language teaching. He also states that
these principles are inexhaustive, and that there is sometimes disagreement in their
interpretation and their application in the classroom, but they nevertheless comprise a body of
constructs which few would dispute as central to most language acquisition contexts. They are
briefly summarized here.
1. Automaticity
Efficient second language learning involves a timely movement of the control of a few language
forms into the automatic processing of a relatively unlimited number of language forms.
Overanalyzing language, thinking too much about its forms, and consciously lingering on rules
of language all tend to impede this graduation to automaticity.
2. Meaningful Learning
Meaningful learning will lead toward better long-term retention than rote learning. One among
many examples of meaningful learning is found in content-centered approaches to language
teaching.
3. The Anticipation of Reward
Human beings are universally driven to act, or “behave,” by the anticipation of some sort of
reward – tangible or intangible, short-term or long-term – that will ensue as a result of the
behavior. Although long-term success in language learning requires a more intrinsic motive
(see 4 below), the power of immediate rewards in a language class is undeniable. One of the
tasks of the teacher is to create opportunities for those moment-by-moment rewards that can
keep classrooms interesting, if not exciting.
4. Intrinsic Motivation
Sometimes, reward-driven behavior is dependent on extrinsic (externally administered by
someone else) motivation. But a more powerful category of reward is one which is intrinsically
driven within the learner. When behavior stems from needs, wants, or desires within oneself,
the behavior itself has the potential to be self-rewarding. In such a context, externally
administered rewards are unnecessary; learners are likely to maintain the behavior beyond the
immediate presence of teachers, parents, and other tutors.
5. Strategic Investment
Successful mastery of the second language will be, to a large extent, the result of a learner’s
own personal “investment” of time, effort, and attention to the second language in the form of
an individualized battery of strategies for comprehending and producing the language.
6. Language Ego
As human beings learn to use a second language, they develop a new mode of thinking, feeling,
and acting – a second identity. The new “language ego,” intertwined with the second language,
can easily create within the learner a sense of fragility, defensiveness, and a raising of inhibitions.
7. Self-Confidence
The eventual success that learners attain in a task is partially a factor of their belief that they
indeed are fully capable of accomplishing the task. Self-esteem, at least global self-esteem, lies
at the roots of eventual attainment.
8. Risk Taking
Successful language learners, in their realistic appraisal of themselves as vulnerable beings yet
capable of accomplishing tasks, must be willing to become “gamblers” in the game of language,
to attempt to produce and to interpret language that is a bit beyond their absolute certainty.
267
9. The Language–Culture Connection
Methodology
Whenever you teach a language, you also teach a complex system of cultural customs, values,
and ways of thinking, feeling, and acting.
10. The Native Language Effect
The native language of learners will be a highly significant system on which learners will rely
to predict the target-language system. Although that native system will exercise both facilitating
and interfering (positive and negative transfer) effects on the production and comprehension of
the new language, the interfering effects are likely to be the most salient.
11. Interlanguage
Second language learners tend to go through a systematic or quasi-systematic developmental
process as they progress to full competence in the target language. Successful interlanguage
development is partially a factor of utilizing feedback from others. Teachers in language
classrooms can provide such feedback, but more important, can help learners to generate their
own feedback outside of the language classroom.
12. Communicative Competence
Given that communicative competence is the goal of a language classroom, instruction needs
to point toward all of its components: organizational, pragmatic, strategic, and psychomotoric.
Communicative goals are best achieved by giving due attention to language use and not just
usage, to fluency and not just accuracy, to authentic language and contexts, and to students’
eventual need to apply classroom learning to heretofore unrehearsed contexts in the real world.
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 See also: H. D. Brown (2001, pp. 54-70); Richards and Renandya (2002, pp. 12-13)
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11. The teacher who tries to help his students overcome low vocabulary size in reading
comprehension through purposeful proactive attention is teaching---------- strategies.
1) advance organizer
2) key word
3) self-monitoring
4) grouping
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Richards and Schmidt (2010, p.14) defined an advance organizer as an activity which helps
students organize their thoughts and ideas as a preparation for learning or studying something.
For example, a discussion which takes place before students listen to a lecture and which is
intended to help them follow the lecture more easily, or a preview of the main ideas covered in
a reading passage before reading it.
O’Malley et al. (1985, cited in H. D. Brown, 2000, p. 125) define advance organizers as
strategies which make a general but comprehensive preview of the organizing concept or
principle in an anticipated learning activity.
Thus, when a teacher tries to help his students overcome some anticipated problems
through purposeful proactive attention, he is using an advance organizer.
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 See also: H. D. Brown (2000, pp. 125-126); Richards and Schmidt (2010, p.14)
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268
12. An example of a learning-centered method is ----------.
Methodology
1) Suggestopedia
2) Total Physical Response
3) the Functional-Notional Approach
4) the Natural Approach
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Kumaravadivelu (2006) categorizes established methods into (a) language-centered methods,
(b) learner-centered methods, and (c) learning-centered methods.
Language-centered methods are those that are principally concerned with linguistic
forms. These methods (such as Audiolingual Method) seek to provide opportunities for learners
to practice preselected, presequenced linguistic structures through form-focused exercises in
class, assuming that a preoccupation with form will ultimately lead to the mastery of the target
language and that the learners can draw from this formal repertoire whenever they wish to
communicate in the target language outside the class. According to this view, language
development is more intentional than incidental. That is, learners are expected to pay continual
and conscious attention to linguistic features through systematic planning and sustained practice
in order to learn and to use them.
Learner-centered methods are those that are principally concerned with learner needs,
wants, and situations. These methods (such as Communicative Language Teaching) seek to
provide opportunities for learners to practice preselected, presequenced linguistic structures and
communicative notions/functions through meaning-focused activities, assuming that a
preoccupation with form and function will ultimately lead to target language mastery and that
the learners can make use of both formal and functional repertoire to fulfill their communicative
needs outside the class. In this view, as in the previous case, language development is more
intentional than incidental.
Learning-centered methods are those that are principally concerned with cognitive
processes of language learning. These methods (such as the Natural Approach) seek to
provide opportunities for learners to participate in open-ended meaningful interaction through
problem-solving tasks in class, assuming that a preoccupation with meaning-making will
ultimately lead to target language mastery and that the learners can deploy the still-developing
interlanguage to achieve linguistic as well as pragmatic knowledge/ability. In this case, unlike
in the other two, language development is more incidental than intentional. That is, grammar
construction can take place when the learners pay attention to the process of meaning-making,
even if they are not explicitly focused on the formal properties of the language.
According to learning-centered pedagogists, language development is a nonlinear process,
and, therefore, does not require preselected, presequenced systematic language input but
requires the creation of conditions in which learners engage in meaningful activities in class.
They believe that a language is best learned when the focus is not on the language, that is, when
the learner’s attention is focused on understanding, saying, and doing something with language,
and not when their attention is focused explicitly on linguistic features. They also hold the view
that linguistic systems are too complex to be neatly analyzed, explicitly explained, and
profitably presented to the learner.
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 See also: Kumaravadivelu (2006, pp. 90-91, 134-157)
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269
13. Consider the following exchange:
Methodology
Teacher: What did you eat for dinner?
Student: I eat a sandwich.
Teacher: You ate a sandwich.
The type of correction made by the teacher is ----------.
1) metalinguistic
2) explicit and deductive
3) recast
4) repair
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Corrective feedback has been categorized differently by different scholars. One such
categorization is Lyster and Ranta’s (1997) model:
1. Explicit correction: Clearly indicating that the student's utterance was incorrect, the teacher
provides the correct form.
2. Recast: The teacher implicitly reformulates the student's error, or provides the correction
without directly pointing out that the student's utterance was incorrect.
3. Clarification request: The teacher indicates that the message has not been understood or
that the student's utterance included some kind of mistake and that a repetition or a
reformulation is needed by using phrases like "Excuse me?".
4. Metalinguistic clues: The teacher poses questions like “Do we say it like that?” or provides
comments or information related to the formation of the student's utterance without
providing the correct form.
5. Elicitation: The teacher directly elicits the correct form from the student by asking questions
(e.g., "How do I ask somebody to clean the board?"), by pausing to allow the student to
complete the teacher's utterance (e.g., "He is a good…") or by asking students to
reformulate the utterance (e.g., "Can you say that again?").
6. Repetition: The teacher repeats the student's error and changes intonation to draw student's
attention to it.
Richards and Schmidt (2010) define recast as follows: recast (also corrective recast,
implicit negative feedback) is a type of negative feedback in which a more competent
interlocutor (parent, teacher, native-speaking interlocutor) rephrases an incorrect or incomplete
learner utterance by changing one or more sentence components (e.g. subject, verb, or object)
while still referring to its central meaning. Recasts have the following characteristics:
a They are a reformulation of the ill-formed utterance.

b They expand the utterance in some way.
c The central meaning of the utterance is retained.
d The recast follows the ill-formed utterance.
For example when two students are comparing two pictures:

Learner 1: What are they . . . what do they do in your picture?
Learner 2: What are they doing in my picture?
Recasts are thought to be one way in which learners acquire new linguistic structures or come
to notice that the ones they are using are not correct.
270
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 See also: Richards and Schmidt (2010, p. 487); Richards and Rodgers (2014, p. 122)
Methodology
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14. The humanistic approach to language teaching ----------.

1) posits that a match between teachers' affection and that of students is of paramount
importance
2) gives weight to both affective and cognitive factors
3) accentuates cognitive factors more than affective factors
4) highlights the priority of affection over intake
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
As Carl Rogers, one of the fathers of humanist psychology argued, significant learning will take
place only when the subject matter is perceived to be of personal relevance to learners and it
involves their active participation. Promoting a type of experiential learning, Rogers and other
humanists rightfully claim that learning which involves feelings (i.e. affective factors) as well
as cognition (i.e. cognitive factors) is more likely to be lasting and pervasive.
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 See also: H. D. Brown (2000, pp. 89-90); H. D. Brown (2014, pp. 89-90)
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15. The strategy of relating new information to other concepts in memory is known as ---
------------.
1) contextualization
2) inferencing
3) elaboration
4) transfer
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
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271
16. Moving from "Mary studies hard" to "Mary studies" is based on ----------.
1) the argument structure of the subject
2) relation maxim
3) relational synonymy
4) entailment
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Linguistics
Explanation:
If you know that the sentence Jack swims beautifully is true, then you also know that the
sentence Jack swims is true. This meaning relation is called entailment. We say that Jack swims
beautifully entails Jack swims. More generally, one sentence entails another if whenever the
first sentence is true the second one is also true in all conceivable circumstances.
Generally, entailment goes only in one direction. So while the sentence Jack swims
beautifully entails Jack swims, the reverse is not true. Knowing merely that Jack swims is true
does not necessitate the truth of Jack swims beautifully. Jack could be a poor swimmer. On the
other hand, negating both sentences reverses the entailment. Jack doesn’t swim entails Jack
doesn’t swim beautifully.
For more information and similar items on entailment, refer to Year 94, Item 18; Year 97, Items
7 and 8.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 141-142); Hudson (2000, p. 322)
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17. "The grass appreciated the student" ----------.

1) includes a verb with no intrinsic semantic properties
2) does not follow the rules for C-selection
3) is an example of what Chomsky calls syntactic anomaly
4) violates S-selection
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
The well-formedness of a phrase depends on at least two factors: (1) whether the phrase
conforms to the structural constraints of the language as expressed in the X-bar schema, and (2)
semantic (S-selection).
C-selection: The head of a phrase selects different kinds of complements. More clearly,
whether a head takes a complement or not depends on the properties of the head. For example,
verbs select different kinds of complements: find is a transitive verb and requires an NP
complement (direct object), as in The boy found the ball, but not *The boy found, or *The boy
found in the house. Some verbs like eat are optionally transitive. John ate and John ate a
sandwich are both grammatical. Sleep is an intransitive verb; it cannot take an NP complement:
Michael slept.
*Michael slept their baby.
Some verbs, such as think, may select both a PP and a sentence complement:
272
Let’s think about it.

I think a girl won the race.
Other verbs, like tell, select an NP and a sentence:
I told the boy a girl won the race.
Yet other verbs like feel select either an AP or a sentence complement:
Paul felt strong as an ox.
He feels he can win.
The information about the complement types selected by particular verbs and other lexical
Linguistics
items is called C-selection or subcategorization, and is included in the lexical entries of the
items in our mental lexicons. (C stands for “categorial.”)
S-selection: A verb also includes in its lexical entry a specification that requires certain
semantic properties of its subjects and complements, just as it selects for syntactic categories.
This kind of selection is called S-selection. (S stands for “semantic.”) For example, the verb
murder requires its subject and object to be animate, while the verb quaff requires its subject to
be animate and its object liquid. Verbs such as like, hate, and so on select animate subjects. The
following sentences violate S-selection and can only be used in a metaphorical sense. (We will
use the symbol “!” to indicate a semantic anomaly.)
!The beer drank the student.
!The tree liked the boy.
The famous sentence Colorless green ideas sleep furiously is anomalous because (among other
things) S-selection is violated (e.g., the verb sleep requires an animate subject).
The well-formedness of a phrase depends, then, on at least two factors: whether the phrase
conforms to the structural constraints of the language as expressed in the X-bar schema, and
semantic (S-selection). The X-bar schema allows complements of any syntactic category (XP),
but the choice of complement type for any particular phrase depends on the lexical properties
of the head of that phrase.
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18. In the word saw [sɔ], ----------.

1) the general rule about the position of lax vowels at the end of words is violated
2) [ɔ] is considered to be a back, high vowel
3) a lax vowel loses certain features to become nasalized
4) a rounded, palatal consonant is used
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Tense and Lax Vowels
The following figure shows that the vowel [i] has a slightly higher tongue position than [ɪ]. This
is also true for [e] and [ɛ]; and [u] and [ʊ]. The first vowel in each pair is generally produced
with greater tension of the tongue muscles than its counterpart, and it is often a little longer
273
in duration. These vowels can be distinguished by the features tense and lax, as shown in the
first three rows of the following:
Tense Lax
i beat ɪ bit
e bait ɛ bet
u boot ʊ put
o boat ʌ hut
ɔ saw æ hat
a pa ə about
aɪ high
Linguistics
aʊ how
ɔɪ boy
Tense vowels may occur at the ends of words: [si], [se], [su], [so], [sɔ], [pa], [saɪ], [haʊ], and
[sɔɪ] represent the English words see, say, sue, sew, saw, pa, sigh, how, and soy. Lax vowels do
not ordinarily occur at the ends of words: [sɪ], [sɛ], [sʊ], [sʌ], [sæ], and [sə] are not possible
words in English.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 208); Hudson (2000, pp. 29-30)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
19. According to the maturation version of the critical period hypothesis, ----------.
1) those who do not acquire a language before 11 often appear to be unable to do so with
success later
2) everything must be learned during this period or learning will be weakened after it
3) after this period, the biological basis to learn in the spontaneous and effortless way will
be lost
4) this period is valid only for learning the first language
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The Critical Period Hypothesis
Under ordinary circumstances a child is introduced to language virtually at the moment of birth.
Adults talk to him and to each other in his presence. Children do not require explicit language
instruction, but they do need exposure to language to develop normally. Children who do not
receive linguistic input during their formative years do not achieve native-like grammatical
competence. Moreover, behavioral tests and brain imaging studies show that late exposure to
language alters the fundamental organization of the brain for language.
The critical-age hypothesis or the critical period hypothesis (CPH) asserts that language
is biologically based and that the ability to learn a native language develops within a fixed
period, from birth to middle childhood. During this critical period, language acquisition
proceeds easily, swiftly, and without external intervention. After this period, the acquisition of
grammar is difficult and, for most individuals, never fully achieved. Children deprived of
language during this critical period show atypical patterns of brain lateralization.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 476-477); Hudson (2000, pp. 160, 172)
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274
20. The main five sorts of meanings requiring pragmatic inference are ----------.
1) synecdoche, personification, hyperbole, irony, and analogy
2) homophones, homographs, homonymy, polysemy, and function ambiguity
3) ambiguous words, deictics, figures of speech, indirect illocution, and presupposition
4) relevance, quality, quantity, manner, and illocution
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Hudson (2000) identifies five sorts of language requiring pragmatic inference: (1) ambiguous
Linguistics
words, phrases, and sentences, (2) deictics, (3) figures of speech, (4) indirect illocution, and (5)
presupposition.
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21. According to the Innateness Hypothesis, the child ----------.

1) extracts the specific rules of English from the linguistic environment
2) acquires all rules which are beyond exposure very slowly
3) cannot avoid most of the grammatical errors predicted by the empirical camp
4) needs to learn only universal principles
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The Innateness Hypothesis is proposed by Chomsky as part of the Universal Grammar theory.
In UG, it is believed that the basic design of language is universal. Universal Grammar specifies
that our grammar is innately determined. That is, we are born with a language acquisition device
(LAD) which contains some invariant principles and some parameters. The principles are
invariant universals for all languages, and the parameters are the variant universals for
languages (with two settings). Principles need not be learned, but parameters are set based on
the specific linguistic environment the child is exposed to. In fact, the child’s tasks in learning
a language are extracting the specific rules (i.e. setting the appropriate parameters) for that
language based on the linguistic environment, and lexical learning.
See also Year 91, Item 16.

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22. When an expression is grammatical in the presence of negation but ungrammatical

in simple affirmative sentences, it is called ----------.
1) feature-spreading rule
2) grammatical relation
3) negative polarity item
4) presupposition
Answer: 3
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275
Explanation:
Negation is a particularly interesting component of the meaning of some verbs. Expressions
such as ever, anymore, have a red cent, and many more are ungrammatical in certain simple
affirmative sentences, but grammatical in corresponding negative ones.
*Mary will ever smile. (compare ‘Mary will not ever smile.’)
*I can visit you anymore. (compare ‘I cannot visit you anymore.’)
*It’s worth a red cent. (compare ‘It’s not worth a red cent.’)
Such expressions are called negative polarity items because they require a negative element
such as “not” elsewhere in the sentence. Consider these data:
*John thinks that he’ll ever fly a plane again.
Linguistics
*John hopes to ever fly a plane again.
John doubts that he’ll ever fly a plane again.
John refuses to ever fly a plane again.
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23. The use of "swim" as a noun and a verb is an example of ----------.

1) semantic extension
2) zero-derivation
3) syntactic narrowing
4) backformation
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Semantic extension: From the perspective of semantic change, semantic extension occurs
when a word or phrase take on a new meaning. From the perspective of theories of meaning, a
distinction is made between semantic extension and semantic intension. The semantic
extension of a word is the set of things the word denotes, while its semantic intension is the
concept or meaning of the word. The meaning of a word determines the things it refers to, but
it cannot be equated with its denotations.
Zero-derivation: (also known as ‘functional shift’ or ‘conversion’) Zero-derivation is
using a word as another part of speech, without any affix or change of form at all. For example,
a noun may be used as a verb or a verb may be used as a noun. For example, swim is basically
a verb in English (as in ‘Can you swim?’), but it may be used as a noun, as in ‘have a swim’.
Syntactic narrowing: Syntactic narrowing occurs diachronically when new generations
prefer to use “one or two” structures from among “several structures” with the “same function”,
or when speakers of a language narrow down their use of syntactic structures so that it could be
understandable for non-native speakers of the speakers of their neighboring community. This
will result in the narrowing down of syntax.
Backformation: Backformation is the process of reducing a word such as a noun to a
shorter version and using it as a new word such as a verb (e.g. babysit from babysitter).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Arrese, Haßler, and Carretero (2017); Hudson (2000, pp. 257-264); Mitchell
and Myles (2014, p.141); Siemund and Kintana (2008); Yule (2014, p. 54)
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276
24. In the sentence "The sun pleases flowers but too much heat harms such plants", the
words "flowers'" and "sun" function as ----------.
1) Experiencer and Stimulus
2) Patient and Stimulus
3) Patient and Agent
4) Experiencer and Agent
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Linguistics
Nouns may have various semantic roles in their relation to a verb. A semantic role is the
underlying relationship that a participant (as a noun or noun phrase) has with the verb. It is also
known as semantic case or thematic role. Below are an alphabetical list of common semantic
roles:
1. Agent: the entity that performs the action; doer, actor, or instigator of the action. Examples:
Bill ate his soup quietly.
The boy kicked the ball.
John sold his house to a company.
The boy rolled a red ball.
The boy threw the red ball to the girl.
2. Beneficiary (also known as ‘benefactive’): A beneficiary is the semantic role of a referent
which benefits from an event, or which is advantaged or disadvantaged by an event.
Example:
John helped Susan to buy her first car
I baked Reggie a cake.
He built a car for me.
I fight for the king.
3. Cause: (or natural cause or causer): Causer is the semantic role of the referent which
instigates (i.e. brings about) an event rather than actually doing it. Example:
An avalanche destroyed the ancient temple.
The rain destroyed the crops.
4. Committative: It refers to someone else who does an action with the agent. In English, the
preposition "with," in the sense of "in company with" or "together with," comes before the
committative case. Example:
I did the homework with my son.
5. Experiencer: Experiencer is the semantic role of an entity (or referent) which receives,
accepts, experiences, or undergoes the effect of an action. In other words, it is the noun
phrase identifying the entity that has the feeling, perception or state described by the verb.
Normally an experiencer is an entity that receives a sensory impression, or in some other
way is the locus of some event or activity that involves neither volition nor a change of state.
Examples:
Lucretia saw the bicycle.
It was Bill who smelled the bacon first.
The explosion was heard by everyone.
The boy feels sad.
Professor Snape awakened Harry Potter with his wand.
Verbs like awaken or frighten have a feature “affects mental state” so that one of its
arguments takes on the thematic role of experiencer.
277
6. Goal (or direction): Goal is the semantic role of the place to which something moves, or
thing toward which an action is directed. Examples:
John swam to the raft.
He studied for the test.
The caravan continued on toward the distant oasis.
He walked to school.
We drove from Chicago to New Orleans.
Also, when we talk about transferring money from savings to checking, the source is savings
and the goal is checking.
Linguistics
7. Instrument: Instrument is the semantic role of an inanimate thing that an agent uses to
implement/perform an action or an event. It is the stimulus or immediate physical cause of
an event. Instrument words are usually nouns occurring in the noun phrase of a clause:
Example:
Someone cut the bread with a knife.
The boy cut the rope with a razor.
Professor Snape awakened Harry Potter with his wand.
8. Locative (or location): It is a semantic role which identifies the location or spatial orientation
of a state or action. In other words, it is the semantic role of the noun phrase identifying
where an entity is. A locative semantic role does not imply motion to, from, or across the
location. Examples:
The paper is in the folder.
The ship sank at sea.
The boy is sitting in the classroom.
9. Recipient: It is a special kind of goal associated with verbs expressing a change in ownership,
possession. Examples:
I sent John the letter.
He gave the book to her.
10. Source (or origin): It is the semantic role of the noun phrase identifying where an entity
moves from. It may refer to (1) ‘the place of origin’ (with verbs of motion, locomotion, and
propulsion), (2) ‘the entity from which a physical sensation emanates (with verbs of
sensation, attention, and speech), or (3) ‘the original owner in a transfer’ (with verbs of
acquisition, transfer, and grab). Examples:
(1) As the place of origin:
John fell off the chair. (with a motion verb)
The baby crawled from the kitchen to the door. (with a locomotion verb)
John picked up the knife from the box. (with a propulsion verb
(2) As the entity from which a physical sensation emanates:
John smelled the odor of onions. (with a sensation verb)
The people watched the performance of the dancers. (with an attention verb)
The mother told her child a story. (with a speech verb)
(3) As the original owner in a transfer
John obtained an application form from the office. (with an acquisition verb)
John bought the book from Tom. (with a transfer verb)
John grabbed the book from Tom. (with a grab verb)
As stated above, when we talk about transferring money from savings to checking, the source
is savings and the goal is checking.
278
More examples include:

Professor Snape awakened Harry Potter with his wand. (where the action originates)
11. Stimulus: It is the entity that prompts sensory or emotional feeling - not deliberately.
Example:
Kim detests sprouts.
12. Time: Time is the semantic role of the temporal placement of an event. Example:
The whistle will sound at noon.
The pitcher struck out nine batters today.
13. Theme/patient (also known as ‘affected’ or ‘undergoer’): Theme or patient is “the entity
Linguistics
that is involved in or affected by the action,” or “the entity that is described, possessed,
exchanged,”.
The boy kicked the ball.
The ball was red.
John sold his house to a company.
The boy rolled a red ball.
In the example The boy kicked the ball, another role is taken by the ball as “the entity that is
involved in or affected by the action,” which is called the theme (or sometimes the “patient”).
The theme can also be an entity (The ball) that is simply being described (i.e. not performing
an action), as in The ball was red.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 163-165); Hudson (2000, pp. 276-277); Yule (2014,
pp. 112-113)
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25. Felicity conditions ----------.

1) validate an illocution
2) refer to the conditions for presupposition
3) are thought of as the maxim of quality
4) are divided into declarative and performative
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Felicity conditions
Appropriate grammatical form or use of performative verbs, however, do not guarantee an
illocution. There are, for example, rhetorical questions, which do not ask for or expect an
answer, and imperative verbs in advertisements (Get one today! Call now!), which everyone
ignores. The request by a lawyer for a mistrial, while it has the form of a request, may be
knowingly futile and merely a formality to justify a subsequent appeal. Valid or sincere
illocution, as for a promise to be accepted as a promise or for a request to be taken as a request,
depends on the fulfillment of certain conditions within the context of speech.
The conditions which validate an illocution are termed felicity conditions. Following are
some felicity conditions for questions, requests, promises, and warnings.
a. Questions about X
1 The speaker wants to know something about X
2. The speaker believes the hearer may know something about X
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b. Requests for X
1. The speaker desires X
2. The speaker believes the hearer is able and willing to provide X
c. Promises that X
1. The speaker believes the bearer desires X
2. The speaker is able and willing to bring about X
d. Warnings that X
1. The speaker is knowledgeable about X
2. The speaker believes the hearer does not desire X
Felicity conditions may be thought of as part of the meaning of the performative verbs which
Linguistics
express an illocution, but whether they are fulfilled or not must be judged by pragmatic inference.
For example, do we consider something to be a promise if the speaker is certainly unable and/or
unwilling to fulfill it? And if the speaker is unable or unwilling to fulfil a promise, is it then a
‘false promise’ or not a promise at all? In either case, our ability to recognize an indirect illocution,
as well as a direct one, depends on our understanding of its felicity conditions.
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 See also: Hudson (2000, pp. 320-321); Yule (1996, pp. 50-51)
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26. “If a language has mid vowels, then it has high vowels.” This statement is based on --
--------.
1) absolute implicational universals
2) marked features in UG
3) the head-first principle
4) phonological tendencies
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Language universals are principles that are valid for all languages. Language universals concern
features which are essential for the function and/or structure of language and thus for human
communication. Language universals are classified based on two characteristics: absoluteness
and implicationalness. These two characteristics determine universals of four types:
1. Absolute non-implicational universals: Absolute non-implicational universals concern
features which appear to be found without exception in languages.
2. Non-implicational universal tendencies: Non-implicational universal tendencies concern
features which strongly tend to be found in languages.
3. Absolute implicational universals: Absolute implicational universals concern features
which are found without exception in languages, if some other feature is found.
4. Implicational universal tendencies: Implicational universal tendencies concern features
which strongly tend to be found in languages, if some other feature is found.
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27. The empiricist camp in linguistics claims that ----------.
1) generalizations have no place in empirical studies
2) languages represent basic human knowledge
3) the ability to encode input develops universally
4) the mind starts out as a blank slate
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Answer: 4
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Explanation:
There have been two main perspectives as to the how knowledge of language is acquired.
Rationalists believe that we have some innate knowledge and that we can acquire knowledge
by introspection. Empiricist, on the other hand, believe that the mind starts out as a ‘blank
state’, which we fill with experience and generalizations based on experience. Thus, empiricists
state that we derives all our knowledge by experience.
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28. Back-channeling refers to ----------.

1) transition from the visual to the verbal mode
2) short comments to confirm one's attention to a speaker
3) discourse markers such as previously and afterwards
4) the use of a pronoun to refer to a noun
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Feedback refers to any information that provides information on the result of behavior. For
example, in phonetics, feedback is both air- and bone-conducted. This is why we do not sound
to ourselves as we sound to others and find tape-recordings of our own voices to be odd and
often embarrassing.
In discourse analysis, feedback given while someone is speaking is sometimes called back-
channeling, for example comments such as uh, yeah, really, smiles, headshakes, and grunts
that indicate success or failure in communication. In teaching, feedback refers to comments or
other information that learners receive concerning their success on learning tasks or tests, either
from the teacher or other persons.
Hudson (2000, p. 466) defines back-channeling as inserting short comments like uhuh,
mmm, and yes, to confirm one’s attention to a speaker.
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 See also: Hudson (2000, p. 466); Richards and Schmidt (2010, p. 217)
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29. The word "jumbo" was coined from the name of an elephant brought to the US. This
----------.
1) shows blending
2) is an example of eponyms
3) shows a derived word
4) refers to the process of root productivity
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
New words based on the name of a person, animals or a place are called eponyms. When we
talk about a hoover (or even a spangler), we are using an eponym. We use the eponyms teddy
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bear, derived from US president Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, and jeans (from the Italian city
of Genoa where the type of cloth was first made).
Thus, eponyms are words that are coined from proper names and are another of the many
creative ways that the vocabulary of a language expands. Here are some examples:
sandwich Named for the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who put his food between two slices of
bread so that he could eat while he gambled.
robot After the mechanical creatures in the Czech writer Karel Capek’s play R.U.R.,
the initials standing for ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots.’
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gargantuan Named for Gargantua, the creature with a huge appetite created by Rabelais.
jumbo After an elephant brought to the United States by P. T. Barnum. (“Jumbo olives”
need not be as big as an elephant, however.)
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2010, p. 94); Yule (2014, p. 56)
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30. In German, the past participle of regular verbs is formed by adding a prefix and a
suffix to the verb root. This shows that German ----------.
1) is monomorphemic
2) is a language with two roots
3) has circumfixes
4) has continuous morphemes
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
A Monomorphemic Word: It is a word that consists of one morpheme. For example, The
fings.”
Some languages have circumfixes, morphemes that are attached to a base morpheme both
initially and finally. These are sometimes called discontinuous morphemes. In languages that
have circumfixes, the root is the form around which the circumfix attaches, for example, the
Chickasaw root chokm in ikchokmo (‘he isn’t good’). German uses circumfixes to inflect a
verb stem to produce a past particle: lieb to geliebt, similar to the -ed ending of English. Here
are two examples from Indonesian:
(“big”) besar kebesaran (“bigness”)
(“beautiful”) indah keindahan (beauty”)
See also Year 91, Item 28; and Year 92, Item 17
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2010, pp. 42, 48); Yule (2014, p. 61)
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31. Unlike other kinds of triangulation, theoretical triangulation is mainly aimed at ------
----------.
1) drawing on different measures to investigate a particular phenomenon
2) enhancing the validity of the information
3) using multiple perspectives to analyze the same set of data
4) using multiple observations to obtain data
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
MacKey and Gass (2016) state that triangulation involves using multiple research techniques
and multiple sources of data in order to explore the issues from all feasible perspectives. Using
the technique of triangulation can aid in credibility, transferability, and dependability of
qualitative research. Different types of triangulation have been identified, including theoretical
triangulation (using multiple perspectives to analyze the same set of data), investigator
triangulation (using multiple observers or interviewers), and methodological triangulation
(using different measures or research methods to investigate a particular phenomenon). The
most common definition of triangulation, however, is that it entails the use of multiple,
independent methods of obtaining data in a single investigation in order to arrive at the same
research findings.
Cohen et al. (2007) identify types of triangulation as follows:
 Time triangulation: this type attempts to take into consideration the factors of change and
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process by utilizing cross-sectional and longitudinal designs. Kirk and Miller (1986) suggest
that diachronic reliability seeks stability of observations over time, while synchronic
reliability seeks similarity of data gathered in the same time.
 Space triangulation: this type attempts to overcome the parochialism of studies conducted
in the same country or within the same subculture by making use of cross-cultural
techniques.
 Combined levels of triangulation: this type uses more than one level of analysis from the
three principal levels used in the social sciences, namely, the individual level, the interactive
level (groups), and the level of collectivities (organizational, cultural or societal).
 Theoretical triangulation: this type draws upon alternative or competing theories in
preference to utilizing one viewpoint only.
 Investigator triangulation: this type engages more than one observer, data are discovered
independently by more than one observer (Silverman, 1993, p. 99).
 Methodological triangulation: this type uses either the same method on different occasions,
or different methods on the same object of study.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, p. 593); J. D. Brown (2014, p. 20); Cohen et al. (2007, p. 142);
MacKey and Gass (2016, p. 233)
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32. Which of the following is TRUE of quasi-experimental research?
1) Random assignment is not ensured.
2) All groups need to receive treatment.
3) Within-group rather than between-groups design is at work.
4) The correlation between or among variables is the basis of all prediction.
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Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Quantitative research may be further classified as either experimental or nonexperimental.
Experimental research involves a study of the effect of the systematic manipulation of one or
more variables on another variable. The manipulated variable is called the experimental
treatment of the independent variable. The observed and measured variable is called the
dependent variable.
Experimental research may also be classified according to how well they provide control
of the threats to internal validity:
(1) True experimental research (also called randomized designs): An experimental design
in which the researcher provides maximum control of extraneous variables involved in
the treatment and uses randomization to assign subjects to treatments.
(2) Quasi-experimental research is research in which the investigator can control the
treatment and the measurement of the dependent variable but cannot control assignment
of the subjects to treatment. That is, it lacks randomization but employs other strategies
to provide some control over extraneous variables.
(3) Pre-experimental research: Preexperimental research is research with little or no
control of extraneous variables and therefore little internal validity.
In nonexperimental quantitative research, the researcher identifies variables and may

look for relationships among them but does not manipulate the variables. Major forms of
nonexperimental research are relationship studies including ex post facto and correlational
research and survey research.
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(1) Ex post facto research is similar to an experiment, except the researcher does not
manipulate the independent variable, which has already occurred in the natural course of
events. The researcher simply compares groups differing on the preexisting independent
variable to determine any relationships to the dependent variable.
(2) Correlational research gathers data from individuals on two or more variables and then
seeks to determine if the variables are related (correlated).
(3) Survey research (also called descriptive research) uses instruments such as
questionnaires and interviews to gather information from groups of individuals. Surveys
permit the researcher to summarize the characteristics of different groups or to measure
their attitudes and opinions toward some issue.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 28-30, 325); Cohen et al. (2007, p. 282)
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33. The concept of confirmability in qualitative research ----------.

1) needs to be analyzed through triangulation
2) refers to the three components of thick description
3) is based on the credibility of the finding to the research population
4) is analogous to reliability in quantitative research
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Confirmability in qualitative research is the same as the quantitative researcher’s concept of
objectivity. Both deal with the idea of neutrality or the extent to which the research is free of
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bias in the procedures and the interpretation of results. Because it may be impossible to achieve
the levels of objectivity that quantitative studies strive for, qualitative researchers are concerned
with whether the data they collect and the conclusions they draw would be confirmed by others
investigating the same situation. Thus, in qualitative studies, the focus shifts from the neutrality
of the researcher to the confirmability of the data and interpretations.
The audit trail is the main strategy for demonstrating confirmability. By providing a
complete audit trail, the researcher enables another researcher to arrive or not arrive at the same
conclusions given the same data and context. Other strategies used to enhance confirmability
include triangulation of methods, peer review, and reflexivity. In summary, support for validity
and reliability of qualitative studies requires well-documented research and rich description.
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34. In which of the following experimental types of research, control is exclusively

achieved through replication?
1) Factorial designs
2) Time series designs
3) Quasi-experimental designs
4) Single subject designs
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
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The single-subject experimental designs are a type of experimental design with a unique
feature: the sample size is just one or is composed of a few participants who are treated as one
unit. How can an experiment be run with a sample size of one? Obviously, there can be no
random assignment or use of control groups. In single-subject experimental designs (also called
single-case experimental designs), the participant serves as both the treatment and the control
group. The researcher measures participant behavior repeatedly during at least two different
points in time, when a treatment is not present and again when a treatment is present. The
periods during which the treatment is given are called treatment periods, and the periods during
which the treatment is not present are called baseline periods. The baseline period is usually
referred to by the letter A and the treatment period by the letter B.
Each individual serves as his or her own control, so comparability is not a problem. The
major means of control is replication.
For more explanation, refer to Year 92, Item 34.
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35. In multiple regression analysis, in which of the following cases will a predictor variable
have maximum amount of unique variance?
1) It has a high correlation with the criterion variable.
2) It has zero correlation with the other predictor variables.
3) It has a high correlation with the criterion variable and zero correlation with the other
predictor variables.
4) It has a high correlation with the criterion variable and low correlation with the other
predictor variables.
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Answer: 3
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Explanation:
For those less familiar with regression, a brief explanation is in order. Informally speaking, the
logic behind regression is like the logic behind ‘double comparatives’. For example, we often
say “If you study hard enough, you will pass all your courses.” Double comparatives are
qualitative statements, yet their logic can be applied to elaborate on regression. Thus, an
increase in ‘study’ will result in (or predict) ‘a better performance’. Hence, in double
comparatives we make predictions. The same prediction is done in regression, but regression
puts the prediction in quantitative statements.
The example above is a case of simple linear regression: one variable/predictor predicts
the amount of another variable/criterion. Consider the following example:
If you study hard enough and if you take classes, you will pass all your courses.
In this example, the two predictors of ‘studying hard enough’ and ‘taking classes’ account for
‘your passing of all your courses’. This is an example for multiple regression.
Multiple regression involves using two or more variables (predictors) to predict a third
variable (criterion).
Unique variance is the variance in the criterion which is explained by only one predictor,
whereas common variance is the variance in the criterion which is related to or explained by
more than one predictor variable.
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Figure 1: No Common Variance
In this model, both X1 and X2 contribute unique variance explained to Y (as shown by the
shaded areas), but X1 and X2 are totally unrelated (orthogonal).
But in the following model, both X1 and X2 contribute to some unique variance explained
to Y (as shown in the area A for X1 and the area C for X2), but they also have some common
variance explained (as shown in the area B).
Figure 2: Some Common Variance
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Figure 3: Maximum Unique Variance
In the case of the model in Figure 3, the predictor variable X1 has a low correlation with
the criterion variable Y, the predictor variable X2 has a high correlation with the criterion
variable Y, and the predictor variables X1 and X2 have zero correlation with each other. Thus,
the predictor variable X2 has the maximum amount of unique variance.
Therefore, when a predictor variable has a zero correlation with other predictors, it shows
that much of the variance in the criterion has been accounted for by the predictors.
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 See also: Coolican (2014, pp. 554-557)
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36. Which of the following types of research can be used to discover the effect of one
variable on another?
1) Survey research
2) Ex-post-facto research
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3) Experimental research
4) Correlational research
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Ex post facto research is similar to an experiment, except the researcher does not manipulate
the independent variable, which has already occurred in the natural course of events. The
researcher simply compares groups differing on the preexisting independent variable to
determine any relationship to or effect on the dependent variable. Because there is no
manipulation or control of the independent variable, one must be very careful regarding the
conclusions that are drawn about any observed relationship. The variables in this type of
research differ in kind rather than in amount. For example, to answer the question, “What is the
effect of part-time work on school achievement of high school students?” one would use the ex
post facto method. The researcher would not manipulate the lives of high school students by
having some take part-time jobs and others not; instead, the researcher would identify students
who already work part-time and compare their achievement with that of students who do not
work. Because researchers lack control over many factors, they must be especially careful in
interpreting the results of ex post facto investigations. They do not establish a simple causal
relationship among the variables of a study.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 394, exercise 15a; pp. 29, 357)
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37. To guard against wild samples and to cater for systematic variation in the population,
it would be advisable to use ---------- sampling.
1) simple random
2) comprehensive
3) proportional stratified
4) extreme case
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Stratified Sampling
When the population consists of a number of subgroups, or strata, which may differ in the
characteristics being studied, it is often desirable to use a form of probability sampling called
stratified sampling. For example, if you were conducting a poll designed to assess opinions
on a certain political issue, it might be advisable to subdivide the population into subgroups on
the basis of age, neighborhood, and occupation because you would expect opinions to differ
systematically among various ages, neighborhoods, and occupational groups. In stratified
sampling, you first identify the strata of interest and then randomly draw a specified number
of subjects from each stratum.
An advantage of stratified sampling is that it enables the researcher to also study the
differences that might exist between various subgroups of a population. In this kind of sampling,
you may either take equal numbers from each stratum or select in proportion to the size of the
stratum in the population. The latter procedure is known as proportional stratified sampling,
which is applied when the characteristics of the entire population are the main concern in the
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study. Each stratum is represented in the sample in exact proportion to its frequency in the total
population.
When you sample from the strata of interest, you avoid the use of wild samples which have
no relevance to your study. Thus, “stratified sampling guards against wild samples, ensures that
no subpopulation will be omitted from the sample, and avoids overloading in certain
subpopulations” (Wiersma & Jurs, 2009).
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 166-167); Wiersma and Jurs (2009, p. 333)
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38. What is NOT true about case study?

1) The researcher should use a single procedure for data collection.
2) It should provide a detailed description of the case under investigation.
3) It should focus on a single unit, whether an individual or an organization.
4) It has a potential for theory-building and/or generalization to other cases.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Emerging from approaches in business, law, and medicine, a case study focuses on a single
unit to produce an in-depth description that is rich and holistic. The underlying question is
“What are the characteristics of this particular entity, phenomenon, person, or setting?” Case
studies typically include multiple sources of data collected over time.
As indicated, case studies provide an in-depth description of a single unit. The “unit” can
be an individual, a group, a site, a class, a policy, a program, a process, an institution, or a
288
community. It is a single occurrence of something that the researcher is interested in examining.

The unit of analysis determines whether the study is a case study or a different form of
qualitative research. Case studies can answer descriptive questions (what happened) or attempt
to explain why something happened by looking at a process. They are particularistic (focused
on a particular phenomenon, situation, or event), descriptive (providing as an end result a thick
rich description), and heuristic (focused on providing new insights). The researcher believes
that something can be learned in this specific case.
The greatest advantage of a case study is the possibility of depth; it seeks to understand the
whole case in the totality of the environment. Not only the present actions of an individual but
also his or her past, environment, emotions, and thoughts can be probed. The researcher tries to
determine why an individual behaves as he or she does and not merely to record behavior. Case
studies often provide an opportunity for an investigator to develop insight into basic aspects of
human behavior. The intensive probing characteristic of this technique may lead to the
discovery of previously unsuspected relationships.
Case studies are anchored in real life and can provide rich detailed accounts of phenomena.
The case study permits an in-depth examination of factors that explain the present status and
that may influence change over time. Case studies may employ multiple methods of data
collection and do not rely on a single technique. Testing, interviewing, observation, review of
documents and artifacts, and other methods may be used. The distinction is that whatever
techniques are used, all are focused on a single phenomenon or entity (the case) and attempt to
collect information that can help understand or interpret the focus of the study.
The case study has its weaknesses. Although it can have depth, it inevitably lacks breadth.
The dynamics of one individual or one social unit may bear little relationship to the dynamics
of others. Some argue, however, that what we learn in a particular case can be transferred to
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similar situations with the reader, rather than the researcher, determining what might apply to
his or her context. The opportunities for insights in a case study are also opportunities for
subjectivity or even prejudice. The preconceptions of an investigator can determine which
behaviors are observed and which are ignored, as well as the way in which the observations are
interpreted.
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39. Meta-analysis involves explicit criteria for including relevant studies as well as -------
-----------.
1) quantitative measure of effect size
2) qualitative analysis of their findings
3) re-analysis of the data in other studies
4) synthesis of a wide range of topics
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
A meta-analysis is a statistical technique (i.e. a quantitative measure) that combines the effect
sizes reported in the results of studies with the same (or similar) independent and dependent
variables. In 1981, Glass, McGaw, and Smith wrote Meta-Analysis in Social Research, which
is considered the classic work on meta-analysis. The result of a meta-analysis provides an
overall summary of the outcomes of a number of studies by calculating a weighted average of
their effect sizes. Meta-analysis gives a better estimate of the relationship among variables than
289
do single studies alone. It is important that the group of studies included in a meta-analysis
focus on the same hypothesis or research questions with the same variables. One would not
conduct a meta-analysis on school achievement in general but, rather, would focus on a
particular area such as the effect of specific science teaching strategies on student achievement
in high school chemistry.
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40. The use of time-series designs is recommended when ----------.

1) there is a systematic variation in the population
2) random assignment and having a control group is not feasible
3) treatment and control groups are different at the outset of the study
4) there is a danger of sensitizing the subject with pretest
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Time-series designs are quasi-experimental procedures in which changes in a dependent
variable are observed for some period of time both before and after a treatment is introduced.
Since they are quasi-experimental, they involve no randomization. Time series designs, then,
involve periodic observations of a group intervened with treatments. The most common types
of time-series designs are the one-group time-series design.
The one-group time-series design is a quasi-experimental design that involves periodic
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measurement (or observation) on one group and the introduction of an experimental treatment
(or intervention) into this time series of measurements. As the design indicates, a number of
measurements on a dependent variable are taken, X is introduced, and additional measurements
of Y are made. By comparing the measurements immediately before and immediately after the
intervention, you can assess the effect of X on the performance of the group on Y. Thus, the
one-group time-series design involves no randomization and no control group.
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41. If with t-observed= 3, df = 35, the null hypothesis is rejected at p<.05 , we may conclude
that ----------.
1) t-critical must be smaller than 3
2) the null hypothesis is also rejected at p<.01
3) directional hypothesis cannot be maintained with the same values
4) t-observed must be less than 3 for df = 30
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
To determine whether to reject the null hypothesis using the t-value (or t-observed), compare
the t-value (or t-observed) to the critical value (or t-critical). If the absolute value of the t-value
(or t-observed) is greater than the critical value (or t-critical), you reject the null hypothesis. If
the absolute value of the t-value (or t-observed) is less than the critical value (or t-critical), you
fail to reject the null hypothesis.
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t-critical
t-observed
The value of t-observed in this example is 3. The t-critical value is unknown. To reject the null
hypothesis, we must compare the absolute value of t-observed to t-critical. The rules for
interpreting the comparison of t-observed and t-critical are:
If t-observed ≤ t-critical  accept the null hypothesis
If t-observed > t-critical  reject the null hypothesis
Thus, in order to reject the null hypothesis the t-observed must be bigger than t-critical.
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 See also: Turner (2014, p. 152)
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42. In qualitative research, detailed analysis of contextual factors, participants, and their
roles in the social setting refers to ----------.
1) audit trail
2) triangulation
3) grounded theory
4) thick description
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Audit trail is a qualitative researcher’s documentation of how a study was conducted, including
what was done, when, and why. It allows an independent auditor to examine the study from
beginning to end and judge the trustworthiness of the outcome.
Triangulation refers to the use of multiple data gathering procedures, multiple sources of
data or multiple observers for the purpose of confirming data.
Grounded theory is theory derived inductively from the data collected in a natural setting
rather than from a priori ideas or theories.
Thick description is a term used in qualitative research that refers to descriptions that are
written to create vivid images of the setting and behaviors being observed. In other words, thick
description is intended to place readers vividly in the research setting so that they can follow
the logical processes that the researcher went through in collecting the data. The role of the
writer is to “tell the story the data tell.” In contrast to the more technical and structured style of
quantitative reports, a qualitative report is more like a story and may have very little, if any,
technical language.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 492-494, 527, 561-562, 538)
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43. You want to examine the effect of experience on teacher's self-efficacy. You divide
your sample into the following subcategories: 1-5, 5-15, and beyond 15 years of
experience. You check self-efficacy through a questionnaire. The appropriate
statistical test would be ----------.
1) Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA)
2) one-way ANOVA
3) multivariate ANOVA
4) three-way ANOVA
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Simple or one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) is a statistical procedure used to analyze
the data from a study with more than two groups. It is called one-way ANOVA because there
is only one independent variable and one dependent variable.
Independent variable: Dependent variable:
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Experience Self-efficacy
As shown in the question item, the independent variable is teacher’s experience and the
dependent variable is teacher’s self-efficacy. Thus, there is only one independent variable and
one dependent variable. Hence, we use one-way ANOVA as its statistical test.
The subcategories stated are the levels of the independent variable. They do not constitute
different variables themselves.
Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) is used to test the main and interaction effects of
categorical variables on a continuous dependent variable, controlling for the effects of selected
other continuous variables, which co-vary with the dependent. The control variables are called
the "covariates."
Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) is simply an ANOVA with several
dependent variables.
Three-Way ANOVA is a statistical test used to determine the effect of three independent
variables on a dependent variable.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 192-193); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, pp. 307-329)
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44. What is NOT true about mixed-methods research?

1) It incorporates blends of paradigm and philosophical positions.
2) It is clear whether qualitative o or quantitative aspect is emphasized.
3) Multiple forms of data are used, both qualitative and quantitative.
4) Mixing can take place in any or all phases of the study.
292
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Mixed methods research combines qualitative and quantitative approaches in a single or multi-
phased study. The mixing process may occur in any or all phases of the research, including the
methodology, the logistics of the design, the specified methods to be conducted, the procedures
or data collection, and the analysis. However, mixed methods research is more than quantitative
and qualitative research mixed: It incorporates and embraces blends of paradigms,
philosophical assumptions, and theoretical perspectives directly driven by the purpose of the
study and the intended audience. As Yin (2006) indicates, unless there is a purposeful and
logical blending of the qualitative and quantitative methods within the design, the result is
instead two distinctly separate studies.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, p. 590); J. D. Brown (2014, pp. 6-14)
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45. What analytic technique is appropriate for the study below?

An MA student of TEFL intends to find out if paraphrasing or L1 translation of texts
would make any difference in adult EFL students' level of reading comprehension. In
so doing, she has to think of a number of variables such as the nature of the text, the
participants’ level of proficiency, the measuring instruments, etc.
1) t-test
2) correlation
3) think-aloud study
Research
4) two-way ANOVA
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
The t-test (also called Student’s T-Test) compares two means and tells you if they are different
from each other. The t-test also tells you how significant the differences are; in other words, it
lets you know if those differences could have happened by chance.
There are three main types of t-test:

1. An Independent Samples t-test compares the means for two groups.
2. A Paired sample t-test compares means from the same group at different times (say, one
year apart).
3. A One sample t-test tests the mean of a single group against a known mean.
Correlation is a statistical technique that can show whether and how strongly pairs of
variables are related. For example, height and weight are related; taller people tend to be heavier
than shorter people.
Two-Way ANOVA is a statistical test used to determine the effect of two independent
variables on a dependent variable.
Think aloud study: Think-aloud protocols involve participants thinking aloud as they are
performing a set of specified tasks. Participants are asked to say whatever comes into their mind
as they complete the task. This might include what they are looking at, thinking, doing, and
feeling. This gives observers insight into the participant's cognitive processes (rather than only
their final product), to make thought processes as explicit as possible during task performance.
293
In a formal research protocol, all verbalizations are transcribed and then analyzed. In a usability
testing context, observers are asked to take notes of what participants say and do, without
attempting to interpret their actions and words, and especially noting places where they
encounter difficulty. Test sessions are often audio- and video-recorded so that developers can
go back and refer to what participants did and how they reacted.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, p. 185)
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Research
294
46. Dynamic assessment from a sociocultural perspective ----------.

1) is primarily related to ZPD
2) needs to be non-gradual and given by peers
3) should mainly take place at the intrapsychological plane
4) is based on the distinction between object and human mediation
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
In DA, assessment and instruction are a single activity that seeks to simultaneously diagnose
and promote learner development by offering learners mediation, a qualitatively different form
of support from feedback. Mediation is provided during the assessment procedure and is
intended to bring to light underlying problems and help leaners overcome them. Lidz (1991, p.
6.) explains that DA focuses not on what individuals can accomplish on their own but on their
"modifiability and on producing suggestions for interventions that appear successful in
facilitating improved learner performance."
Testing
Vygotsky's writings on the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) provide the theoretical
underpinnings of DA. Central to the ZPD is the notion that higher forms of thinking (voluntary
memory, attention, planning, learning, perception) are always mediated. Initially, these
functions are mediated through our interactions with others and with physical and symbolic
artifacts (e g., books, computers, diagrams, language, etc.). These interactions are internalized
and give rise to new cognitive functions. One's relationship with the world is still mediated, but
this is accomplished on the psychological rather than social plane.
For similar items, refer to Year 91, Items 39 and 47; Year 92, Item 47; Year 94, Item 34; Year
96, Item 34; and Year 97, Item 40.
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 See also: Lantolf and Poehner (2004)
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47. In the input-response relationship, ----------.

1) reciprocity negatively affects the expected response
2) both input and response are part of test method facet
3) adaptive relationship requires both feedback and interaction
4) the two options are either nonreciprocal or adaptive
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Bachman (1990) states five major categories for test method facets: (1) the testing environment;
(2) the test rubric; (3) the nature of the input the test taker receives; (4) the nature of the expected
response to that input, and (5) the relationship between input and response.

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48. In Bachman's (1990) model of test development, ----------.

1) quantifying test performance observation is part of operational definition
2) unlike language skills, general proficiency should be defined theoretically
3) quantifying test performance observation requires defining units of measurement
4) deciding on the scoring scale should be a prerequisite to the operational definition of a
construct
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Quantifying observations
The third step in measurement is to establish procedures for quantifying or scaling our
observations of performance. Physical characteristics such as height and weight can be observed
directly and compared directly with established standard scales. Thus, we need not define an inch
every time we measure a person’s height, because there exists, in the Bureau of Standards, a
standard ruler that defines the length of an inch, and we assume that most rulers accurately represent
that standard inch. In measuring mental constructs, however, our observations are indirect and no
such standards exist for defining the units of measurement. The primary concern in establishing
Testing
scales for measuring mental abilities, therefore, is defining the units of measurement.
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49. In assessing the pragmalinguistic component of ESL learners' pragmatic competence,

the rating rubric should ----------.
1) include the use of politeness marker
2) be derived from the norms of the Expanding Circle
3) be based on the learners' performance in real-life situations
4) focus on the consideration of social norms and conventions
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Following Leech (1983), McNamara and Roever (2006) state two components for pragmatics:
(1) “sociopragmatic” knowledge: sociopragmatic knowledge describes knowledge of the
target language community’s social rules, appropriateness norms, discourse practices, and
accepted behaviors.
(2) “pragmalinguistic” knowledge: pragmalinguistic knowledge encompasses the linguistic
tools necessary to “do things with words” (Austin, 1962)—for example, produce
comprehensible discourse, make requests, surrender a turn in a conversation, and so forth.
Both components of pragmatic competence are equally necessary: language users who know
the target language sociopragmatic norms but have no pragmalinguistic tools at their disposal
are prevented from even participating in interaction. Conversely, users who command a range
of pragmalinguistic tools but use them unconstrained by sociopragmatic rules may unwittingly
give offense, index roles and stances they do not intend to convey, or be entirely
incomprehensible. Because of the connection between sociopragmatics and pragmalinguistics,
it is often difficult in practice to determine whether a given error was due to pragmalinguistic
or sociopragmatic deficits. For example, if an utterance is missing requisite politeness
markers, this might be because the learner does not know these markers (pragmalinguistic
296
deficit) or they might know the markers but not be aware that those markers need to be used in
the given situation (sociopragmatic deficit).
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50. "Many different kinds of evidence can be provided to support the intended
interpretations and use of a test". This statement ----------.
1) is in line with validity as a unitary concept
2) is valid only if the multitrait-multimethod matrix is used
3) is based on the findings of confirmatory factor analysis
4) goes against Messick's conceptualization of construct validity
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Validity as a unitary concept
Although validity has traditionally been discussed in terms of different types, psychometricians
Testing
have increasingly come to view it as a single, unitary concept. Messick (1980, 1988b) has
argued that even viewing different approaches to validation (content, criterion-related, and
construct) as separate lines of evidence for supporting given score interpretations is inadequate,
and that the consideration of values and consequences of score use has an essential role in
validity considerations. He proposes a unified framework of validity that
forestalls undue reliance on selected forms of evidence, that highlights the important
though subsidiary role of specific content and criterion-related evidence in support of
construct validity in testing applications, and that formally brings consideration of value
implications and social consequences into the validity framework.
(Messick, 1988. p. 20)
Thus, Messick stats that for justifying a particular interpretation of a test score, we must
gather evidence for construct validity and consider the value implications of this interpretation.
If we wish to use this test score for a particular purpose, we must justify this by considering not
only construct validity and value implications, but also the relevance or utility of the particular
use and the social consequences of using the test score in this particular way.
Thus, Messick sees all other kinds of validity types as evidence in support of the construct
validity as a unifying concept for validation.
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51. In the test performance research based on DIF, ----------.

1) items function differentially due to rater bias
2) testee variables such as gender and ethnicity count
3) each item is considered as an independent variable
4) rater severity is the main concern in understanding test information function
297
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Test fairness is a broad area, encompassing quality management in test design,
administration and scoring, adequate coverage of relevant content, sufficient construct
validation work, equal learning opportunities and access to testing, and items measuring only
the skill or ability under investigation without being unduly influenced by construct-irrelevant
variance introduced through test-taker background factors.
Bias: The use of the term “bias” in assessment research fundamentally follows its popular
usage, which conveys a skewed and unfair inclination toward one side (group, population) to
the detriment of another. The notion of bias is directly tied to fairness, in popular usage as well
as assessment. A biased judgment unduly takes into account factors other than those that should
be informing it. Bias is a general description of a situation in which construct-irrelevant group
characteristics influence scores, but because of its semantic association with societal issues like
discrimination, another term was coined for more technical analyses of test items: differential
item functioning (DIF).
Differential item functioning (DIF) identifies test items that function differently for two
groups of test takers, without the discriminatory overtones of the term bias. Angoff (1993)
Testing
admitted that there is the temptation to use the term bias because it is shorter and less
cumbersome than the somewhat unwieldy term differential item functioning, but he argued for
keeping the two separate and using DIF for nonjudgmental analyses of score differences
between groups and using bias to discuss the larger social issues caused by DIF. DIF analysis
is usually a first step in a larger bias analysis. An item that does not show DIF is not biased,
whereas an item that shows DIF needs to be investigated further to uncover the reasons for its
differential functioning. Most DIF analyses compute DIF for a potentially disadvantaged group
(also known as the focal group) compared to the potentially advantaged group (also known as
the reference group). DIF analyses outside language testing often investigate DIF for minority
groups (Blacks vs. Whites) or gender (women vs. men), whereas in language testing, group
membership tends to be determined by native language, and there is less a priori hypothesizing
about likely disadvantages.
For similar items on “bias”, refer to Year 91, Items 32 and 42; Year 92, Item 53, Year 93, Item
52; Year 97, Item 21.
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52. Systematic errors have all of the following characteristics EXCEPT ----------.
1) tending to decrease validity
2) introducing bias into measures
3) tending to decrease estimates of reliability
4) limiting the generalizability of test scores as indicators of universe scores
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
The effects of systematic measurement error
Two different effects are associated with systematic error: a general effect and a specific effect
(Kane, 1982). The general effect of systematic error is constant for all observations; it affects
298
the scores of all individuals who take the test. The specific effect varies across individuals; it
affects different individuals differentially. For example, when a passage is about, say,
economics, the passage content is the same for all tests, and so will have a general effect on all
test scores. If individuals differ in their familiarity with economics, this systematic error will
have different specific effects for different individuals, increasing some scores and lowering
others. In terms of variance components, the general effect of systematic error is that associated
with a main effect, while the specific effect is associated with an interaction between persons
and the facet. This specific effect in turn can be distinguished from random error variance,
which is associated with residual, or unpredicted variance.
Both the general and the specific effects of systematic error limit the generalizability of
test scores as indicators of universe scores. Thus, we would be reluctant to make inferences
about reading comprehension in general on the basis of scores from tests containing passages
only from the field of economics. We might be willing to accept such scores for students of
economics by redefining the ability we are interested in measuring (limiting our universe of
generalizability) to reading comprehension of passages in economics. Most of us, however,
would object strongly to the obvious bias if such tests were to be used as measures of reading
comprehension with individuals from a wide variety of disciplines, including economics.
One way in which systematic error is different from random error, then, is that it
Testing
introduces bias into our measures. Another way in which systematic error is different from
random error is that systematic errors tend to be correlated across measures. What this means
is that systematic errors will tend to increase estimates of reliability. The problem this creates,
however, is that this may also decrease validity. If we gave two tests based on economics
reading passages to a group of economics students, for example, we might find that the
correlation between scores on the two tests was quite high, indicating equivalence reliability. If
we had doubts about the validity of our reading tests, we would also give our students a 'general'
reading comprehension test and a test of their knowledge of economics that did not involve
reading. If we found that scores on our reading tests were correlated more highly with the
economics knowledge test scores than with the general reading comprehension test scores, this
would suggest that scores on our reading test reflect individuals’ knowledge of economics as
much as their reading comprehension ability, and were therefore not valid measures of general
reading comprehension.
For similar items on “bias”, refer to Year 91, Items 32 and 42; Year 92, Item 53; Year 93, Item
51; Year 97, Item 21.
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 See also: Bachman (1990, pp. 222-223, 227)
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53. Which of the following statements relevant to Bachman and Palmer's (1996) notion of
test usefulness is FALSE?
1) The individual qualities that affect test usefulness need to be evaluated independently.
2) The threshold level for practicality in any given situation would be one in which
required resources do not exceed available resources.
3) Interactiveness is considered to be the extent and type of involvement of the test taker's
characteristics in accomplishing a test task.
4) Authenticity is the degree of correspondence between the characteristics of the test task
and the target language use task.
Answer: 1
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299
Explanation:
Authenticity: In order to justify the use of language tests, we need to be able to
demonstrate that performance on language tests corresponds to language use in specific
domains other than the language test itself. One aspect of demonstrating this pertains to the
correspondence between the characteristics of TLU tasks and those of the test task. It is
this correspondence that is at the heart of authenticity, and we would describe a test task whose
characteristics correspond to those of TLU tasks as relatively authentic. We define authenticity
as the degree of correspondence of the characteristics of a given language test task to the
features of a TLU task.
Practicality is a matter of the extent to which the demands of the particular test
specifications can be met within the limits of existing resources. We believe this view of
practicality is useful because it enables us to define a “threshold level” for practicality in any
given testing situation. If the resource demands of the test specifications do not exceed the
available resources at any stage in test development, then the test is practical and test
development and use can proceed. If available resources are exceeded, then the test is not
practical and the developer must either modify the specifications to reduce the resources
required, or increase the available resources or reallocate them so that they can be utilized more
efficiently. Thus, a practical test is one whose design, development, and use do not require more
Testing
resources than are available.
Interactiveness: We define interactiveness as the extent and type of involvement of the
test taker's individual characteristics in accomplishing a test task. The individual
characteristics that are most relevant for language testing are the test taker's language ability
(language knowledge and strategic competence, or metacognitive strategies), topical knowledge,
and affective schemata. The interactiveness of a given language test task can thus be characterized
in terms of the ways in which the test taker's areas of language knowledge, metacognitive
strategies, topical knowledge, and affective schemata are engaged by the test task. For example,
a test task that requires a test taker to relate the topical content of the test input to her own topical
knowledge is likely to be relatively more interactive than one that does not.
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 See also: Bachman and Palmer (1996, pp. 23, 25, 36, 142)
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54. Which of the following definitions is FALSE?

1) The practice of teaching to the test in order to raise test scores is called test score
pollution.
2) Formative assessment is using assessment information to provide feedback to the
teaching/learning process.
3) Aggregation refers to the collapsing of the detailed performance profile for each
individual into a single grade.
4) A test is systemically valid to the extent that it provides evidence confirming the
assessment system being practiced.
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Test Score Pollution: The practice of teaching to the test, in order to raise test scores, is
generally called in the US ‘test score pollution’. Pollution here refers to an increase in the test
score which is not connected to the construct being measured, that is it produces construct-
irrelevant test score variance.
300
Aggregation: A major problem for criterion-referenced assessment is aggregation, i.e. the

‘collapsing’ of the detailed performance profile for each individual into a single reporting
figure, or grade. Aggregating detailed assessment information into a crude single grade
compromises the information offered by the assessment. A final summative aggregated grade
does not help the pupil or employer: it obscures more than it clarifies. If an exam assesses five
domains, elements or components, candidates with a high overall grade may have done well on
(any) three or four and poorly on the other(s). The high grade, therefore, tells us little about
what the pupil is capable of doing (Gipps and Stobart, 1993).
Formative Assessment: Formative assessment involves using assessment information to
feed back into the teaching/learning process; some believe that assessment is only truly
formative if it involves the pupil, others that it can be a process which involves only the teacher
who feeds back into curriculum planning.
Systemic validity: Gipps (1994, p. 64) states that systemic validity is a specific form of
consequential validity (Frederiksen and Collins, 1989). ‘A systemically valid test is one that
induces in the education system curricular and instructional changes that foster the development
of the cognitive skills that the test is designed to measure’ (p. 27). As Frederiksen and Collins
point out, since the education system tends to adapt itself to the characteristics of high stakes
tests, introducing tests in to the system poses particular validity problems. Gipps (1994, p. 102)
Testing
adds that given the promises made for performance assessment, Frederiksen and Collins’ (1989)
concept of systemic validity is relevant: a test is systemically valid to the extent that it induces
in the education system curriculum change and teaching approaches which foster the
development of the cognitive skills the test is designed to measure. The main characteristics
which Fredericksen and Collins identify as contributing to systemic validity are the directness
of the cognitive assessment and the degree of judgment required in assigning a score. Direct
tests involve evaluating the cognitive skill of interest directly rather than indirectly, for
example, through a more or less abstract task. Frederiksen and Collins argue that the advantage
of such direct tests is that instruction which improves the test score will also result in improved
performance on the extended task and on the expression of the cognitive skill within the context
of the task (i.e., teaching to the task will be teaching to the domain). If the assessment involves
judgment, reflection and analysis on the part of the scorer, then the scorer must understand the
scoring categories and be taught how to use them. Training is expensive but may be seen as an
aspect of professional development. In this model the assessment system provides a basis for
developing metacognitive awareness of what are important characteristics of good problem
solving, good historical analysis etc.
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 See also: Gipps (1994, pp. 46, 64, 85, 102, 124-125)
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55. Which of the following is NOT a potential problem with reliability estimates based on
correlational analyses?
1) Short tests
2) Skewedness
3) Homogeneity of test takers
4) Linear relationships
301
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Reliability estimates can be categorized as follows:
(1) Reliability estimates based on correlational analysis
1. Internal consistency estimates
a. Split-half reliability estimates
(1) The Spearman-Brown split-half estimate
(2) The Guttman split-half estimate
2. Rater consistency estimates
a. Intra-rater reliability
b. Inter-rater reliability
3. Stability estimates (test-retest reliability)
4. Equivalence estimates (parallel forms reliability)
(2) Reliability estimates based on item variances
1. Internal consistency estimates based on item variances
a. KR 20
Testing
b. KR 21
c. Cronbach’s Alpha
Since split-half reliability estimates reduce the test length in half, they do not provide us
with precise reliability estimates. They give us an estimate of how consistent the halves are;
however, we are interested in the reliability of the whole test. In general, a long test will be
more reliable than a short one, assuming that the additional items correlate positively with the
other items in the test. In the split-half method, we have reduced the test by half, and we must
therefore correct the obtained correlation for this reduction in length. The most commonly used
formula for this is a special case of the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula.
Reliability estimates in classical true score theory are based on norm-referencing. As a
consequence of the way ability is defined operationally in classical true score theory, reliability
estimates are highly dependent upon the amount of variability in test scores. This can be
demonstrated by considering the extreme case in which there is no variance in test scores, such
as would happen if all individuals answered all test items correctly (i.e. when we have a skewed
distribution). In this case, as has been noted by Cziko (198 l), classical correlational approaches
to reliability (split-half, equivalence, stability) would yield estimates of zero.
And when our test takers are highly homogeneous, they either answer all test items
correctly or incorrectly. Thus, we will have a skewed distributions. Hence, reliability estimates
in CTS cannot provide accurate estimates in such situations.
For similar items on “skewedness”, refer to Year 92, Items 38, 40 and 52; Year 94, Item 44;
Year 96, Item 45; and Year 97, Items 45 and 58.
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56. Which of the following is used as a reliability estimate for NRTs?
1) Guttman split-half estimate
2) Threshold loss agreement statistics
3) Squared-error loss agreement coefficients
4) Domain score dependability estimates
302
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Guttman split-half estimate is used as a reliability estimate for NRTs. Threshold loss agreement
statistics, Squared-error loss agreement coefficients, and Domain score dependability estimates
are used as reliability estimates for CRTs.
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 See also: Bachman (1990, pp. 175, 212, 217)
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57. Which of the following statements about Test Information Function (TIF) is FALSE?
1) It is the IRT analog of classical true score reliability.
2) It provides estimates of measurement errors at various ability levels.
3) It provides the least information for test takers at or near the level of the test.
4) It is independent of the particular sample of individuals taking the test.
Answer: 3
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Testing
Explanation:
The test information function (TIF) is the sum of the item information functions, each of which
contributes independently to the total, and is a measure of how much information a test provides
at different ability levels. The TIF is the IRT analog of CTS theory reliability and the standard
error of measurement, and offers two important advantages over these indicators of precision
of measurement. Since the standard error of the ability estimates at a given ability level are
inversely related to the TIF, it provides estimates of measurement errors at each ability level.
An additional advantage is that the TIF is independent of the particular sample of individuals
upon whose responses it is based. This is because the TIF is a function of the individual item
information functions, each of which is based on ICCs that are sample independent. The TIF is
thus generalizable across different samples of individual test takers.
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58. Which of the following statements is FALSE about G-Theory?

1) If all test takers take every item in the test, it is called a crossed design and is symbolized
as p x i.
2) When the number of conditions for a facet in a G-study includes all the conditions of the
D-study, the facet is considered to be a fixed facet.
3) G-theory provides an estimation of an individual's level of ability, independently of the
particular set of items used.
4) G-theory allows us to estimate the different variance components, except the highest-
order interaction, which cannot be distinguished from the error variance.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Generalizability study (G-study)
The purpose of the G-study is to estimate the relative effects of the different sources of
variance – the objects of measurement, and the specified facets of measurement – from
303
data that have been collected according to a particular design. Estimates of these effects are
called variance components, symbolized by ‘σ2’. In conducting a G-study, the test developer
begins by specifying the facets of measurement to be included, which will determine the
relevant variance components that need to be estimated. In addition to obtaining an estimate of
the relative effects of different facets of measurement, G-theory can provide means, or averages,
for each condition on each facet.
We can illustrate this with a test consisting of a single set of individual items, in which case
there is a single facet: items. If all test takers take every item in the test, we will have information
on every possible pair of test taker and item, and this is called a crossed design, with the persons
and items crossed, symbolized as ‘p x i’.
In a crossed single-facet design, there are three sources of variation. One source of
variation in this design is the object of measurement, persons, symbolized in the figure
below by ‘p’. Another source of variation is the facet items, symbolized by ‘i’. Since different
test takers may perform differently on different items, a third source of variation is the
interaction between persons and items, symbolized by ‘pi’.
Testing
Figure 1: Sources of variation in a single-facet crossed design, p x i
In this design, the following variance components will need to be estimated: (1) the object
of measurement (persons–p); (2) the item facet (items–i); and (3) the person-by-item interaction
(pi). In addition, since factors other than the measurement facets we have specified in this
design may affect test scores, a portion of the total score variance will inevitably be unaccounted
for. This variance is essentially an error in our estimation, and is symbolized by σ 2e. In all G-
study designs, the variance for the highest-order interaction (in this case, pi) cannot be
distinguished from the error variance.
When the number of conditions for a particular facet in the D-study universe of
generalization far exceeds the number of conditions in the G-study universe of admissible
measures, this facet is typically considered to be a random facet. When the number of
conditions for a particular facet in the D-study universe of generalization is included
exhaustively in the G-study universe of admissible measures, this facet is considered to be a
fixed facet.
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 See also: Bachman (2004, pp. 179-180, 183-184)
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304
59. Which of the following refers to an analytical process of test creation in which we
analyze a test item to see what it is testing in order to infer the underlying guiding
principles of the item, both to decide whether it is a useful item and to help generate
similar items, if necessary?
1) Piloting
2) Field testing
3) Prototyping
4) Reverse engineering
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Reverse engineering (RE) is an idea of ancient origin; the name was coined by Davidson and
Lynch (2002), but they are the first to admit that all they created was the name. RE is an
analytical process of test creation that begins with an actual test question and infers the guiding
language that drives it, such that equivalent items can be generated. It is a very good idea to
stress an evolving spec by trying to write a new item during our reverse engineering.
Testing
The purpose of a prototype in language testing is not dissimilar to its purpose in
engineering. What we wish to do is produce an item or task that fulfils a particular function
within a larger test. The function of the item or task is to generate a response from which we
can make inferences. If we see the language test as a machine that needs designing and building,
the first part of the design process is to ensure that the parts fulfil their intended function and
contribute towards the working of the whole machine. The first part of the design phase is
referred to as prototyping – that is, the design and testing of prototypes.
Field testing is often described as product use testing with users from the target market.
At this stage the prototypes have been extensively tested and refined in alpha and beta testing,
but this does not mean that there are no further changes to be made, or that some items or tasks
will not be eliminated from the mix at this point. However, taking tasks to field testing implies
that initial decisions have been taken about the range and number of task types that should be
included on a prototype test, rather than the prototyping individual task or item types. In field
testing, the items and tasks are still under investigation, but they are considered in the context
of the larger product of which they are a component part.
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 See also: Fulcher and Davidson (2007, pp. 57, 77, 85)
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60. Which of the following statements about classical true score measurement is FALSE?
1) Classical true score measurement considers all sources of error to be random.
2) Classical true score measurement fails to distinguish between different sources of
variance.
3) The true score in classical true score measurement theory is the analog of universe score
in G-theory and theta (θ) in item response theory.
4) In classical true score measurement theory, reliability is defined in terms of observed
score variance.
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
True score and error score: Classical true score (CTS) measurement theory consists of a set
of assumptions about the relationships between actual, or observed test scores and the factors
that affect these scores. The first assumption of this model states that an observed score on a
test comprises two factors or components: a true score that is due to an individual’s level of
ability and an error score, that is due to factors other than the ability being tested. A second set
of assumptions has to do with the relationship between true and error scores. Essentially, these
assumptions state that error scores are unsystematic, or random, and are uncorrelated with true
scores (Bachman, 1990, p. 167).
Bachman (1990, p. 187) states some problems with the CTS theory. One of the problems,
he states, is that the CTS model considers all error to be random, and consequently fails to
distinguish systematic error from random error.
Universe score: If we could obtain measures for an individual under all the different
conditions specified in the universe of possible measures, his average score on these measures
might be considered the best indicator of his ability. A universe score xp is thus defined as the
mean of a person's scores on all measures from the universe of possible measures (this universe
of possible measures being defined by the facets and conditions of concern for a given test use).
The universe score is thus the G-theory analog of the CTS-theory true score (Bachman, 1990,
Testing
p. 191).
Reliability is defined in the CTS theory in terms of true score variance. Since we can never
know the true scores of individuals, we can never know what the reliability is, but can only
estimate it from the observed scores. The basis for all such estimates in the CTS model is the
correlation between parallel tests (Bachman, 1990, p. 171).
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 See also: Bachman (1990, pp. 167, 171, 187, 191)
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61. Which of the following involves teaching grammar through giving students
information about a particular structure without giving them the full picture?
1) Input flooding
2) Input processing
3) Consciousness raising
4) Garden path strategy
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Enhancing the input. By highlighting (e.g., making boldface) certain non-salient grammatical
forms in a reading passage, students' attention will be drawn to them (Sharwood Smith, 1993).
The oral equivalent is when a teacher stresses certain forms when speaking with students.
Input flooding. Choosing texts in which a particular construction or structural contrast is
especially frequent will enhance its saliency and thus might promote noticing.
Input processing. Another technique for directing students' attention to form is called
input processing (VanPatten, 1996). Rather than working on rule learning and rule application,
input processing activities push learners to attend to properties of language during activities
where the structure is being used meaningfully. The examples the students focus on have been
carefully chosen to make salient the differences between the L1 and the L2.
Consciousness-raising. Ellis (2014) states that L2 learners, particularly older ones, might
benefit from the explicit teaching of grammatical rules and patterns. One option for explicit rule
instruction is to use a consciousness-raising task, in which it is the students' job to induce a
grammatical generalization from the data they have been given.
Garden path. Another option for promoting students' awareness is to use the garden path
strategy (Tomasello & Herron, 1988, 1989). As applied to grammar teaching, this means giving
students information about a construction without giving them the full picture, thus making it
seem easier than it is or, in other words, "leading them down the garden path."
For similar items on “input processing”, refer to Year 92, Item, 72; Year 93, Items 61 and 89;
Year 94, Item 74; and Year 96, Item 64.
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 See also: Celce-Murcia et al. (2014, pp. 263, 265-266)
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Skills
62. Which of the following is a reciprocal listening task?
1) Students are cast in the role of an eavesdropper or an overhearer.
2) Students are expected to provide information that goes beyond what is given.
3) Students listen to a text several times and perform increasingly challenging tasks each
time.
4) Students listen to long stretches of discourse and scan it for certain information.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Reciprocal vs. Nonreciprocal Listening
Reciprocal listening involves dialogues in which the role of an individual alternates between
listener and speaker. Nonreciprocal listening involves listening to monologues. In listening
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courses, learners are involved in both reciprocal and nonreciprocal listening tasks. In the case
of reciprocal listening, they can be cast in the role of participant, in which they alternate between
listener or speaker, or they can be cast in the role of "eavesdropper" or "overhearer." In this
second type of task, they listen in on conversations between two or more other speakers, but do
not take part in the conversation themselves. Not surprisingly, this second type of listening is
the more usual type in the listening class.
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 See also: Nunan (1999, p. 215)
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63. Which of the following best describes the visual metaphor for our memory of words?
1) Domino effect
2) Bathtub effect
3) Superordinate effect
4) Intra-lexical effect
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Domino effect: The domino effect is defined as a chain reaction when a small change leads to
another small change, and then a series of changes in a linear sequence. It can be described as
a mechanical effect and is analogous to falling rows of dominos. Applied to education, domino
effect is the modification of the former factor which results in changes in the latter, and may
compromise effective learning. Domino effect can also occur in research and in interviews:
During investigation processes or interview sessions, one answer usually leads to another
question. A repeating pattern in this type of analysis is often referred to as the "domino effect."
Bathtub effect: In language studies, the bathtub effect is the observation that, when trying
to remember a word or name, people find it easier to recall the beginning and end of a lost item
than the middle.
Superordinate effect: It is well established that participants are faster at detecting an
animal/vehicle (superordinate object level) than a dog/bus (basic object level or the more
detailed item-specific information) in the processing of the incoming information. This
consistent behavioral effect in ultrarapid categorization tasks is denoted as the superordinate
advantage/effect.
Intra-lexical effect: In priming studies, intra-lexical effect is an effect occurring within the
lexicon, independent of higher level syntactic relations between prime (i.e. the word used as a Skills
stimulus) and target (i.e. the word intended to be remembered).
Semantic Priming: Words can also be activated by hearing semantically related words.
This effect is known as semantic priming. A listener will be faster at making a lexical decision
on the word doctor if he has just heard nurse than if he just heard a semantically unrelated word
such as flower. The word nurse is said to prime the word doctor. When we hear a priming word,
related words are “awakened” and become more readily accessible for a few moments. This
priming effect might arise because semantically related words are near each other or linked to
each other in the mental lexicon.
For similar items on semantic priming, refer to Year 91, Item 26; and Year 92, Item 24.
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 See also: Field (2004, p. 158, lexical storage; p. 288: spreading activation); Fromkin et al.
(2014, p. 452)
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64. All of the following are true about reformulation activities EXCEPT ----------.
1) they are students' compositions recreated by the teacher resembling a putative target
language model
2) they are compatible with the principles of Community Language Learning
3) they require learners to write a text and compare it with a model they will be given later
4) they are consistent with a fluency-to-accuracy model of instruction
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Reformulation has gained currency in recent years as a technique in the activities development
of students' writing skills: rather than simply correcting a student's composition, which usually
involves attention to surface features of the text only, the teacher reformulates it, using the
content the student has provided, but recasting it so that the rewritten draft approximates as
closely as possible to a putative target language model. The technique has also been promoted
for the teaching of speaking skills in one-to-one classes (see Wilberg, 1987) since it is an
effective way of tailoring instruction to the individual student's needs and interests.
Reformulation, then, reverses the order of traditional models of instruction, which move
from accuracy to fluency, as, for example, when learners are required to imitate model texts (as
in a product approach to writing) or to drill pre-selected structures for subsequent use in 'freer
practice' activities (as in the PPP model). Reformulation is consistent with a fluency-to-
accuracy, or task-based, model of instruction, that is, one that 'encourages learners to make the
best use of whatever language they have. It assumes that learners will find ways of encoding
the meanings they have in order to achieve the outcome' (Willis 1990, p. 128). Once encoded
by the learner, these meanings are then ‘re-encoded’ (or reformulated) by the teacher.
A methodology, one of whose core pedagogic principles is the reformulation of spoken
language, is Community Language Learning (CLL), sometimes called Counselling-Learning
(Curran 1976).
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 See also: Thornbury (1997)
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65. Which of the following is NOT true of the genre approach to teaching writing?
1) It undervalues the importance of word-level skills involved in writing a text.
Skills
2) It observes the importance of social context and having a purpose in writing.
3) It acknowledges the fact that learning can happen through conscious imitation.
4) It is more or less similar to the process approach to teaching writing.
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Genre approaches are relative newcomers to ELT. However, there are strong similarities with
product approaches and, in some ways, genre approaches can be regarded as an extension of
product approaches. Like product approaches, genre approaches regard writing as
predominantly linguistic but, unlike product approaches, they emphasize that writing varies
with the social context in which it is produced. So, we have a range of kinds of writing - such
as sales letters, research articles, and reports - linked with different situations (Flowerdew,
1993, p. 307). As not all learners need to operate in all social contexts, this view of texts has
implications for the writing syllabus.
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For genre analysts, the central aspect of the situation is purpose. Different kinds of writing,
or genres, such as letters of apology, recipes, or law reports, are used to carry out different
purposes. Indeed, Swales (1990) defines a genre “as a class of communicative events, the
members of which share some set of communicative purposes.”
Proponents of genre approaches are not often explicit about their theory of learning.
However, the use of model texts and the idea of analysis suggest that learning is partly a
question of imitation and partly a matter of understanding and consciously applying rules.
In short, genre-based approaches see writing as essentially concerned with knowledge of
language, and as being tied closely to a social purpose, while the development of writing is
largely viewed as the analysis and imitation of input in the form of texts provided by the teacher.
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 See also: Badger and White (2000)
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66. Which of the following are the components of the Involvement Load Hypothesis?
1) search, challenge, evaluation
2) need, search, evaluation
3) search, challenge, noticing
4) need, search, noticing
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Involvement Load Hypothesis
Designing effective pedagogical tasks has been of critical interest among second language (L2)
researchers and teachers. Accordingly, several claims about how to classify pedagogic task
characteristics in terms of their effectiveness in L2 learning have been made. One such example
is the involvement load hypothesis (Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001), which claims that learning new
words during vocabulary-focused tasks is dependent on the degree of cognitive processing
required of an L2 learner by a given task.
Hulstijn and Laufer’s (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis is based on a motivational-
cognitive construct of involvement to capture the degree of cognitive processing required of an
L2 learner by a given task. The construct of involvement is composed of three components:
need, search, and evaluation. Each of the three components can be absent or present when
Skills
processing a word during tasks. They contend that the degree to which an L2 learner is engaged
in cognitive processing does not depend on whether the given task is input- or output-based,
but on the combination of motivational and cognitive dimensions of the task, which they term
involvement load.
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 See also: Robinson (2011, pp. 100-104)
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67. Which of the following principles is the most appropriate for the communicative
teaching of grammar?
1) Focus on the development of procedural rather than declarative knowledge.
2) Use either interventionist or deductive methods in teaching.
3) Foster intelligibility in the use of grammar in writing or speaking.
4) Give attention to the exceptions in grammar.
310
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Nunan (2015) states four key principles for teaching grammar based on the communicative
language teaching:
1. Integrate both inductive and deductive approaches into the teaching of grammar.
2. Use tasks that make clear the relationship between grammatical form and communicative
function.
3. Focus on the development of procedural rather than declarative knowledge.
4. Encourage learners to use language creatively rather than reproductively.
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 See also: Nunan (2003, pp. 158-160); Nunan (2015, pp. 127-129)
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68. A listening text needs to deal with the issue of authenticity which includes ----------.
1) task and input authenticity
2) genuine and adapted input
3) simulated and incidental task
4) altered and minimal input
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
A much discussed concept in communicative language teaching is that of authenticity. There
are two types of authenticity: text authenticity and task authenticity. Authentic listening
texts are those that originally emerged in the course of some type of communication outside of
the classroom – a casual conversation in a coffee shop, a news broadcast, a train announcement,
and so on – and are subsequently imported into the classroom for teaching purposes.
In addition to text authenticity, there is task authenticity. Again, in deciding whether or
not a task is authentic, we need to take our bearings from the world outside the classroom and
ask ourselves “Is this something that people do outside the classroom?”
It has also been suggested that authentic tasks contrast with pedagogic tasks. According to
Nunan (1989, p. 44), communicative tasks can be categorized into two main types: (1)
pedagogic tasks that are practiced in the classroom and (2) real world tasks that are used for
the purpose of rehearsing future needs.
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 See also: Nunan (2015, p. 41); Nunan (2003, pp. 32-34)
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69. What is the difference between information gap and jigsaw activity?
1) The former is an activity in which each person in a pair has some information the other
person needs.
2) The latter is an activity in which one person has the whole information that the other
lacks.
3) The former is an activity in which students are given particular roles in the target
language.
4) The latter is a bidirectional information gap.
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Information gap is a useful activity in which one person has information that the other lacks.
They must use the target language to share that information. For instance, one student has the
directions to a party and must give them to a classmate.
Jigsaw activities are a bidirectional or multidirectional information gap. Each person in

a pair or group has some information the other persons need. For example, one student could
have a timetable for train travel in Canada. Another could have a map of Canada. Without
showing each other the visual information, they must speak English to plan a one-week trip.
Therefore, jigsaw tasks are information gap activities where two or more students have the
information the others lack. I think they’re a great way to integrate all the skills in a single
activity as students will have to listen, write, read, and speak in order to complete the task.
Another crucial point to be mentioned is that this type of activity tends to be student-centered,
allowing more time for students to produce the target language in class and it also can reduce
teacher talking time. Jigsaw tasks not only make a reading exercise more challenging but also
negotiation may occur among members of the groups, which is very healthy for language
development. One of the great things with jigsaw tasks is that they encourage the negotiation
of meaning. The negotiation of meaning refers to when someone signals that there has been a
misunderstanding or breakdown in communication in a conversation. According to Pica,
negotiation of meaning (also referred to as ‘interactional adjustments’) can be in the form of:
Confirmation checks: one speaker seeks confirmation of the other’s previous utterance:
A: I went to the ballet last weekend.

B: The ballet?
Clarification request: a speaker seeks help in understanding the other’s preceding utterance by
saying “I don't understand”/“Repeat that, please”:
A: Did you see Brenda last night? She was stuck to James like white on rice.
B: Sorry? What do you mean by that?
Comprehension checks: when a speaker checks if the listener is following the utterance or has
understood the preceding utterance:
Skills
A: You have to fold that side over like this. Do you know what I mean?
B: Yeah.
Thus, Information gaps and jigsaw activities encourage the negotiation of meaning because
of the way they are designed – learners have to communicate with and understand one another
in order to successfully complete the activity. In brief, jigsaw tasks are multi-directional
information gaps designed to encourage learners to interact with one another in the target
language in order to achieve a common goal. Some of the benefits of such tasks is that they not
only encourage learners to negotiate meaning with one another to successfully complete the
task, but they also increase student talk time because the learners are engaged in pair or group
work.
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 See also: Nunan (2003, p. 56); Nunan (2015, pp. 60-61)
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70. A teaching system for reading is ACTIVE, which stands for ----------.
1) Activating students’ background knowledge, Communicating with the students,
Teaching the strategies, Increasing accuracy, Verifying reading rate, and Evaluating the
students
2) Active students, Communicative method, Target, Information gap, Verification, and
Evaluation
3) Activating prior knowledge, Cultivating vocabulary, Teaching for comprehension,
Increasing reading rate, Verifying reading strategies, and Evaluating progress
4) Accuracy, Communication. Teaching, Interaction, Validity, and Expressivism
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Neil Anderson (2003) organized a teaching system for reading around the word ACTIVE:
A: Activate prior knowledge
C: Cultivate vocabulary
T: Teach for comprehension
I: Increase reading rate
V: Verify reading strategies
E: Evaluate progress
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 See also: Nunan (2003, p. 79)
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Skills
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71. In Activity Theory, ----------.

1) “Internalization” is used instead of “appropriation”
2) activity is the motive behind actions
3) the surface behavior is called action
4) all needs are socially constructed
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Activity Theory
Lantolf (2000b, p. 8) describes activity theory as 'a unified account of Vygotsky's original
proposals on the nature and development of human behavior. According to Leontiev (1978),
people possess motives that determine how they respond to a particular task. Motives can be
biologically determined, for example, the need to satisfy hunger, or, more importantly from our
perspective here, socially constructed, for example, the need to learn an L2. The learners'
motives determine how they construe a given situation. Thus people with different motives will
perform the same task in different ways. Therefore, motives are both individually and
socioculturally determined. Activity theory distinguishes three dimensions or levels of
cognition motives, goals, and operations. Lantolf and Appel (1994a, pp. 21-2) distinguish these
as follows:
.. the level of motive answers why something is done, the level of goal answers what
is done, and the level of operations answers how it is done. The link between
socioculturally defined motives and concrete operations is provided by semiotic
systems, of which language is the most powerful and pervasive.
Therefore, we can expect a task to result in different kinds of activity (as in the case of because
different people will approach the task differently depending on their underlying motives. As
Lantolf (2000b) emphasizes, activities are differentiated in terms of motives. Furthermore,
activity theory recognizes that changing social conditions can result in individuals realigning
SLA
their motives and, perhaps, the operations they employ to achieve them. Thus, we can anticipate
that learners might view a task as a game on one occasion and as work on another, depending
on how they approach the task at different times. One of the implications of this is that
researchers need to ascertain what motives learners bring to a task if they are to understand the
interactions that occur when the task is performed. In this respect, much of the task-based
research that has taken place to date is seriously at fault.
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 See also: Ellis (2003, pp. 183-4); Mitchell, Myles, and Marsden (2013, pp. 226-7)
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72. In the information processing model of SLA (Susan Gass), the "integration" stage
refers to ----------.
1) assimilating comprehended input to existing knowledge system
2) analyzing apperceived input
3) restructuring existing knowledge system
4) noticing and parsing the input
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Gass and Selinker (2008) have proposed an integrated model of SLA which considers what a
learner must do to convert input to output. There are five stages in this process: (a) apperceived
input, (b) comprehended input, (c) intake, (d) integration, and (e) output.
1. Apperceived input
The first point to note is that learners are exposed to a body of second language data. This is
known as input. A well-established fact about second language acquisition is that not everything
that learners hear/read is used as they form their second language grammars. Some language
data filter through to learners and some do not. A concern in second language acquisition
research has been with the limits on what filters through to learners and what determines those
limits.
The first stage of input utilization is called apperceived input. Apperception is the process
of understanding by which newly observed qualities of an object are related to past experiences.
In other words, past experiences relate to the selection of what might be called noticed material.
Apperception is an internal cognitive act, identifying a linguistic form as being related to some
prior knowledge. We can think of apperception as a priming device that tells us which
parameters to attend to in analyzing second language data. That is, it is a priming device that
prepares the input for further analysis. What is noticed, or apperceived, then interacts with a
parsing mechanism that attempts to segment the stream of speech into meaningful units for the
learner. Thus, apperceived input is that bit of language that is noticed in some way by the learner
because of some particular features.
Why are some aspects of language noticed by a learner, whereas others are not? What are
the mediating factors at this initial stage? Put differently, what factors serve as input filters? An
obvious factor is frequency—possibly at both extremes. Something which is very frequent in
the input is likely to be noticed. On the other hand, particularly at more advanced stages of
learning, stages at which expectations of language data are well established, something that is
unusual because of its infrequency may stand out for a learner. A second factor that influences
apperception is what has been described as affect. Within this category are included such factors
as social distance, status, motivation, and attitude. This is exemplified by work of Krashen, who
SLA
proposed that individuals have what he called an Affective Filter. Another explanation has been
put forth by Schumann, who argued that social distance is important in preventing a learner
from obtaining input data. If a learner feels psychologically or socially distant from the target
language community, the language input will not be available to that learner. This may be the
case because a learner physically removes herself or himself from speakers of the target
language. A third factor that may determine whether language data are apperceived has to do
with the broad category of associations and prior knowledge. Learning involves integration of
new knowledge with prior knowledge. Importantly, one needs some sort of anchor on which to
ground new knowledge. Prior knowledge is one of the factors that determine whether the input
is meaningful. Prior knowledge is to be interpreted broadly and can include knowledge of the
native language, knowledge of other languages, existing knowledge of the second language,
world knowledge, language universals, and so forth.
A final factor to mention is that of attention. At a given point in time, does a learner attend
to the input? One can think of many reasons why the input is not attended to. Many of these are
trivial and don’t concern second language acquisition (e.g., falling asleep in class); others are
not trivial (e.g., an a priori realization that the input is not manageable, or task demands that
make multiple foci of attention difficult or impossible). Why is attention important? It is
important because it allows a learner to notice a mismatch between what he or she knows about
the second language and what is produced by speakers of the second language. If one is going
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to make modifications in one’s grammar, one must first recognize that changes need to be made.
Thus, readjustment of one’s grammar is triggered by the perception of a mismatch
2. Comprehended input
The factors mentioned thus far contribute to the potentiality of comprehension of the input. But
there is another point to consider: the concept of comprehended input. There are two differences
between the notion of comprehended input and that of comprehensible input. One is that
comprehensible input is controlled by the person providing input, generally (but not
necessarily) a native speaker of the second language, whereas comprehended input is learner-
controlled; that is, it is the learner who is or who is not doing the “work” to understand. This
distinction is crucial in the eventual relationship to intake, because it is the learner who
ultimately controls that intake. A second difference is that comprehensible input, in Krashen’s
sense, is treated as a dichotomous variable; that is, it is either comprehensible or it is not. But
there are different levels of comprehension that can take place. The most typical meaning of
comprehension is at the level of semantics. However, there is a broader sense of the word, one
that includes comprehension of structure as well as meaning. Comprehension represents a
continuum of possibilities ranging from semantics to detailed structural analyses. In other
words, comprehended input is potentially multi-staged.
There are a number of means by which one can reach a particular analysis. For example,
the most common way of getting at a syntactic analysis is by first having an understanding of
the meaning. However, one can also imagine having an understanding of the syntax yet not
being able to arrive at a meaning. This would be so in the case of idioms, for example, or a
proverb. What is the difference between apperceived and comprehended input? Apperception
is conceptualized as a priming device. It prepares the learner for the possibility of subsequent
analysis. For example, in learning a language with contrastive vowel length, a learner might
apperceive that vowel length is an important feature of the language. In comprehending,
however, the task facing the learner is to analyze the input in order to determine what the vowel
length is in some particular context and then to relate the particular vowel length to a specific
meaning.
There is another necessary separation of components—that of comprehended input from
SLA
intake. This separation is important because not all input that is comprehended becomes intake.
For example, input may be comprehended only for the immediate purpose of a conversational
interaction, or it may be used for purposes of learning.
One factor that determines whether a particular instance of comprehended input will result
in intake is the level of analysis of the input a learner achieves. For example, an analysis at the
level of meaning is not as useful for intake as an analysis made at the level of syntax. This
proposal is supported by Færch and Kasper (1986), who, in the context of foreign language
teaching, argued that one way of improving formal correctness is to provide learners with tasks
designed to promote recognition of formal features rather than overall comprehension of
meaning. A second factor is the time factor. Pressures of conversational interaction may
preclude sufficient analysis for the purposes of intake. In this case, the input (even though
comprehended) may have no further role in acquisition. What will determine whether the
second language is comprehended? Prior linguistic knowledge (e.g., knowledge of the NL, of
the TL, language universals, knowledge of other languages). These same factors are important
in the determination of apperception as well. This is not surprising because linguistic knowledge
is in some ways cumulative. One needs a place to attach new information and one needs some
basis for the analysis (i.e., comprehension) of new information. Comprehension cannot take
place in a vacuum. Prior knowledge forms the basis for comprehension (in either a narrow or
broad sense).
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3. Intake
Intake is the process of assimilating linguistic material. Intake refers to the mental activity that
mediates between input and grammars and is different from apperception or comprehension, as
the latter two do not necessarily lead to grammar formation. This, of course, suggests that intake
is not merely a subset of input. Rather, input and intake refer to two fundamentally different
phenomena. What mediates between what has been comprehended and what is eventually
important for intake? We have already mentioned that the quality of analysis (i.e., comprehended
input) is an important factor. Clearly, knowledge of the L1 and the L2 is also significant.
Additionally, whether a particular feature is part of UG (representing something innate) or is part
of a universal typological feature will also bear upon eventual intake. These factors are not to be
understood as being necessarily independent. Features that are part of universal knowledge and/or
present in the native language (or other languages known) are most likely to be candidates for a
deeper analysis and hence candidates for intake. How can we describe the intake component? It
is that component where psycholinguistic processing takes place. That is, it is where incoming
information is matched up against prior knowledge and where, in general, processing takes place
against the backdrop of the existing internalized grammatical rules. It is where generalizations
and so-called overgeneralizations are likely to occur; it is where memory traces are formed; and
finally, it is the component from which fossilization stems.
Fossilization results when new (correct) input fails to have an impact on the learner’s
nontarget-like grammar. That is, the correct input is not apperceived or is not comprehended,
and thus it is not further processed. Some of the major processes that take place in the intake
component are hypothesis formation, hypothesis testing, hypothesis rejection, hypothesis
modification, and hypothesis confirmation. Hypothesis formation takes place with the addition
of new information.
4. Integration
After there is language intake, there are at least two possible outcomes, both of which are a
form of integration: the development per se of one’s second language grammar and storage.
The distinction made here is between integration and nonintegration of new linguistic
information. Let’s consider how this relates to input. There are essentially four possibilities for
SLA
dealing with input. The first two take place in the intake component and result in integration,
the third takes place in the integration component, and the fourth represents input that exits the
system early on in the process.
1 Hypothesis confirmation/rejection (intake). This first possibility for input is useful as part
of the confirmation or rejection of a current hypothesis. This results in integration.
2 Apparent nonuse. Apparent nonuse stems from the fact that the information contained in
the input is already incorporated into a learner’s grammar. However, the fact that the
information is already incorporated into a grammar does not necessarily exclude it from being
utilized—but in a different way than what one normally thinks of. When the information
contained in the input is already a part of one’s knowledge base, the additional input might be
used for rule strengthening or hypothesis reconfirmation. Part of becoming a fluent speaker of
a second language involves the automatic retrieval of information from one’s knowledge base.
The knowledge base is developed through practice or repeated exposures to exemplars. Thus,
information that may appear to be redundant may in fact be serving an important purpose in
terms of the access a learner has to that information.
3 Storage. The third possibility is that input is put into storage, perhaps because some level
of understanding has taken place, yet it is not clear how integration into a learner’s grammar
can or should take place. An example will help to make this clear. A Spanish-speaking ESL
student had heard the word so in the following sentence: So, what did you do yesterday? The
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student could neither figure out what it meant nor how to use it and asked a direct question in
an ESL class as to the meaning. From this, one can infer that the learner had stored this
information and was waiting for it to be available for integration.
4 Nonuse. In this final possibility, learners make no use of the input at all. This may be
because they have not succeeded in comprehending it at a useful level. Integration is not
necessarily a one-time affair. Rather, there are different levels of analysis and reanalysis from
storage into the grammar, and within the grammar itself, as part of integration. Importantly, the
integration component does not function as an independent unit. This is particularly significant
in the model we are discussing (and SLA in general) because SLA is dynamic and interactive,
with knowledge itself being cumulative and interactive. Language information that is processed
and deemed appropriate for language development, yet that is not put into storage, becomes
part of a learner’s knowledge system, or grammar. What are some factors that mediate among
comprehended input, intake, and integration? Some are similar to those that are also available
at the level of apperception. For example, the organizational structure of the native language
may shape the way the learner’s grammar is structured. Existing knowledge of the second
language will also shape the way integration takes place. Universal principles of language may
also play a role in second language grammar formation. Given a particular element in the input,
there are universal factors that interact with it, resulting in a generalization of the initial input
to other related domains. A factor that provides the impetus or motivation for changes in one’s
knowledge base is the recognition of a mismatch between what is present in the input and the
learner’s grammar. For learners to modify their speech, they must first recognize that there is
something in need of modification—that there is a perceived mismatch between native speaker
speech and their own learner grammars. Evidence for integrated knowledge can be seen in one
of two ways. First, there can be changes in the rule system that surface in the output. This is in
fact what is typically thought of when one considers developmental changes. Second, there may
be changes in the underlying system although there is no output change. Changes in underlying
systems with no surface manifestation are typically subsumed under the category of reanalysis
or restructuring. Within a second language context, we can think of reanalysis in two ways.
First, a reanalysis of the underlying system may affect the potential for output. For example,
one can imagine a learner having learned the lexical item orange juice as a single lexical item
SLA
orangejuice and only at a later point in time reanalyzing it as orange + juice. This reanalysis
sets the stage for the potential forms apple juice, grapefruit juice, and so forth. Thus, reanalysis
allows for the potential creation of novel forms. Second, on a syntactic level, prefabricated
patterns may be analyzed (initially) with little output change.
5. Output
The final stage that needs to be examined is that of output. There are two points to emphasize.
First, there is the role of comprehensible output in testing hypotheses. Thus, there can be a
feedback loop back into the intake component. Second, there is the role output plays in forcing
a syntactic rather than a solely semantic analysis on language. This conceptualization of output
necessitates a feedback loop to comprehended input. Learners’ output is often equated with
their grammar. For example, it is frequently inferred that changes in the output represent
changes in a learner’s grammar. However, the two should not be equated. That the output is not
identical to one’s grammar is suggested by a number of factors. Among these is the recognition
that there are individual differences in what learners are willing to say. Personality factors such
as confidence in one’s ability to produce correct target language sentences may influence
whether or not a learner produces target language material. Additionally, learners produce
different linguistic forms that have varying amounts of accuracy depending on the context and
the task performed. For example, what learners can produce in writing is not what they can
318
produce in speaking; what they can understand from a printed page is not equivalent to what
they can understand from an oral stimulus. Finally, different grammatical information may be
used in different genres. Undoubtedly, this has to do with the ability to use different channels
to express linguistic information. It is also a matter of limitations of access that one has to one’s
knowledge base. Not only is confidence in one’s ability a determining factor in output, but we
can also consider how strongly represented the knowledge is. There may be different degrees
of strength of knowledge representation (perhaps related to the automaticity of language
processing) that will in part determine what output will take place and how it will take place.
An example is provided by Swain (1985, p. 248), who quoted from an eighth grade immersion
student who said, “I can hear in my head how I should sound when I talk, but it never comes
out that way.” Thus, there appear to be limitations on the translation of knowledge into output.
In sum, the output component represents more than the product of language knowledge; it is an
active part of the entire learning process.
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73. In terms of the Full Transfer/Full Access (FTFA) hypothesis, -----------.

1) UG role is limited to all parameters not principles
2) all features of L1 are transferred to L2 grammar
3) interlanguage and the native speaker's grammar are the same
4) L2 grammar is UG constrained
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Access or No Access to UG?
As it was discussed in Year 94, Item 83, when it comes to the issue of access to Universal
Grammar, two broad views are discussed generally: the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis
which argues that what happens in child language acquisition is not the same as what happens
SLA
in adult second language acquisition, and the Access to UG Hypothesis, which argues that the
innate language facility is alive and well in second language acquisition and constrains the
grammars of second language learners as it does the grammars of child first language learners.
Here, different hypotheses regarding the second view are discussed.
Access to UG Hypothesis
The opposing view to the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis is the Access to UG Hypothesis.
The common perspective is that “UG is constant (that is, unchanged as a result of L1
acquisition); UG is distinct from the learner’s L1 grammar; UG constrains the L2 learner’s
interlanguage grammars” (White, 2003, p. 60). White (2003) outlines five different positions
with regard to the initial state of second language learning; the first three take the first language
as the basis of the initial state and the second two take UG as the initial state: (1) Full
Transfer/Full Access, (2) Minimal Trees, (3) Valueless Features, (4) Initial Hypothesis of
Syntax, and (5) Full Access (without transfer).
1. Full Transfer/Full Access

This position assumes that the starting point is the L1 grammar, but that there is full access to
UG (both principles and parameters) during the process of acquisition. The learner is assumed
to use the L1 grammar as a basis but to have full access to UG when the L1 is deemed
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insufficient for the learning task at hand (therefore, all features of L1 are NOT transferred to
L2 grammar and we have parameter resetting). L1 and L2 learning differ, and there is no
prediction that learners will eventually attain complete knowledge of the L2. Therefore, L2
grammar is UG constrained.
2. Minimal Trees Hypothesis

Recall that in the previous position, full transfer/full access, learners draw on both the L1 and
UG. The first option was to draw on the L1 and, where that was insufficient, to draw on UG.
The Minimal Trees Hypothesis also maintains that both L1 and UG are available concurrently.
However, the L1 grammar that is available contains no functional categories, and these
categories, initially, are not available from any source. The emergence of functional categories
is not dependent on the L1 and hence there is no transfer; rather, they emerge in response to L2
input. The development of functional categories of learners from different languages will be
the same. On this view, learners may or may not reach the final state of an L2 grammar,
depending on what is available through the L1 and what is available through UG. They should
be able to reach the final state of an L2 grammar with regard to functional categories.
3. Valueless Features
This is the most technical of the hypotheses and will be dealt with in the least detail. In essence,
the claim is that there is weak transfer. The L1 is the primary starting point. Unlike the Minimal
Trees Hypothesis, both functional and lexical categories are available from the L1, but the
strength of these features is not available. There are consequences of feature strength in areas
such as word order. Acquisition involves acquiring appropriate feature strength of the L2.
Learners should be able to fully acquire the L2 grammar.
4. The Initial Hypothesis of Syntax (Platzack, 1996)

This position maintains that, as in child language acquisition, the starting point for acquisition
is UG.
5. Full Access/No Transfer

This position maintains that, as in child language acquisition, the starting point for acquisition
SLA
is UG. There is a disconnection between the L1 and the developing L2 grammar. A prediction
based on this position is that L1 and L2 acquisition will proceed in a similar fashion, will end
up at the same point, and that all L2 acquisition (regardless of L1) would proceed along the
same path. Learners should be able to reach the same level of competence as native speakers.
If there are differences, they are performance-related rather than competence-related.
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 See also: Gass and Selinker (2008, pp. 164, 165-168); Mitchell, Myles, and Marsden (2013,
pp. 89-94)
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74. All of these features characterize the construct of L2 implicit knowledge EXCEPT ---
-------.
1) early learning favored
2) primary focus on form
3) consistent responses
4) time pressure
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Rod Ellis (2005) lays out some criteria for defining implicit and explicit knowledge,
summarized in the table below:
Criterion Implicit knowledge Explicit knowledge

Degree of awareness Response according to feel Response using rules
Time available Time pressure No time pressure
Focus on attention Primary focus on meaning Primary focus on form
Systematicity Consistent responses Variable responses
Certainty High degree of certainty in Low degree of certainty in
responses responses
Metalinguistic knowledge Metalinguistic knowledge Metalinguistic knowledge
not required encouraged
Learnability Early learning favored Late form-focused
instruction favored

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 See also: Mitchell, Myles and Marsden (2013, p. 137)
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75. All of the following are most likely to underlie the sociocultural theory of SLA
EXCEPT ----------.
1) successful learning should lead to the appropriation of new knowledge
2) the most fruitful dialogic interaction is expert-expert
3) there should be a regulatory scale for error feedback
4) language is centrally a tool for thought
SLA
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
The metaphor of scaffolding has been developed in neo-Vygotskyan discussions to capture the
qualities of the type of other-regulation within the Zone of Proximal Development which is
supposedly most helpful for the learning or appropriation of new concepts. According to
Wood et al. (1976), scaffolded help has the following functions:
• recruiting interest in the task
• simplifying the task
• maintaining pursuit of the goal
• marking critical features and discrepancies between what has been produced, and the ideal
solution
• controlling frustration during problem solving
• demonstrating an idealized version of the act to be performed.
Aljaafreh and Lantolf (two proponents of the sociocultural theory of SLA) developed a
'Regulatory Scale' to illustrate how the tutor's interventions could be ranged on a continuum
from implicit to explicit correction. When the feedback needed by individual students moved
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closer to the Implicit end of the scale, they were considered to be moving towards more
independent and self-regulated performance, and this was consequently taken as positive
evidence of learning.
Socio-cultural theory views language as a 'tool for thought'. It is therefore critical of
'transmission' theories of communication, which present language primarily as an instrument
for the passage back and forth of predetermined messages and meanings. Dialogic
communication is seen as central to the joint construction of knowledge (including knowledge
of language forms), which is first developed inter-mentally, and then appropriated and
internalized by individuals. Similarly, private speech, meta-statement, etc., are valued
positively as instruments for self-regulation, that is, the development of autonomous control
over new knowledge.
Choice 2 is NOT supported by the socio-cultural theory of SLA (see Ellis, 2008, pp. 538-540).
For more explanation, refer to Year 92, Items 75 and 87.

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 See also: Mitchell and Myles (2004, pp. 197, 211, 220)
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76. The main contribution of Dulay et al. to SLA studies was that ----------.
1) there is a similar order in the acquisition of L2 morphemes
2) children cannot learn a wide range of L2 rules
3) the L1 plays a major role in the L2 acquisition process
4) few L2 errors are developmental
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Morpheme studies and second language learning: 1970s
As far as second language acquisition research is concerned, the most important empirical
SLA
findings of this period were probably the results of the so-called morpheme studies, and at a
conceptual level, Krashen's Monitor Model, which was a logical theoretical development
arising from such studies.
The second language morpheme studies were inspired by the work of Roger Brown (1973)
in first language acquisition. Brown had found a consistent order of emergence of 14
grammatical morphemes in English in his longitudinal study. The same order was confirmed
by other researchers, for example by De Villiers and De Villiers (1973) in their cross-sectional
study of 20 children acquiring English as a first language. Researchers in second language
acquisition set about investigating the acquisition of the same grammatical morphemes in
second-language learners. Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974, 1975) were the first to undertake such
studies. Dulay and Burt (1982, pp. 207-9) conclude: 'It is highly probable that children of
different language backgrounds learning English in a variety of host country environments
acquire eleven grammatical morphemes in a similar order.’
Thus, the 1970s witnessed a wealth of studies investigating development in second
language learners that seemed to show convincingly that it is systematic, that it is largely
independent of the first language of the learner, and that it presents many similarities with first
language acquisition, even though there are differences. These were major empirical findings
that undermined contemporary beliefs about how second languages are acquired.
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 See also: Mitchell and Myles (2004, pp. 39-40, 43-44)
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77. The Minimalist Program does NOT support the idea that ----------.
1) languages are different from one another only because of lexicons
2) language faculty consists of computational lexicon and UG
3) "narrow syntax" is basically invariant across languages
4) "merge" is a computational principle
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
In Chomsky’s most recent work on UG, called the Minimalist Program, he suggests that the
language faculty consists of a computational procedure (sometimes called "narrow
syntax”), which is virtually invariant across languages, and a lexicon (2000, p. 120). The
principles proposed in the Minimalist Program are even more powerful than in previous
incarnations of generative theory. But probably the biggest changes proposed in the Minimalist
Program concern parameters. Instead of being linked to specific principles and contained in the
structural part of the grammar, parameters are now contained within the lexicon. This departure
was the result of research attempting to describe principles and parametric variation in growing
numbers of the world’s languages; for UG to be able to account adequately for cross-linguistic
variation, the number of parameters attached to core principles was becoming very large. The
minimalist program’s endeavor, therefore, was to propose more abstract and invariant
computational principles, such as "merge” (the operation by which two syntactic objects are
combined to form a new syntactic unit, for example a verb and its complement combine to form
a Verb-Phrase) or Move α. In this view, languages are different from one another only because
their lexicons are different.
According to Minimalism, the abstract principles underlying all human languages will
SLA
already be specified in the computational module, and the task facing children (or L2 learners)
is therefore to learn the lexicon of the language around them, including the settings of the
parameters applying to that language. This idea is the Lexical Parameterization Hypothesis,
and it suggests that the parameters are contained primarily in the functional categories. For
example, the functional category Agr, which governs agreement phenomena, contains a gender
feature in languages such as French or Italian, but not in others such as English.
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 See also: Mitchell, Myles, and Marsden (2013, pp. 75-76)
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78. Which of the following features is appropriate in the Interaction Hypothesis of Long?
1) Automatic rather than controlled processing should be taken into account in learning L2.
2) Negative feedback is facilitative to learning L2.
3) Natural order of acquisition takes place in learning L2.
4) Form-focused instruction is mostly needed to learn L2 pragmatics.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Rethinking the Interaction Hypothesis
Over time, second language input or interaction researchers have shown themselves quite
responsive to the ongoing development of both linguistic and information processing theory
within second language acquisition studies. This is evident in Long's eventual reformulation of
the Interaction hypothesis (1996), which places much more emphasis on linking features of
input and the linguistic environment with 'learner-internal factors', and explaining how such
linkages may facilitate subsequent language development (Long, 1996, p. 454). Long's 1996
version of the Interaction hypothesis reads as follows:
It is proposed that environmental contributions to acquisition are mediated by
selective attention and the learner's developing L2 processing capacity, and that
these resources are brought together most usefully, although not exclusively, during
negotiation for meaning. Negative feedback obtained during negotiation work or
elsewhere may be facilitative of L2 development, at least for vocabulary,
morphology and language-specific syntax, and essential for learning certain
specifiable L1-L2 contrasts (Long, 1996, p. 414).
This new version of the hypothesis highlights the possible contribution to second language
learning of negative evidence as to the structure of the target language, derivable from
environmental language (i.e. from Foreigner Talk Discourse). It also highlights the attempt to
clarify the processes by which input becomes intake, through introducing the notion of selective
attention. These concepts are also repeatedly referred to, in current discussions of output and
its contribution to language development.
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79. The feature of perceptual saliency is that ----------.

1) the beginning and end of stimuli are easier to remember and to manipulate
2) stages of acquisition cannot be skipped through formal instruction
SLA
3) learners will first be able to move elements from outside to inside the sentence
4) underlying semantic relations should be marked overtly and clearly
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
In his Processability Theory (refer to Year 92, Item 85; and Year 96, Item 64), Pienemann has
relied on the principle of perceptual saliency, a widely used concept in cognitive psychology.
The feature of perceptual saliency that Pienemann resorts to in the explanation of the stages of
his theory, is that the beginning and end of stimuli are easier to remember and therefore to
manipulate. This means that learners will first be able to move elements from inside to outside
the sentence, that is, to sentence-initial or sentence-final positions, then from outside to inside
before being able to move elements within the sentence.
Choice 2 refers to the Pienemann’s Teachability hypothesis.
Teachability Hypothesis
Pienemann developed his Processability theory in order to explain the well-documented
observation that second language learners follow a fairly rigid route in their acquisition of
324
certain grammatical structures. This notion of route implies that structures only become
learnable when the previous steps on this acquisitional path have been acquired. For Pienemann,
at any given point in time, learners can only operate within their Hypothesis Space, which is
constrained by the processing resources they have available to them at that time. This has led
him to develop his Teachability hypothesis (Pienemann 1981, 1987, 1989, 1998), in which he
considers the pedagogical implications of the learnability or processability model, and draws
precise conclusions about how some structures should be taught. The predictions of the
Teachability hypothesis are as follows:
• Stages of acquisition cannot be skipped through formal instruction.
• Instruction will be most beneficial if it focuses on structures from 'the next stage' (Pienemann,
1998, p. 250).
Choice 3 refers to Slobin’s operating principles in first language acquisition.
Operating principles and first language acquisition

Slobin's (1973, 1979, 1985) operating principles are based on the claim that 'certain linguistic
forms are more "accessible" or more "salient" to the child than others' (Slobin, 1979, p. 107).
The 1979 edition of his book, Psycholinguistics, lists five operating principles and five resulting
universals; these are different from linguistic universals in that they are cognitive rather than
linguistic in nature, and they characterize the way in which children perceive their environment
and try to make sense of it and organize it. These early principles are as follows (Slobin 1979,
pp. 108-10):
Operating Principle A: pay attention to the ends of words.

Operating Principle B: there are linguistic elements that encode relations between words.
Operating Principle C: avoid exceptions.
Operating Principle D: underlying semantic relations should be marked overtly and clearly.
Operating Principle E: the use of grammatical markers should make semantic sense.
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SLA
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80. Based on UG, second language learners ----------.

1) have available to them from the onset the full range of UG principles and set parameters
2) start off with the parameter settings of their L1
3) resort to first language parameter setting in the last stance
4) reset principles on the basis of input
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Based on UG, and from a theoretical point of view, there are different possible scenarios open
to consideration when it comes to the question, “How is knowledge of language acquired by
second language learners?
a. Second language grammars are constrained by Universal Grammar. The second language is
one example of a natural language, and it is constrained by Universal Grammar in the same way
as native grammars are. Within this view, there is a range of different possibilities. For example,
325
some researchers believe that second language learners start off with the parameter settings of
their first language, and reset them on the basis of input. Others believe that second language
learners have available to them from the onset the full range of Universal Grammar parameters,
like first language child learners, and do not resort to first language parameter settings in the
first instance. Others still believe that second languages gradually draw on Universal Grammar,
and that (for example) functional categories are not available to learners at the beginning of the
learning process. All these approaches believe that the second language grammar can (but does
not necessarily) become native-like.
b. Universal Grammar does not constrain second-language grammars or Universal Grammar is

impaired. Some researchers believe that second language grammars are fundamentally different
from first language grammars because they are not constrained any longer by Universal
Grammar, and learners have to resort to general learning mechanisms, giving rise to 'wild'
grammars, that is, grammars which do not necessarily conform to the general rules underlying
natural human languages. Other researchers believe that only the principles and parameters
instantiated (activated) in the learners' first language will be available, and that parameter
resetting is impossible. Within this view, the second language grammar is still Universal
Grammar constrained in the sense that it does not violate Universal Grammar principles and
parameters (it is not 'wild'), but it cannot become the same as that of first language speakers of
the same language. There is considerable controversy around all these issues, and there are
many representatives of each of these positions in the literature about second language
acquisition.
Since these are all possibilities regarding access to UG (each contributing to different
theories dealt with previously throughout this book), this question, generally speaking, is
problematic by nature. The best answer, however, is Choice 2 based on the source from which
the item has been developed.

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SLA
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81. From a Vygotskyan perspective, it would be argued that we witness microgenesis in

the learner's second language system ----------.
1) through the appropriation of a new lexical item from the scaffolding talk of the native
speaker
2) which appears to take place during scaffolded teacher-student talk
3) while the negotiated zone of proximal development is led to explicit feedback
4) in social settings and as a result of interaction within the ZPD
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Many naturalistic studies conducted by researchers working outside the Vygotskyan tradition
offer evidence which can be interpreted as showing the sharing and transfer of new second
language lexical and grammatical knowledge between speakers. An example by Hatch (1978),
taken from Brunak et al. (1976), shows an adult learner eliciting and using an expression she
needs (last year) from a co-operative interlocutor:
326
NS: O that's a beautiful plant! I like that. Did you buy that?
Rafaela: Excuse me . . . This is the . . . October 24. The how you say . .. The... (writes
'1974') year, ah?
NS: 1974. Last year.
R: Ah! Last years.
NS: One. (Correction of plural form)
R: Last year. Last year a friend gave me it.
From an input or interaction perspective, such passages would be interpreted as instances of

negotiation of meaning, conversational repair, etc., and would be seen as maximizing the
relevance of the available input for the learner's acquisitional stage. From a Vygotskyan
perspective, it would be argued that we are witnessing microgenesis in the learner's second
language system, through the appropriation of a new lexical item from the scaffolding talk of
the native speaker.
Again this item is highly problematic since the conclusion arrived at is based on the
interpretation of the results of a research study (Brunak et al. (1976)) with its own specific
context, and the underlined statement cannot be issued as a tenet of the socio-cultural theory.
The interpretation is highly context-specific, a consideration easily neglected by the test
developer. However, based on the source from which the item has been constructed, the best
answer is Choice 1.
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82. In connectionism, the real criticism is ----------.

1) lack of distinction between competence and performance
2) that it is based on language making capacity
3) that learning occurs based on associative processes
4) ignoring both property and transition theories
SLA
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Emergentism (and its predecessor connectionism) do have problems, however, in accounting
for the poverty of the stimulus problem. Within the theory, there is no real way to explain how
people come to know more than what they are exposed to (emergentists make no distinction
between competence and performance). Because the theory relies heavily on frequency in the
input and general learning architecture, it cannot explain why people know that certain kinds
of sentence permutations are impossible. Indeed connectionist models of language learning
constitute an enormous challenge to nativist theories of language and acquisition. Not
surprisingly, therefore, they have been criticized by researchers working in the Chomskyan
paradigm.
More on Connectionist/emergentist models

In this approach to language learning, also referred to as constructivist approaches, the
emphasis is on usage. Learning does not rely on an innate module, but rather it takes place
based on the extraction of regularities from the input. As these regularities or patterns are used
over and over again, they are strengthened. Frequency accounts (N. Ellis, 2002) are an example.
327
Frequency accounts of second language acquisition rely on the assumption that “humans are
sensitive to the frequencies of events in their experience” (p. 145). The approach is exemplar-
based in that it is the examples that are present in the input that form the basis of complex
patterns and from which regularities emerge. According to N. Ellis (2002, p. 144),
“comprehension is determined by the listeners’ vast amount of statistical information about the
behavior of lexical items in their language.” In other words, language is not driven by an innate
faculty; rather, the complex linguistic environment provides the information from which
learners abstract regularities. Assuming that aspects of language are sensitive to frequency of
usage, there are implications for how one conceives of grammar. The representation of
language, in this view, relies on the notion of variable strengths that reflect the frequency of the
input and the connections between parts of language. In this approach, learning is seen as simple
instance learning (rather than explicit/implicit induction of rules), which proceeds based on
input alone; the resultant knowledge is seen as a network of interconnected exemplars and
patterns, rather than abstract rules.
Even though connectionist approaches have been around for a number of years, it is only
recently that research within a second language context has begun to take place. Connectionism
is a cover term that includes a number of network architectures. One such approach is parallel
distributed processing (PDP). At the heart of PDP is a neural network that is generally
biologically inspired in nature. The network consists of nodes that are connected by pathways.
Within connectionism, pathways are strengthened or weakened through activation or use.
Learning takes place as the network (i.e., the learner) is able to make associations, and
associations come through exposure to repeated patterns. The more often an association is
made, the stronger that association becomes. New associations are formed and new links are
made between larger and larger units until complexes of networks are formed. Recall the
discussion of the morpheme order studies. One of the explanations for the order of acquisition
of morphemes comes from Larsen-Freeman (1976), who proposed that frequency of occurrence
is a major determinant. To frame this explanation within the framework of connectionism, we
would want to say that learners are able to extract regular patterns from the input to create and
strengthen associations, although they may not be aware that this is what they are doing.
SLA
For similar items, refer to Year 91, Items 63 and 73; Year 92, Item 73; and Year 94, Item 76.
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 See also: Ellis (2008, pp. 472-473); Gass and Selinker (2008, pp. 219-); VanPatten and
Benati (2015, p. 67)
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83. Which of the following is NOT among the characteristics of the information-
processing approach?
1) Complex behavior is composed of simpler processes that are modular.
2) The mind is a limited-capacity processor.
3) Component processes cannot be isolated.
4) The mind is a symbol-processing system.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
In general, the fundamental notion of the information-processing approach to psychological
inquiry is that complex behavior builds on simple processes (McLaughlin and Heredia, 1996,
328
p. 213). Moreover, these processes are modular and can therefore be studied independently of
one another. The main characteristics of such an approach include:
1. Humans are viewed as autonomous and active.
2. The mind is a general-purpose, symbol-processing system.
3. Complex behavior is composed of simpler processes; these processes are modular.
4. Component processes can be isolated and studied independently of other processes.
5. Processes take time; therefore, predictions about reaction time can be made.
6. The mind is a limited-capacity processor.
For more expiation, please refer to Year 92, Item 84; and Year 94, Item 76.
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84. Which of the following states that the frequency of a feature in the materials is most
likely to affect L2 learning?
1) Real-operating conditions principle
2) Given-to-new principle
3) Markedness hypothesis
4) Input-flooding strategy
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
For input-flooding strategy, refer to Year 93, Item 61.
Three principles for effective grammar instruction

Batstone and Ellis (2009) have introduced an approach to grammar teaching which consists of
three principles.
1. The Given-to-New Principle
The notion that there is a principled relationship of one sort or another between given and new
SLA
information is far from new. In discourse analysis, for example, it is argued that effective
communication is enhanced when new information is preceded by relevant information which
is already known to the hearer (Cook, 1989, pp. 64–67). Clark and Clark (1977, p. 92) discussed
this as the ‘Given-New Contract’, pointing out that grammatical choices (such as whether to
use active or passive voice) are frequently motivated by determining what the hearer can
reasonably be expected to know. The Given-to-New contract focuses on language use.
However, our concern is with the ways in which given and new information are aligned in the
interests of language acquisition, which we refer to as the Given-to-New Principle. This
principle refers to the idea that the process of making new form/function connections involves
the exploitation of what the learners already know about the world – as part of their ‘given’
schematic knowledge. This knowledge is used as a resource in order to help them perceive
something new: how a meaning they are already familiar with is expressed by a particular
grammatical form.
2. The Awareness Principle
The Awareness Principle is directed at making learners aware of how a particular meaning is
encoded by a particular grammatical form. It is possible of course that learners are able to make
the connection between meaning and form implicitly (i.e. without awareness) and, to some
extent, this probably does take place but, as Schmidt (2001) has convincingly argued, ‘people
learn about the things they attend to and do not learn much about the things they do not attend
to’ (p. 30).
329
3. The Real-operating Conditions Principle

We can distinguish two broad types of grammar teaching activities – those that treat grammar
as an object to be studied and analyzed and those that treat it as a tool for engaging in effective
communication. The former type typically involves contrived examples and inauthentic
operations, while the latter strives to achieve either situational or interactional authenticity
(Bachman and Palmer 1996). Our position is that both types of activity are needed – and, indeed,
that the former can serve to guide learner performance in the latter. The activities illustrating
the Given-to-New Principle and the Awareness Principle in the previous sections have
encouraged learners to view grammar as an object, and have been directed at noticing and
developing explicit knowledge of form-meaning mappings. We will now consider the case for
treating grammar as a communicative tool and suggest ways in which this can be accomplished.
Johnson (1988, 1996) noted that cognitive theories of language acquisition emphasize the need
for practice in the context of ‘real-operating conditions’. That is, learners need the opportunity
to practice language in the same conditions that apply in real-life situations – in communication,
where their primary focus is on message conveyance rather than on linguistic accuracy.
Markedness Differential Hypothesis (Markedness Theory/Markedness Hypothesis/MDH)
In order to explain how markedness affects transfer, Eckman advanced the MDH:
those areas of difficulty that a second language learner will have can be predicted on the
basis of a comparison of the native language (NL) and the target language (TL) such that:
a. those areas of the TL that are different from the NL and are relatively more marked than
in the NL will be difficult;
b. the degree of difficulty associated with those aspects of the TL that are different and
more marked than in the NL corresponds to the relative degree of markedness associated
with those aspects;
c. those areas of the TL that are different from the NL but are not relatively more marked
than the NL will not be difficult. (Eckman, 1977, p. 321)
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 See also: Batstone and Ellis (2009, pp. 194-199); Celce-Murcia et al. (2014, pp. 263, 265-
266); Ellis (2008, p. 386)
SLA
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85. Which of the following statements is TRUE of the Zone of Proximal Development
(ZPD)?
1) It suggests that what we can do today with assistance is likely to be done independently
later.
2) It is the same thing as scaffolding or assisted performance.
3) It is conceptually and theoretically similar to Prabhu's concept of reasonable level of
challenge.
4) It is similar to Krashen's notion of i+1.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
The Zone of Proximal Development
The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) has had a substantial impact on developmental
psychology, education, and applied linguistics. The most frequently referenced definition of the
ZPD is “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent
problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving
under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86). The
330
ZPD has captivated educators and psychologists for a number of reasons. One is the notion of
assisted performance, which, though not equivalent to the ZPD (ZPD is not the same thing as
scaffolding), has been a driving force behind much of the interest in Vygotsky’s research.
Another compelling attribute of the ZPD is that, in contrast to traditional tests and measures
that only indicate the level of development already attained, the ZPD is forward looking through
its assertion that what one can do today with mediation is indicative of what one will be able to
do independently in the future. In this sense, ZPD-oriented assessment provides a nuanced
determination of both development achieved and developmental potential.
Common Misconceptions about the ZPD

There are two general misconceptions about the ZPD, easily the most widely used and yet least
understood of the central concepts of SCT (Chaiklin, 2003). The first is that the ZPD is
equivalent to scaffolding (or assisted performance), and the second is that it is similar to
Krashen’s notion of i + 1 (e.g., Krashen, 1982). Both assumptions are inaccurate.
Scaffolding, a term popularized by Jerome Bruner and his colleagues nearly four decades ago
(Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976), refers to any type of adult–child (expert–novice) assisted
performance. Scaffolding, unlike the ZPD, is thought of in terms of the amount of assistance
provided by the expert to the novice rather than in terms of the quality, and changes in the
quality, of mediation that is negotiated between expert and novice (Stetsenko, 1999).
With regard to misconceptions about equivalences between ZPD and Krashen’s i + 1, the
fundamental problem is that the ZPD focuses on the nature of the concrete dialogic relationship
between expert and novice and its goal of moving the novice toward greater self-regulation
through the new language. Krashen’s concept focuses on language and the language acquisition
device, which is assumed to be the same for all learners with very little room for differential
development (e.g., Dunn & Lantolf, 1998; Thorne, 2000). Krashen’s hypothesis claims that
language develops as a result of learners comprehending input that contains features of the new
language that are “slightly” beyond their current developmental level. As researchers have
pointed out, there is no way of determining precisely the i +1 of any given learner in advance
of development. It can only be assumed after the fact. In terms of the ZPD, development can be
predicted in advance for any given learner on the basis of his or her responsiveness to mediation.
SLA
This is what it means to say that what an individual is capable of with mediation at one point in
time, he or she will be able to do without mediation at a future point in time. Moreover,
development is not merely a function of shifts in linguistic performance, as in the case of
Krashen’s model, but is also determined by the type of, and changes in, mediation negotiated
between expert and novice.
Prabhu's concept of reasonable level of challenge

In task sequencing, sequencing should be determined by task’s level of “reasonable challenge”.
The concept of reasonable challenge implies that learners should not be able to meet the challenge
too easily but should be able to meet it with some effort. According to Gibbons (2006, p. 26):
It is worth noticing that within the SLA area, although from very different theoretical
standpoints, related notions to that of the zone of proximal development have also been put
forward, for example Krashen’s ‘input hypothesis’ and the notion of i + 1 (Krashen, 1985),
Prabhu’s ‘reasonable challenge’ (Prabhu, 1987), and Swain’s ‘pushed language’ (Swain,
1985).
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 See also: Baralt, Gilabert, and Robinson (2014); Gibbons (2006, p. 26); VanPatten and
Williams (2015, pp. 212, 214-215)
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331
86. Which of the following hypotheses does NOT have a role in the updated version of the
Interaction Hypothesis?
2) noticing hypothesis
3) output hypothesis
4) input hypothesis
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
In contrast to the early version of the IH, which simply postulated an effect for comprehensible
input, its updated version sought to account for how interactionally modified input contributes
to acquisition by specifying the learner internal mechanisms involved. Interactionally modified
input works for acquisition when (1) it assists learners to notice linguistic forms in the input
(noticing hypothesis) and (2) the forms that are noticed lie within the learner's processing input
and capacity (input hypothesis). The updated version of the IH also afforded a much richer
view of how negotiation can assist language learning. As in the early version, negotiation was
seen as providing learners with comprehensible input, thereby supplying them with positive
evidence (i.e. models of what is grammatical and acceptable-Long 1996, p. 413).
The later version of the IH also posits two other ways in which interaction can contribute
to acquisition: through the provision of negative evidence and through opportunities for
modified output (the output hypothesis). Long (1996, p. 4) defined negative evidence as ‘input
that provides direct or indirect evidence of what is ungrammatical'. It arises when learners
receive feedback on their own attempts to use the L2. Gass (1997a) suggested that the negative
evidence learners obtain through negotiation serves to initiate interlanguage change but that
permanent restructuring may only take place after an 'incubation period' during which the
learner has access to input that provides further evidence of the need for the change. In other
words, the effects of negative evidence may be delayed. Modified output occurs in cases where
there is learner uptake-with-repair. In positing a role for this, Long was incorporating Swain’s
(1985, 1995) Comprehensible Output Hypothesis.
SLA
The updated version of the IH is also implicated in Long's views about focus on form'
(Long 1991; Long and Robinson 1998). Focus on form constitutes a type of form-focused
instruction that contrasts with focus on form. In focus on form instruction, attention to form
arises out of meaning-centered activity derived from the performance of a communicative task.
Focus-on-forms instruction involves the pre-selection of specific features based on a linguistic
syllabus and the intensive and systematic treatment of those features. Here we are concerned
with the role that negotiation of meaning and form plays in drawing learners' attention to
linguistic forms they are experiencing problems with. Doughty (2001) noted 'the factor that
distinguishes focus on form from other pedagogical approaches is the requirement that focus
on form involves learners briefly and perhaps simultaneously attending to form, meaning and
use during one cognitive event' (p. 2I). One of the chief ways in which this takes place is through
recasts.
The Teachability Hypothesis is, therefore, in sharp contrast with the Interaction Hypothesis
(both the earlier and the updated versions) since the former states that a structure cannot be
successfully taught (in the sense that it will be used correctly and spontaneously in
communication) unless the learner is developmentally ready to acquire it while the latter gives
a prominent status to the role of instruction in second language acquisition.
332
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 See also: Ellis (2008, pp. 254-255); Mitchell and Myles (2004, pp. 173-4)
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87. Why is focusing on pragmatic meaning of paramount importance?

1) It provides an opportunity for a focus-on-form approach.
2) It contributes to the learning of formulaic expressions.
3) It is likely to bring about change in acquisitional route.
4) It is intrinsically motivating and fosters fluency.
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Ellis (2014) has provided 10 principles to guide both researchers and practitioners when it
comes to the role and status of instruction in second language acquisition. Principle 2 of his
provisional specifications reads: Instruction needs to ensure that learners focus predominantly
on meaning.
He believes that the term focus on meaning is somewhat ambiguous. It is necessary to
distinguish two different senses of this term. The first refers to the idea of semantic meaning
(i.e., the meanings of lexical items or of specific grammatical structures). For example, can in
the sentence I can swim expresses a semantic meaning (i.e., ability). The second sense of focus
on meaning relates to pragmatic meaning (i.e., the highly contextualized meanings that arise in
acts of communication). Can also encodes pragmatic meaning, as when it is used in requests
such as Can you pass the salt? To provide opportunities for students to attend to and perform
pragmatic meaning, a task-based (or, at least, a tasks-supported) approach to language teaching
is required. It is clearly important that instruction ensures opportunities for learners to focus on
both types of meaning, but arguably, it is pragmatic meaning that is crucial to language learning.
There is an important difference in the instructional approaches needed for semantic versus
pragmatic meaning. In the case of semantic meaning, the teacher and the students can treat
language as an object and function as pedagogue and learners. But in the case of pragmatic
SLA
meaning, they need to view the L2 as a tool for communicating and to function as
communicators. 2 In effect, this involves two entirely different orientations to teaching and
learning.
The opportunity to focus on pragmatic meaning is important for a number of reasons:

 In the eyes of many theorists (e.g., Prabhu, 1987; Long, 1996), only when learners are
engaged in understanding and producing messages in the context of actual acts of
communication are the conditions created for acquisition to take place.
 To develop true fluency in an L2, learners must have opportunities to create pragmatic
meaning (DeKeyser, 1998).
 Engaging learners in activities during which they are focused on creating pragmatic
meaning (and, therefore, treating language as a tool rather than as an object) is
intrinsically motivating.

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 See also: Celce-Murcia et al. (2014, p. 34)
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333
88. What is the difference between comprehensible and comprehended input?

1) Comprehended input fosters implicit knowledge, while comprehensible input develops
explicit knowledge.
2) Comprehensible input is speaker-controlled but comprehended input is learner-
controlled.
3) Comprehensible input is concerned with meaning but comprehended input deals with
form.
4) Comprehended input is a dichotomous variable, while comprehensible input is not.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
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89. Which SLA theory does the principle "learners tend to process the first noun or
pronoun they encounter in a sentence as the subject" belong to?
1) Pienemann's Processability Theory
2) Chomsky's Universal Grammar
3) Lantolf’s Sociocultural Theory
4) VanPatten's Input Processing
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
For Pienemann's Processability Theory, refer to Year 92, Item 85 or Year 96, item 64.
For Chomsky's Universal Grammar, refer to Year 94, Item 83.
For Lantolf’s Sociocultural Theory, refer to Year 92, Item 87; and Year 94, Item 86.
For VanPatten's Input Processing, refer to Year 92, Item 72.
SLA
For items related to “Processability Theory”, please refer to Year 91, Item 79; Year 92, Items
80 and 85; Year 93, Item 79; and Year 96, Item 64.
For items related to “sociocultural theory”, please refer to Year 91, Items 64 and 69; Year 92,
Items 71 and 87; Year 93, Items 2 and 75; Year 94, Item 86; and Year 96, Item 63.
For similar items on “input processing”, refer to Year 92, Item, 72; Year 93, Item 89; Year 94,
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 See also: Gass and Selinker (2008, pp. 159-165 ); VanPatten and Williams (2015, pp. 113-
134, 159-160)
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90. The three distinct phases proposed in Dörnyei’s motivational cycle respectively follow
as ----------.
1) choice motivation, executive motivation, and motivational retrospection
2) executive motivation, motivational retrospection, and choice motivation
3) executive motivation, choice motivation, and motivational retrospection
4) choice motivation, motivational retrospection, and executive motivation
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Dörnyei and Ottó (1998) proposed a model of motivation that allows for changes over time.
Essentially, there are three components to this model which represent three temporal steps. The
model chronicles how initial wishes are transformed into goals, how intentions are
operationalized, then how they are enacted, and finally how a goal is accomplished and
evaluated. The three phases are:
• Preactional (Choice) stage. This is the stage during which motivation is generated. This leads
to the selection of the goal that will be pursued.
• Actional stage. This is referred to as executive motivation and it relates to the sustaining of
the activity even with distracting influences.
• Postactional stage. The third phase follows the completion of the action. This is referred to
as motivational retrospection. This refers to the evaluation of how the activity went and feeds
into future activities that might be pursued in the future. These are schematized in the following
figure:
Preactional stage Actional stage Postactional stage
CHOICE MOTIVATION EXECUTIVE MOTIVATION MOTIVATIONAL RETROSPECTION

Motivational Functions
Motivational Functions Motivational Functions  Forming casual attributions
 Setting goals  Generating and carrying out  Elaborating standards and
 Forming intentions subtasks strategies
 Launching action  Ongoing appraisal (of one’s  Dismissing the intention and
achievement) further planning
 Action control (self-regulation)
Main motivational influences

Main motivational influences Main motivational influences  Attributional factors (e.g.
 Various goal properties (e.g.  Quality of the learning attributional styles and biases)
goal relevance, specificity and experience (pleasantness, need  Self-concept beliefs (e.g. self-
proximity) significance, coping potential, confidence and self-worth)
 Values associated with the self and social image)
 Received feedback, praise, grades
learning process itself, as well as  Sense of autonomy
with its outcomes and  Teachers’ and parents’ influence
consequences  Classroom reward and goal
 Attitudes towards the L2 and its structure (e.g. competitive or
speakers cooperative)
 Expectancy of success and  Influence of the learner group
SLA
perceived coping potential  Knowledge and use of self-
 Learner beliefs and strategies regulatory strategies (e.g. goal
 Environmental support or setting, learning, and self-
hindrance motivating strategies)

A Process Model of L2 Motivation

As Dörnyei (2005) points out, the division between stages is not as abrupt as would seem by
this diagram on paper. Where one stage ends and another begins most likely includes some
overlap. The model, however, is intended to show that different motives may be involved at
different points in time. Further motives can be reassessed and modified during the process.
Shoaib and Dörnyei (2005) found that specific episodes in people’s lives had the consequence
of restructuring their motivation.
For a similar item, refer to Year 94, Item 82; and Year 96, Item 79.
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335
91. Felicity conditions are met when ----------.

1) communication is carried out by the right person in a right place at the right time
2) rules and principles in a communication are followed
3) communication is carried out in a particular context
4) the analysis of speech acts, implied meaning, and pragmatic routines are taken into
account
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
An important notion in speech act theory is the concept of felicity conditions. For a speech act
to ‘work’, Austin argued that there are a number of conditions that must be met. The first of
these is that there must be a generally accepted procedure for successfully carrying out the
speech act, such as inviting someone to a wedding through the use of a formal written wedding
invitation, rather than (for many people) an informal email message. Also the circumstances
must be appropriate for the use of the speech act. That is, someone must be getting married.
The person who uses the speech act must be the appropriate person to use it in the particular
context – such as the bride or groom's family, or in some cases the bride or groom, inviting the
person to the wedding. A friend of the couple getting married cannot, for example, without the
appropriate authority invite someone to the wedding.
Austin argued that this procedure must be carried out correctly and completely. And the
person performing the speech act must (in most circumstances) have the required thoughts,
feelings and intentions for the speech act to be ‘felicitous’. That is, the communication must
be carried out by the right person, in the right place, at the right time and, normally, with
a certain intention or it will not ‘work’. If the first two of these conditions are not satisfied,
the act will not be achieved and will ‘misfire’. If the third of these conditions does not hold,
then the procedure will be ‘abused’.
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92. The difference between conventional presupposition and pragmatic presupposition is
that ----------.
1) the latter is context-independent and arises from the use of an utterance in a particular
context
2) the former is based on politeness universals
3) the latter is typically linked to particular linguistic forms
4) the former is less context-dependent
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Presupposition and discourse
An important notion in the area of speech act theory and pragmatics is presupposition.
Presupposition refers to the common ground that is assumed to exist between language users
such as assumed knowledge of a situation and/or of the world. This may come from sources
such as books, television and the Internet, or through personal experiences with the world. A
speaker says something based on their assumption (or presupposition) of what the hearer is
likely to ‘know' and what they will infer from what they say.
336
Two main kinds of presupposition are discussed in the area of pragmatics: conventional
presupposition and pragmatic presupposition. Conventional presuppositions are less context-
dependent than pragmatic presuppositions and are typically linked to particular linguistic forms.
For example 'Would you like some coffee?’ suggests the coffee is already prepared whereas
'Would you like anything to drink?’ does not suggest a drink has already been prepared (Lo
Castro, 2003).
Pragmatic presuppositions, however, are context-dependent and arise from the use of an
utterance in a particular context. The following example from the delicatessen section of a
supermarket illustrates this. The customers know they need to take a ticket from the ticket
machine and wait their turn to be served. The person with the ticket with ‘2’ on it is the next
person to be served. B implicates what A has said as an offer of service to them (alone).
A: Customer number two!
B: Ah… could I have 250 grams of the honey smoked ham please?
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93. Schegloff criticizes critical discourse analysis for ----------.
1) overemphasizing the context in which a text is produced
2) lack of attention to issues of power, inequality, and social status
3) lack of attention to wider historical, cultural, and political issues
4) overlooking how the participants take up what is said in the text
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
A debate (Billig, 1999) that took part in the journal Discourse & Society on the relationship
between conversation analysis and critical discourse analysis illustrates criticisms against
conversation analysis and critical discourse analysis. In this debate Schegloff criticizes critical
discourse analysis for relying on the analyst's view of what is happening in the text rather than
looking at how the participants ‘take up’ what is said in a text. Schegloff also criticizes
critical discourse analysts for drawing on what they know about people engaged in an
interaction for their interpretation of the data.
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94. When speakers report on people's mental states, they often use expressions which
identify the type of mental state. This is called ----------.
1) formulaic expression
2) domain restriction
3) propositional attitude
4) indexicality
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
A formulaic expression (also formulae, formulaic language, formulaic sequence) is “a
sequence, continuous or discontinuous, of words or other elements, which is, or appears to be,
prefabricated: that is, stored and retrieved whole from memory at the time of use, rather than
337
being subject to generation or analysis by the language grammar.” In other words, they are
sequences of words that are stored and retrieved as a unit from memory at the time of use, rather
than generated online using the full resources of the grammar of the language. Researchers have
used many different terms for this phenomenon, including prefabricated routines, routine
formulae, stock utterances, lexical phrases or lexicalized phrases, institutionalized utterances,
and unanalyzed chunks. Formulaic sequences may be semantically transparent and
grammatically regular (e.g. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” “with best wishes,” “thank you very
much”) or irregular in their form and meaning, as is the case with idioms. Formulaic sequences
may be learned initially as a unit, without an understanding of their internal structure, and later
analyzed so that internal elements can be used productively; formulaic sequences can also be
constructed from smaller units but stored as a unit for future use, a process called fusion. Some
formulae have open slots and are called lexicalized sentence stems, e.g. “Who the [expletive]
does [pronoun] think [pronoun] is?” Formulaic language is believed to have several functions,
including conserving processing resources, enhancing both fluency and idiomaticity, and
realizing specific interactional functions. Formulaic sequences that primarily function to
organize discourse (e.g. “In the first place,” “So what you are saying is X”) are often referred
to as conversational routines or gambits. Formulaic sequences associated with a specific speech
act (e.g. “I really like your [noun],” “If it’s not too much trouble, could you X?”) are sometimes
called politeness formulas.
Indexicality is the phenomenon of a sign pointing to (or indexing) some object in the
context in which it occurs. A sign that signifies indexically is called an index or, in philosophy,
an indexical.
Domain Restriction: The term 'domain restriction' describes a cluster of phenomena
involving the interaction of compositional semantics and the context in the interpretation of
tripartite quantificational structures and referring expressions. Research on domain restriction
has focused on the following questions: What constructions are associated with domains? What
linguistic and contextual factors determine a particular domain of quantification or reference!
And how may the contextual influences on domain restriction be modeled? (see Cummings,
2010, pp. 133-135).
A propositional attitude is a mental state held by an agent toward a proposition.
Propositional attitudes are often assumed to be the fundamental units of thought and their
contents, being propositions, are true or false from the perspective of the person. An agent can
have different propositional attitudes toward the same proposition (e.g., “S believes that her
ice-cream is cold,” and “S fears that her ice-cream is cold”). Linguistically, propositional
attitudes are denoted by a verb (e.g. "believed") governing an embedded "that" clause, for
example, 'Sally believed that she had won'.
In other words, when speakers report on people's mental states, they often use expressions DA & Sociolinguistics
which identify the type of this mental state (e.g. belief, doubt, fear) and its content, referred to
in the form of a that-clause, as in (1).
(1) Ben believes that Alaska is an island.
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 See also: Cummings (2010); Richards and Schmidt (2010, p. 229)
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95. Given that conceptualizations of face are rooted in conceptualizations of the social self,
(Arundale, 2006) ----------.
1) face explains the actions of individuals as caused by internal needs
2) face is a social psychological phenomenon
3) face is a matter of the individual actor's public self-image
4) face is a relational phenomenon
338
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
In a recent re-examination of face as related to politeness, Bargiela-Chiappini (2003, p. 1463)
argues for examining “cultural conceptualizations of the social self and its relationship to others
as an alternative and possibly more fruitful way of studying the relevance and dynamics of
‘face’ and ‘facework’ in interpersonal contacts”. One productive alternative account of the
social self and hence of face draws on the well-developed tradition of theory and research on
interpersonal communication. Within this framework, face is a relational and an interactional,
rather than an individual phenomenon, in that the social self is interactionally achieved in
relationships with others. Positive and negative face are re-conceptualized in terms of the
dialectical opposition between connection with others and separation from them. This culture-
general conceptualization is interpreted in research using the culture-specific construal of this
relational dialectic in the cultural group under study. Framing face as both relational and
interactional permits an integrated account of the full scope of human facework from outright
threat, through both addressing face without changing it and balancing threat with support, to
outright face support.
Conceptualizing the social self as arising in relationships entails a distinct ontology in
which social selves, together with the social order, are emergent in communication. Given that
conceptualizations of face are rooted in conceptualizations of the social self, this shift away
from Goffman’s (1955) ontology of the monadic social actor engaged in rituals of presentation
and avoidance provides one “alternative and possibly more fruitful way of studying the
relevance and dynamics of ‘face’ and ‘facework’ in interpersonal contacts” (Bargiela-
Chiappini, 2003, p. 1463). In the alternative ontology, face is not a matter of the individual
actor’s public self-image. Instead, because social selves emerge in relationships with other
social selves, face is an emergent property of relationships, and therefore a relational
phenomenon, as opposed to a social psychological one. Importantly, framing face as relational
rests directly on framing it as interactional. Within the framework of interactional achievement
models, face is a meaning or action, or more generally an interpreting that a participant
forms in verbal and visible communication.
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 See also: Arundale (2006)
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96. According to Malinowski, ---------- is a type of speech in which ties of union are created
by a mere exchange of words. They are neither the result of intellectual reflection, nor
do they necessarily arouse reflection in the listener.
1) institutional language
2) phatic communion
3) constructed discourse
4) language idling
Answer: Sazman Sanjesh’s Answer is choice 1. But the correct option is choice 2.
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Explanation:
Malinowski (1936, p. 296) illustrates how the meaning of utterances can be determined in what
he calls ‘the essential primitive uses of speech: speech in action, ritual handling of words, the
narrative, and “phatic communion” (speech in social intercourse)’. The last of these four types
of language use which are fundamental for Malinowski needs some brief comments. Discussing
language used in what he calls ‘free, aimless social intercourse’, like greeting formulae, passing
339
inquiries about someone’s health, comments on the weather, and comments on what is obvious
Malinowski points out the following:
to a natural man another man’s silence is not a reassuring factor but, on the contrary,
something alarming and dangerous ... The breaking of silence, the communion of words
is the first act to establish links of fellowship, which is consummated only by the
breaking of bread and the communion of food. The modern English expression, ‘Nice
day to-day’ or the Melanesian phrase ‘Whence comest thou?’ are needed to get over the
strange unpleasant tension which men feel when facing each other in silence.
After the first formula, there comes a flow of language, purpose-less expressions of
preference or aversion, accounts of irrelevant happenings, comments on what is
perfectly obvious ...
There can be no doubt that we have a new type of linguistic use – phatic
communion I am tempted to call it … – a type of speech in which ties of union are
created by a mere exchange of words. ... Are words in Phatic Communion used
primarily to convey meaning, the meaning which is symbolically theirs? Certainly not!
They fulfil a social function and that is their principal aim, they are neither the
result of intellectual reflection, nor do they necessarily arouse reflection in the
listener. ... Each utterance is an act serving the direct aim of binding hearer to speaker
by a tie of some social sentiment or other. Once more, language appears to us in this
function not as an instrument of reflection but as a mode of action...
... ‘phatic communion’ serves to establish bonds of personal union between people
brought together by the mere need of companionship and does not serve any purpose of
communicating ideas (Malinowski 1936, pp. 313).
Institutional language is the kind of language used inside institutions which is not
normally used in everyday language. Institutional uses of language are often seen as secondary
to everyday talks, with fixed roles and a restricted range (British Association for Applied
Linguistics, 1997, pp. 1-5).
“Language idling” means “just talking and doing no work”.

It is worth developing the point that it is through conversation that we conduct the ordinary
affairs of our lives. Our relationships with one another, and our sense of who we are to one
another, is generated, manifest, maintained, and managed in and through our conversations,
whether face-to-face, on the telephone, or even by other electronic means (Hutchby, 1998).
Social actions play a role in the management of our daily lives. In our interactions with others, DA & Sociolinguistics
we don't just talk; conversation is not, to adapt Wittgenstein’s phrase, "language idling."
We are doing things, such as inviting someone over, asking them to do a favor or a service,
blaming or criticizing them, greeting them or trying to get on first-name terms with them,
disagreeing or arguing with them, advising or warning them, apologizing for something one did
or said, complaining about one’s treatment, sympathizing, offering to help, and the like.
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 See also: British Association for Applied Linguistics (1997, pp. 1-5); Fitch and Sanders
(2005, p. 74); Senft (2014, p. 106)
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340
97. Which of the following is NOT true of conversation analysis?

1) Language in its primitive function and original form has essentially encyclopedic
character.
2) Historically, and almost certainly phylogenetically, talk came first.
3) Conversation analysis emerged from two intellectual streams in sociology.
4) Conversation is mutually constructed and negotiated.
Answer: Sazman Sanjesh’s Answer is choice 3. But the correct option is choice 1.
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Explanation:
One of the anthropologists whose ethnographic theory about meaning and language became
extremely influential in pragmatics was Bronislaw Malinowski. For him, language in its
primitive function and original form has an essentially pragmatic character. It was a mode
of behavior, a mode of action in which the meaning of a word or an utterance is constituted by
its function within certain contexts (Senft, 2014, p.8).
It might be argued that talk is but one of a number of modes of communication and
interaction available to humans, and so why privilege talk above, for example, writing or
electronic modes? After all, virtually no complex modern activity – in politics, law, education,
commerce, the electronic media, defense, finance, medicine, sport – can take place without
written documents or computerized communication. The main question, however, is about
which of these modes is most fundamentally human. Of these modes, only talk exists in all
human social groups. Historically, and almost certainly phylogenetically, talk came first.
And last but not least, talk is ontogenetically primary: children learn talk by mere exposure to
their caregivers, whereas literate and electronic forms of communication need to be actively
taught (Gardner, 2004, p. 263).
The background and program of CA

Conversation analysis is a field of study concerned with the norms, practices and
competences underlying the organization of social interaction. Notwithstanding its name, it is
concerned with all forms of spoken interaction including not only everyday conversations
between friends and acquaintances, but also interactions in medical, educational, mass media
and socio-legal contexts, 'monologic' interactions such as lecturing or speech-making, and
technologically complex interactions such as web-based multiparty communication. Regardless
of the interaction being studied, CA starts from the perspective that (contra both Chomsky and
Parsons) the details of conduct in interaction are highly organized and orderly and, indeed, that
the specificities of meaning and understanding in interaction would be impossible without this
orderliness (Drew and Heritage, 2006, pp. xxi-xxxvii). DA & Sociolinguistics
The central sociological insight of CA is that it is through conversation that we conduct the
ordinary, and perhaps extraordinary, affairs of our lives. When people talk with one another,
they are not merely communicating thoughts, information or knowledge. Our relationships with
one another, and our sense of who we are to one another, is generated, manifest, maintained
and managed in and through our conversations, whether face-to-face or on the telephone.
People construct, establish, reproduce, and negotiate their identities, roles, and relationships in
conversational interaction. In our interactions with others, we don’t just talk; conversation is
not, to adapt Wittgenstein’s phrase, “language idling”. We are doing things, such as inviting
someone over, asking them to do a favor or a service, blaming or criticizing them, greeting them
or trying to get on first name terms with them, disagreeing or arguing with them, advising or
warning them, apologizing for something one did or said, complaining about one’s treatment,
telling about troubles, sympathizing, offering to help and the like. These and other such
activities are the primary forms of social action. They are as real, concrete, consequential and
341
as fundamental as any other form of conduct. So when we study conversation, we are

investigating the actions and activities through which social life is conducted. It is therefore
primarily an approach to social action (Schegloff 1996a). Methodologically, CA seeks to
uncover the practices, patterns, and generally the methods through which participants perform
and interpret social action (Drew and Heritage, 2006, pp. xxi-xxxvii).
CA emerged from two intellectual streams in sociology. The first is Durkheimian and
derives most proximately from the work of Erving Goffman (1955, 1983). Goffman argued that
social interaction constitutes a distinct institutional order comprised of normative rights and
obligations that regulate interaction, and that function in broad independence from the social,
psychological and motivational characteristics of persons. The second is Harold Garfinkel's
ethnomethodology. This stresses the contingent and socially constructed nature both of action
and the understanding of action, and the role of shared methods in the production, recognition
and shared understanding of joint activities. CA emerged from a fusion of these two perspectives:
the Goffmanian interaction order structures the production, recognition and analysis of action as
it unfolds in real time through the use of shared methods or practices. This process (and its
analysis) are possible because participants reflexively display their analyses of one another's
conduct in each successive contribution to interaction (Drew and Heritage, 2006, pp. xxi-xxxvii).
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 See also: Davies and Elder (2004, pp. 262-281); Drew and Heritage (2006, pp. xxi-xxxvii);
Senft (2014, p.8)
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98. As one of the processes which a typical standard language passes through, codification
refers to ----------.
1) the function of the standard language as a unifying force for society
2) agreement on what is correct by everyone
3) the recognition of the language as one of the social dialects
4) the degree of mutual intelligibility
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
The notion 'standard language' (or the process of standardization of language) is somewhat
imprecise, but a typical standard language will have passed through the following processes:
(1) Selection - somehow or other a particular variety must have been selected as the one to be
developed into a standard language. It may be an existing variety, such as the one used in an
important political or commercial center, but it could be an amalgam of various varieties. The
choice is a matter of great social and political importance, as the chosen variety necessarily
gains prestige and so the people who already speak it share in this prestige. However, in some
cases the chosen variety has been one with no native speakers at all for instance, Classical
Hebrew in Israel and the two modern standards for Norwegian (Haugen 1994).
(2) Codification - some agency such as an academy must have written dictionaries and
grammar books to ‘fix’ the variety, so that everyone agrees on what is correct. Once
codification has taken place, it becomes necessary for any ambitious citizen to learn the correct
forms and not to use in writing any 'incorrect' forms that may exist in their native variety.
(3) Elaboration of function - it must be possible to use the selected variety in all the functions
associated with central government and with writing: for example, in parliament and law courts,
342
in bureaucratic, educational and scientific documents of all kinds and, of course, in various
forms of literature. This may require extra linguistic items to be added to the variety, especially
technical words, but it is also necessary to develop new conventions for using existing forms
how to formulate examination questions, how to write formal letters and so on.
(4) Acceptance - the variety has to be accepted by the relevant population as the variety of the
community - usually, in fact, as the national language. Once this has happened, the standard
language serves as a strong unifying force for the state, as a symbol of its independence of other
states (assuming that its standard is unique and not shared with others), and as a marker of its
difference from other states. It is precisely this symbolic function that makes states go to some
lengths to develop one.
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99. The term acrolect refers to ----------.

1) a dialect from which all standard dialects originate
2) a range of non-standard dialects
3) a creole's lexical source language
4) the basilect spoken by children
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
The idea of a creole continuum was first introduced by DeCamp (1971) to describe the
linguistic situation in Jamaica. Holm (1988, p.52) states that
A creole continuum can evolve in situations in which a creole coexists with its
lexical source language and there is social motivation for creole speakers to
acquire the standard, so that the speech of individuals takes on features of the latter
– or avoids features of the former – to varying degrees. These varieties can be
seen as forming a continuum from those farthest from the standard to those closest
to it.
On one end of the continuum, DeCamp identifies the acrolect, defined as the variety most
similar to the “standard” form of the overtly prestigious superstrate language (usually also the
variety associated with socioeconomic prestige). The basilect exists on the other end of the
spectrum, and is defined as the variety most distant from and often mutually unintelligible with
the “standard” (or acrolectal) form. The mesolect is defined as any intermediate variety, which
often demonstrates a large amount of linguistic variation and code mixing between the acrolect
and basilect (DeCamp 1961, 1971).
basilect mesolec acrolect source

t languag
Creole continuum
e
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 See also: Hudson (2001, pp. 63-67, 140)
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343
100. The expressions such as “This is probably wrong” and “I suppose …” as used more
frequently by women mainly show ----------.
1) women’s preference for the violation of maxim of quantity
2) women’s tendency to use more hedges
3) the importance of the lexifier language
4) the falsity of genderlects
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Genderlects
Dialects are defined in terms of groups of speakers, and speakers are most readily grouped by
geography. Thus, regional dialects are the most apparent and generally are what people mean
when they use the word dialect. Social groups are more amorphous, and social dialects
correspondingly less well delineated and, until recently, less well studied. Surprisingly, the
most obvious division of humankind into groups—women and men—has not engendered (if
you’ll pardon the expression) as much dialectal attention as regional and social divisions.
In the earliest work on women and language a number of features were identified that
occurred more frequently in women’s speech than in men’s. For example, women “hedge”
their speech more often than men do, with expressions like I suppose, I would imagine, This
is probably wrong, sort of, but . . . , and so on. Women also use tag questions more frequently
to qualify their statements (He’s not a very good actor, is he?), as well as words of politeness
(e.g., please, thank you) and intensifying adjectives such as really and so (It’s a really good
film, It’s so nice of you). It was claimed that the use of these devices was due to uncertainty and
a lack of confidence on the part of women.
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344

‫سال ‪1394‬‬
Methodology
1. Which language teaching method does the principle "Analogy provides a better
foundation for language learning than analysis" belong to?
1) The Direct Method
2) The Audio-Lingual Method
3) The Grammar Translation Method
4) Situational Language Teaching
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Out of the various influences of behaviorism emerged a number of learning principles, which
became the psychological foundations of Audiolingualism and came to shape its
methodological practices. Among the more central are the following:
1. Foreign language learning is basically a process of mechanical habit formation. Good habits
are formed by giving correct responses rather than by making mistakes. By memorizing
dialogues and performing pattern drills, the chances of producing mistakes are minimized.
Language is verbal behavior – that is, the automatic production and comprehension of
utterances – and can be learned by inducing the students to do likewise.
2. Language skills are learned more effectively if the items to be learned in the target language
are presented in spoken form before they are seen in written form. Aural-oral training is
needed to provide the foundation for the development of other language skills.
3. Analogy provides a better foundation for language learning than analysis. Analogy involves
the processes of generalization and discrimination. Explanations of rules are therefore not
given until students have practiced a pattern in a variety of contexts and are thought to have
acquired a perception of the analogies involved. Drills can enable learners to form correct
analogies. Hence the approach to the teaching of grammar is essentially inductive rather than
deductive.
4. The meanings that the words of a language have for the native speaker can be learned only
in a linguistic and cultural context and not in isolation. Teaching a language thus involves
teaching aspects of the cultural system of the people who speak the language.
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2. Which language teaching method puts emphasis on learning the most functional and
versatile vocabulary of the language?
1) Desuggestopedia
2) Community Language Learning
3) The Silent Way
4) Total Physical Response
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Gattegno sees vocabulary as a central dimension of language learning and the choice of
vocabulary as crucial. He distinguishes between several classes of vocabulary items. The “semi-
luxury vocabulary” consists of expressions common in the daily life of the target language
346
culture; this refers to food, clothing, travel, family life, and so on. "Luxury vocabulary” is used
Methodology
in communicating more specialized ideas, such as political or philosophical opinions. The most
important vocabulary for the learner deals with the most functional and versatile words of the
language many of which may not have direct equivalents in the learner’s native language.
“Functional vocabulary” includes such areas as pronouns, umbers, and comparison words that
refer to oneself and to others. This functional vocabulary provides a key, says Gattegno, to
comprehending the “spirit” of the language.
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 See also: Kumaravadivelu (2006, p. 130); Richards and Rodgers (2014, pp. 290-291)
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3. According to Wilkins, which of the following is NOT true about synthetic language
teaching?
1) It focuses on the purposes for which people are learning a language.
2) Learners are exposed to limited samples of language.
3) Language rules are learned in an additive fashion.
4) Language is taught piece by piece.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Wilkins (1976) made the classic distinction between synthetic and analytic syllabuses in the
language classroom.
Synthetic syllabuses, similar to type A syllabuses in White (1988), segment the target
language into discrete linguistic items for presentation one at a time: “Different parts of
language are taught separately and step by step so that acquisition is a process of gradual
accumulation of parts until the whole structure of language has been built up…At any one time
the learner is being exposed to a deliberately limited sample of language. The language that is
mastered in one unit of learning is added to that which has been acquired in the preceding units.”
(Wilkins, 1976, p.2). The language learning process is seen as the steady accumulation of
linguistic rules and items, in the ultimate direction of command of the second language. It is
assumed that the learner is able to learn language in parts, and to integrate them when the time
comes to use them for communicative purposes. Wilkins (1976) indicated that the learner’s role
is “to re-synthesize the language that has been broken down into a large number of small pieces
with the aim of making his learning task easier”. Synthetic approaches to syllabus design
characterize many traditional or conventional language courses and textbooks. The actual units
according to which synthetic syllabuses are organized vary. Structural, lexical, notional and
functional, and most situational and topical syllabuses are all synthetic (Long & Crookes, 1992,
1993; Long & Robinson, 1998).
A synthetic language teaching strategy is one in which the different parts of language are
taught separately and step-by-step so that acquisition is a process of gradual accumulation of
the parts until the whole structure of the language has been built up (Wilkins, 1976, p.2).
The above definition provided by Wilkins suggests that in a structural syllabus, language
is broken down into smaller units (e.g. grammatical items plus a word list) and then it is taught
piece by piece. This view as Wilkins observes exposes learners to limited samples of
language in that each lesson in the syllabus centers on one particular grammatical feature. This
is based on the assumption that language rules are learned in an additive fashion, which
refers to the complete mastery of each item before a new one is introduced (Nunan, 1988). Thus
it is the learner’s task to put these items next to one another and re-synthesize the language that
347
has been presented to him in a broken fashion (Wilkins, 1976). Once the learner manages to do
Methodology
this, he could be said to have mastered the target language.
In analytic syllabuses, the “prior analysis of the total language system into discrete pieces
of language that is a necessary precondition for the adoption of a synthetic approach is largely
superfluous… Analytic approaches … are organized in terms of the purposes for which people
are learning language and the kinds of language performance that are necessary to meet those
purposes” (Wilkins, 1976, p.13). Here a chunk of language is presented to the learner in the
context of a meaning oriented lesson. ‘Analytic’ refers not to what the syllabus designer does,
but to the “operations” required of the learner to recognize and analyze the linguistic
components of the language chunks presented.
Long and Crookes (1993, p.11) update Wilkins’s definition, pointing out that “analytic
syllabuses are those that present the target language whole chunks at a time, in molar rather
than molecular units, without linguistic interference or control. They rely on (a) the learners’
presumed ability to perceive regularities in the input and induce rules, and/or (b) the continued
availability to learners of innate knowledge of linguistic universals and the ways language can
vary, knowledge which can be reactivated by exposure to natural samples of the L2. Procedural,
process, and task syllabuses are examples of the analytic syllabus type.
Although arguably "more sensitive to SLA processes and learner variable" than synthetic
syllabuses (Robinson, 1998), some types of analytic syllabuses, also called "focus on meaning"
in Long and Robinson (1998), have been criticized for, for example, (1) lack of needs analysis,
(2) lack of accuracy attained, (3) unlearnability of some grammatical features from positive
evidence only, (4) and deprivation of the opportunity to speed up the rate of learning.
For more explanation and similar items, refer to Year 92, Item 4; and Year 96, Item 82.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Baleghizadeh (2016, p. 21); Crookes (1993, p. 11)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
4. Which of the following is TRUE about conversation-facilitation dialogs?
1) They lead students to inductive recognition of target rules.
2) They are often used for the sake of language analysis.
3) They often carry long and artificial sentences.
4) Students are expected to memorize them.
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
With conversation-facilitation dialogs, students are expected to memorize the sentences
(through active roleplaying) so that they can produce them quickly in new situations. This
provides practice in the rhythm of the phrase and in specific intonation patterns.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Rivers and Temperley (1978, p. 28)
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5. Why are methods more likely to solve beginning teachers’ problems compared to
approaches?
1) There is no right or wrong way of teaching according to a method.
2) Methods clearly tell teachers both "what to teach" and "how to teach".
3) Methods tend to be interpreted differently by different teachers.
4) Approaches tend to limit teachers more than methods.
348
Answer: 2
Methodology
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Methods offer some advantages over approaches, and this doubtless explains their appeal.
Because of the general nature of approaches, there is often no clear application of their
assumptions and principles in the classroom. Much is left to the individual teacher’s
interpretation, skill, and expertise. Consequently, there is often no clear right or wrong way of
teaching according to an approach and no prescribed body of practice waiting to be
implemented. This lack of detail can be a source of frustration and irritation for teachers,
particularly those with little training or experience. Methods, on the other hand, solve many
of the problems beginning teachers have to struggle with because many of the basic decisions
about what to teach and how to teach it have already been made for them. Moreover, method
enthusiasts create together a professional community with a common purpose, ideology, and
vernacular. This provides adherents with a cohort group of like-minded teachers with whom
they can share ideas and experiences. Methods can also be seen as a rich resource of activities,
some of which can be adapted or adopted regardless of one’s own ideology. Like the "P-P-P"
prescription of Present, Practice, and Produce, a method offers to the novice teacher the
reassurance of a detailed set of sequential steps to follow in the classroom.
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6. Which of the following is TRUE about left-brain dominant learners?

1) They prefer multiple-choice tests.
2) They frequently use metaphors.
3) They are intuitive.
4) They are synthesizing readers.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Left-Brain Dominance Right-Bain Dominance
Relies strongly on the intellect Uses intuitive processes
Remembers names Remembers faces
Responds to verbal instructions and Responds to demonstrated, illustrated, or
explanations symbolic instructions
Experiments systematically and with control Experiments randomly and with less
restraint
Makes objective judgments Makes subjective judgments
Is planned and structured Is fluid and spontaneous
Prefers established, certain information Is comfortable with elusive, uncertain
information
Reads analytically Reads with synthesis
Relies on language in thinking and Relies on images in thinking and
remembering remembering
349
Left-Brain Dominance Right-Bain Dominance
Methodology
Is stronger in talking, writing, and verbal Is stronger in drawing, images, and
communication manipulating objects
Prefers multiple-choice tests Prefers open-ended questions
Controls feelings More free with feelings
Deciphers linguistic cues, lexical, and Interprets body language, attends to facial,
grammatical subtleties nonverbal communication
Uses empirical description Uses metaphors and verbal imagery
Favors logical problem solving Favors intuitive problem solving
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7. Which compensatory strategy is concerned with overuse of words like “thing” or

“stuff”?
1) Circumlocution
2) Approximation
3) Use of all-purpose words
4) Appeal for help
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Communication Strategies
While learning strategies deal with the receptive domain of intake, memory, storage, and recall,
communication strategies pertain to the employment of verbal or nonverbal mechanisms for the
productive communication of information. Dörnyei’s classification of communication
strategies includes avoidance strategies and compensatory strategies:
Avoidance Strategies
1. Message abandonment: Leaving a message unfinished because of language difficulties
2. Topic avoidance: Avoiding topic areas or concepts that pose language difficulties
Compensatory Strategies
3. Circumlocution: Describing or exemplifying the target object of action (e.g., the thing you
open bottles with for corkscrew)
4. Approximation: Using an alternative term which expresses the meaning of the target lexical
item as closely as possible (e g. ship for sailboat)
5. Use of all-purpose words: Extending a general, empty lexical item to contexts where specific
words are lacking (e g. the overuse of thing, stuff, what-do-you-call-it, thingie)
6. Word coinage: Creating a nonexisting L2 word based on a supposed rule (e.g., vegetarianist
for vegetarian)
7. Prefabricated patterns: Using memorized stock phrases, usually for "survival" purposes (e.g.,
Where is the___ or Comment allez –vous?, where the morphological components are not
known to the learner)
8. Nonlinguistic signals: Mime, gesture, facial expression, or sound imitation
9. Literal translation: Translating literally a lexical item, idiom, compound word, or structure
from L1 to L2
350
10. Foreignizing: Using a L1 word by adjusting it to L2 phonology (i.e., with a L2
Methodology
pronunciation) and/or morphology (e. g, adding to it a L2 suffix)
11. Code-switching: Using a LI word with L1 pronunciation or a L3 word with L3
pronunciation while speaking in L2
12. Appeal for help: Asking for aid from the interlocutor either directly (e.g., What do you
call…? or indirectly (e.g., rising intonation, pause, eye contact, puzzled expression)
13. Stalling or time-gaining strategies: Using fillers or hesitation devices to fill pauses and to
gain time to think (e.g., well, now let’s see, uh, as a matter of fact)
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8. According to attribution theory, which of the following is NOT a cause of success and/or
failure in achieving a personal objective?
1) Ability
2) Attitude
3) Effort
4) Luck
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Based on the seminal work of psychologist Bernard Weiner (1986, 1992, 2000), attribution
theory focuses on how people explain the causes of their own successes and failures. Weiner
and others (Bandura, 1993; Williams & Burden, 1997, Slavin, 2003; Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011)
describe attribution theory in terms of four explanations for success and/or failure in achieving
a personal objective: (1) ability, (2) effort, (3) perceived difficulty of a task, and (4) luck.
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9. Why did the history of language teaching witness a shift toward deductive rule learning
in the cognitive approach?
1) To compensate for inadequacies of the Grammar Translation Method
2) To change the route of morpheme acquisition
3) To help learners acquire rules unconsciously
4) To emphasize meaningful language learning
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Cognitive Approach/Cognitive Code Learning
The age of audiolingualism, with its emphasis on surface forms and on the rote practice of
scientifically produced patterns, began to wane when the Chomskyan revolution in linguistics
turned linguists and language teachers toward the “deep structure” of language. Increasing
interest in generative transformational grammar and focused attention on the rule-governed
nature of language and language acquisition led some language-teaching programs to promote
a deductive approach rather than the inductivity of the ALM. Arguing that children
subconsciously acquire a system of rules, proponents of a cognitive code learning
methodology (see Carroll 1966) began to inject more deductive rule learning into language
351
classes. In an amalgamation of Audiolingual and Grammar Translation techniques, classes
Methodology
retained the drilling typical of ALM but added healthy doses of rule explanations and reliance
on grammatical sequencing of material.
Cognitive code learning was not so much a method as it was an approach that emphasized
a conscious awareness of rules and their applications to second language learning. It was a
reaction to the strictly behavioristic practices of the ALM and, ironically, a return to some of
the practices of Grammar Translation. As teachers and materials developers saw that incessant
parroting of potentially rote material was not creating communicatively proficient learners, a
new twist was needed, and cognitive code learning appeared to provide just such a twist.
Unfortunately, the innovation was short-lived, for as surely as rote drilling bored students, overt
cognitive attention to the rules, paradigms, intricacies, and exceptions of a language over-taxed
the mental reserves of language students.
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10. Which tasks often require students to derive new information by inferring it from
information they have already received?
1) Opinion-gap
2) Input-providing
3) Reasoning-gap
4) Information-gap
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Prabhu (1987) introduced three types of tasks in discussing task-based instruction:
1. An information-gap activity involves the exchange of information among participants in
order to complete a task. For example, an information gap activity might involve a student
describing a picture for another student to draw or students drawing each other’s family trees
after sharing information.
2. An opinion-gap activity requires that students give their personal preference, feelings, or
attitudes in order to complete a task. For instance, students might be given a social problem,
such as high unemployment and be asked to come up with a series of possible solutions.
Another task might be to compose a letter of advice to a friend who has sought their counsel
about a dilemma.
3. A reasoning-gap activity requires students to derive some new information by inferring
it from information they have been given. For example, students might be given a railroad
timetable and asked to work out the best route to get from one particular city to another or they
might be asked to solve a riddle.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Larsen-Freeman and Anderson (2011, pp. 158-160)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
11. Who was the episode hypothesis proposed by?

1) John Oller
2) James Cummins
3) Robert Kaplan
4) Stephen Krashen
352
Answer: 1
Methodology
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The Episode Hypothesis
More than a hundred years ago, François Gouin designed a method of language teaching called
the Series Method. One of the keys to the success of the method lay in the presentation of
language in an easily followed storyline. In a lesson, Gouin teaches a number of verbs, verb
forms, and other vocabulary in a little story about a girl chopping wood:
The girl goes and seeks a piece of wood.
She takes a hatchet.
She draws near to the block.
She places the wood on this block.
She raises the hatchet.
She brings down the hatchet.
The blade strikes against the wood. etc.
In easily visualized steps, the students are led through the process of chopping and gathering
wood, all at a very elementary level of the language.
In some ways, Gouin was utilizing a psychological device that, a hundred years later, John
Oller called the episode hypothesis. According to Oller (1983, p.12), “text (i.e., discourse in
any form) will be easier to reproduce, understand, and recall, to the extent that it is structured
episodically.” By this he meant that the presentation of language is enhanced if students receive
interconnected sentences in an interest-provoking episode rather than in a disconnected series
of sentences.
The episode hypothesis goes well beyond simple "meaningful" learning. Look at this
dialogue to illustrate the point further:
Jack: Hi, Tony. What do you usually do on weekends?
Tony: Oh, I usually study, but sometimes I go to a movie.
Jack: Uh huh. Well, I often go to movies, but I seldom study.
Tony:Well, I don’t study as much as Greg. He always studies on the weekends. He
never goes out.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
12. Which of the following is NOT a key element of cooperative learning?

1) Positive interdependence
2) Impulsivity
3) Individual accountability
4) Social skills
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The success of Cooperative Language Learning (CLL) is crucially dependent on the nature and
organization of group work. This requires a structured program of learning carefully designed
so that learners interact with each other and are motivated to increase each other’s learning.
Olsen and Kagan (1992) propose the following key elements of successful group-based learning
in CLL:
353
- Positive interdependence
Methodology
- Group formation
- Individual accountability
- Social skills
- Structuring and structures
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
13. Which of the following are the activities typically done in content-based classes?
1) Dictogloss, process writing, dialogue journals
2) Dialogue journals, map drawing, reflective listening
3) Dictogloss, reflective listening, transformation drills
4) Process writing, jigsaw puzzles, transformation drills
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Larsen-Freeman (2011) identifies five activities typically done in content-based classes:
1. Dictogloss
2. Graphic Organizers
3. Language Experience Approach
4. Process Writing, and
5. Dialogue Journals
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Larsen-Freeman and Anderson (2011, pp. 142-143)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
14. Why did language aptitude tests such as MLAT and PLAB gradually lose their
popularity?
1) They were extremely difficult to administer.
2) It was later found that language aptitude varies by age.
3) The concept of language aptitude was no more studied as a trait.
4) They mostly measured the general intelligence or academic ability of students.
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Language Aptitude
Historically, research on language aptitude has been a roller-coaster ride. John Carroll’s (Carroll
& Sapon, 199) pioneering work on aptitude, embodied in the Modern Language aptitude Test
(MLAT), began the quest. The MLAT asserted the predictability of number learning, sound
discrimination, pattern discernment and memorization for future success in a foreign language.
This test, along with the Pimsleur Language Aptitude Battery (PLAB) (Pimsleur, 1966) and the
Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB) (Peterson & Haik, 1976) were used for military
time in such contexts as Peace Corps volunteer training programs and military communication
courses to help predict successful language learners.
354
The above-mentioned aptitude tests were initially well received by L2 teachers and
Methodology
administrators, especially in view of their reportedly high correlations with ultimate success in
language classrooms. But slowly their popularity waned, even in the absence of alternative
measures of language aptitude (Parry & Child, 1990; Skehan, 1998). Two factors accounted
for the decline. First, even though the paper-and-pencil tests claimed to measure language
aptitude, it soon though became apparent that they more than likely reflected the general
intelligence or academic ability of a student in any instructional setting (Skehan, 1989:
Dekeyser & Koeth, 2011). At best, they appeared to measure ability to perform focused,
analytical, context-reduced activities that occupy a student in a traditional language classroom.
They hardly even began to tap into the kinds of learning strategies and styles that
subsequent research (Ehrman, 1990; Oxford, 1990b, 1996; Reid, 1995, Chamot, 2005; Cohen,
1998) showed to be crucial in the acquisition of communicative competence in context-
embedded situations. Learners can be successful for a multitude of reasons, many of which are
much more related to focus and determination than to so-called "native" abilities (Lett &
O’Mara, 1990).
Second, how is one to interpret a language aptitude test? Rarely does an institution have
the luxury or capability to test people before they take a foreign language in order to counsel
certain people out of their decision to do so. And in cases where an aptitude test might be
administered, isn’t such a test likely to bias both student and teacher? Both are led to believe
that they will be successful or unsuccessful, depending on the aptitude test score, and a self-
fulfilling prophecy is likely to occur. Isn’t it wiser for teachers to be optimistic for all their
students? By monitoring individual differences and abilities, teachers can steer the student
toward strategies that will aid learning and away from those blocking factors that will hinder
the process.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
15. What kind of error is the learner who says “He can sings” making?
1) Global
2) Induced
3) Intralingual
4) Interference
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
A number of different sources or causes of competence errors have been identified. Richards
(1971b) distinguishes three:
1. Interference errors occur as a result of ‘the use of elements from one language while speaking
another.’ An example might be when a German learner of L2 English says ‘I go not’ because
the equivalent sentence in German is ‘Ich gehe nicht’.
2. Intralingual errors ‘reflect the general characteristics of rule learning such as faulty
generalization, incomplete application of rules and failure to learn conditions under which
rules apply’.
3. Developmental errors occur when the learner attempts to build up hypotheses about the target
language on the basis of limited experience.
355
Intralingual errors are also often further subdivided. Thus, Richards (1971b) distinguishes the
Methodology
following:
1. Overgeneralization errors arise when the learner creates a deviant structure on the basis of
other structures in the target language. It generally involves the creation of one deviant
structure in place of two target language structures (for example, *‘He can sings’ where
English allows ‘He can sing’ and ‘He sings’).
2. Ignorance of rule restrictions involves the application of rules to contexts where they do not
apply. An example is *‘He made me to rest’ through extension of the pattern found with the
majority of verbs that take infinitival complements (for example, ‘He asked/wanted/invited
me to go’).
3. Incomplete application of rules involves a failure to fully develop a structure. Thus learners
of L2 English have been observed to use declarative word order in questions (for example,
‘You like to sing?’) in place of interrogative word order (for example, ‘Do you like to sing?’).
This type of intralingual error corresponds to what is often referred to as an error of
transitional competence (Richards, 197la).
4. False concepts hypothesized (i.e. the learner fails to comprehend fully) arise when the learner
does not fully comprehend a distinction in the target language – for example, the use of ‘was’
as a marker of past tense in *‘One day it was happened’.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis (1994, pp. 58-59)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
356
16. Which of the following sentences would normally be considered an indirect speech
act?
1) You are advised against fishing alone.
2) I hereby apologize for my impolite behavior last night.
3) Why don’t we go to the museum near the Lebanese restaurant?
4) Once again, we respectfully request that you hand in your forms by May 17.
Answer: 3
Linguistics
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Speech Acts
You can use language to do things. You can use language to make promises, lay bets, issue
warnings, christen boats, place names in nomination, offer congratulations, or swear testimony.
The theory of speech acts describes how this is done.
By saying I warn you that there is a sheepdog in the closet, you not only say something,
you warn someone. Verbs like bet, promise, warn, and so on are performative verbs. Using
them in a sentence (in the first person, present tense) adds something extra over and above the
statement.
There are hundreds of performative verbs in every language. The following sentences
illustrate their usage:
I bet you five dollars the Yankees win.
I challenge you to a match.
I dare you to step over this line.
I fine you $100 for possession of oregano.
I move that we adjourn.
I nominate Batman for mayor of Gotham City.
I promise to improve.
I resign!
I pronounce you husband and wife.
Thus, we can define a speech act as the action performed by a speaker with an utterance. If you
say, I’ll be there at six, you are not just speaking, you seem to be performing the speech act of
“promising.”
Direct and indirect speech acts

When an interrogative structure such as Did you . . .?, Are they . . .? or Can we . . .? is used
with the function of a question, it is described as a direct speech act. For example, when we
don’t know something and we ask someone to provide the information, we produce a direct
speech act such as Can you ride a bicycle?. Compare that utterance with Can you pass the salt?.
In this second example, we are not really asking a question about someone’s ability. In fact,
we don’t normally use this structure as a question at all. We normally use it to make a request.
That is, we are using a structure associated with the function of a question, but in this case with
the function of a request. This is an example of an indirect speech act. Whenever one of the
structures in the set above is used to perform a function other than the one listed beside it on
the same line, the result is an indirect speech act.
The utterance You left the door open has a declarative structure and, as a direct speech act,
would be used to make a statement. However, if you say this to someone who has just come in
(and it’s cold outside), you would probably want that person to close the door. You aren’t using
357
the imperative structure. You are using a declarative structure to make a request. It’s another
indirect speech act.
For more information, see Year 96, Item 5. For similar items, refer to Year 91, Item 19; and
Year 94, Items 19, 22, and 95.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 174-175); Yule (2014, pp. 131-132)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
17. The statement Daffodils are flowers is an example of a(n) ----------- statement.
1) synthetic
Linguistics
2) irrational
3) contradictory
4) analytic
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Truth Conditions
Statements are either:
1) Linguistically true or false: Linguistically true statements are called analytic
statements, and linguistically false statements are called contradictions.
2) Empirically true or false: Empirically true or false statements are called synthetic
statements.
Consider first the property of being linguistically true (also called analytically true or just
analytic) or linguistically false. A sentence is linguistically true (or linguistically false) if its
truth (or falsehood) is determined solely by the semantics of the language and it is not necessary
to check any facts about the nonlinguistic world in order to determine its truth or falsehood.
A sentence is empirically true (or empirically false) if it is not linguistically true or false
— that is, if it is necessary to check the nonlinguistic world in order to verify or falsify it;
knowledge of the language alone does not settle the matter.
Therefore, a distinction can be made between analytic statements and synthetic statements.
Analytic statements are true by virtue of meanings, while synthetic statements are claims
whose truth or falsity depends on how the world is.
Synthetic statements
For most sentences it does not make sense to say that they are always true or always false: The
term synthetic is also used for such sentences. Rather, they are true or false in a given situation,
as we can see with Jack swims. When sentences are true or false in ‘a given situation’, they are
referred to as “synthetic statements”.
In other rods, a synthetic statement requires the reader/listener to refer to the world for its
interpretations: e.g., Jack is swimming. Thus, a synthetic statement is either empirically true or
empirically false, depending on the context.
Analytic statements
But a restricted number of sentences are indeed always true regardless of the circumstances.
They are called tautologies. (The term analytic is also used for such sentences.) Examples of
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tautologies are sentences like Circles are round and A person who is single is not married. Their
truth is guaranteed solely by the meaning of their parts and the way they are put together.
In other words, an analytic statement describes a sentence that is true by virtue of its
meaning alone, irrespective of context: e.g., Kings are male. Thus, an analytic statement is
linguistically true.
Contradictions
Some sentences are always false. These are called contradictions. Examples of contradictions
are sentences like Circles are square or A bachelor is married.
Linguistics
Contradictions vs. Contradictory statements
Contradictions are related to one sentence, but contradictory statements are related to more than
one sentence.
Contradictory statements is a mutual negative entailment: the truth of one sentence
necessarily implies the falseness of another sentence, and vice versa: e.g., The door is open and
The door is closed are contradictory sentences. Thus, contradictory statements are
linguistically false.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Akmajian et al. (2010, pp. 240-241); Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 141-142)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
18. What is the relationship between the following two sentences?

My father teaches English and French at the college.
My father teaches English at the college.
1) The second sentence entails the first one.
2) The first sentence entails the second one.
3) The second sentence presupposes the first one.
4) The first sentence presupposes the second one.
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Truth Relations
There are truth relations as well as truth properties that fall within the scope of semantics. The
most central truth relation for semantics is entailment. One sentence S is said to entail another
sentence S’ when the truth of the first guarantees the truth of the second, and the falsity of the
second guarantees the falsity of the first, as in (1):
(1)
a. The car is red entails The car has a color.
b. The needle is too short entails The needle is not long enough.
We can see that the first sentence in each example, if true, guarantees the truth of the second;
and the falsity of the second sentence in each example guarantees the falsity of the first.
Closely related to entailment is another truth relation, presupposition. If someone tells
you Your brother is waiting outside, there is an obvious presupposition that you have a brother.
If you are asked Why did you arrive late?, there is a presupposition that you did arrive late. And
if you are asked the question When did you stop smoking?, there are at least two presuppositions
involved. In asking this question, the speaker presupposes that you used to smoke and that you
359
no longer do so. Thus, what a speaker (or writer) assumes is true or known by a listener (or
reader) can be described as a presupposition.
For more information on entailment and presupposition, refer to Year 93, Items 16 and 92; Year
96, Item 16; and Year 97, Items 7 and 8.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 141-142); Akmajian et al. (2010, pp. 241-242); Yule
(2014, pp. 130-131)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
19. Which of the following verbs is used to perform a perlocutionary act?
Linguistics
1) Hurt
2) Declare
3) Ask
4) Approve
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Speech Acts
On any occasion, the action performed by producing an utterance will consist of three
interrelated acts:
1. Locutionary Act: It is the basic act of utterance and refers to “producing a meaningful
linguistic expression”.
2. Illocutionary Act: It refers to the function or communicative purpose of an utterance. In
other words, it is a speech act viewed at the level of its function, such as informing, ordering,
warning, promising, declaring, approving, asserting,
3. Perlocutionary Act: It refers to the effect that an utterance has on the listener. A
perlocutionary act (or perlocutionary effect) is a speech act, as viewed at the level of its
consequences, such as persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, deterring,
surprising, hurting (biologically or psychologically) or otherwise affecting the listener.
Riemer (2010, p. 109) remarks that Austin distinguished between three types of act present in
every utterance, the locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. Austin defined them
as follows:
1. Locutionary act: the act of saying something;
2. Illocutionary act: the act performed in saying something; and
3. Perlocutionary act: the act performed by saying something.
What do these definitions mean? The locutionary act – the act of saying something – is
the act of expressing the basic, literal meanings of the words chosen. For example, in uttering
the words You will get your hands blown off, a speaker performs the locutionary act of stating
that the hearer will get their hands blown off.
The illocutionary act is the act that the speaker performs in saying something. In many
contexts, utterance of the statement You will get your hands blown off is intended, and
understood, as an act of warning: the utterance thus has the illocutionary force of a warning.
Thanking, congratulating, and advising are all acts which differ in their illocutionary force; in
all of them, the speaker does more than describe or assert facts about some situation. As Austin
puts it, the speaker of this type of act does not simply say something, instead, (s)he does
360
something (thank, congratulate, or advise) by engaging in a certain conventionalized form of

verbal behavior. Illocutionary acts are also referred to as speech acts.
Lastly, the perlocutionary act is the act of producing an effect in the hearer by means of
the utterance. Depending on the circumstances, the perlocutionary act involved in saying You
will get your hands blown off might be to dissuade the hearer from playing with a lighter and a
stick of dynamite, to frighten the hearer, to encourage them to go on provocatively waving a
naked flame in front of a bag of fi reworks, etc.
The linguistic expressions which figure in illocutionary acts do not simply have the
function of describing or stating facts about a situation (this Austin called the constative
function). When we say something like You will get your hands blown off, we are not only
Linguistics
stating something: we are also performing an action, the action of warning. If it was not obvious
that the words You will get your hands blown off were intended to constitute a warning, the
speaker could explicitly say I’m warning you, you’ll get your hands blown off. In using the verb
warn, the speaker makes the force of their utterance as a warning explicit; there is, indeed, no
other way to explicitly warn someone other than to use the words ‘I’m warning you’, ‘I warn
you that’, or synonymous constructions. Austin called this type of utterance an explicit
performative utterance: when I say I warn you that . . . I am not describing or stating the
existence of any independent fact; I am, instead, performing an act (the act of warning) which
cannot be explicitly performed in any other way. (By contrast, the basic utterance you will get
your hands blown off may well have the illocutionary force of a warning, but it is not an explicit
performative; we will call it an implicit performative.)
Speech Act Classification

The philosopher Searle established a five-part classification of general functions performed
speech acts:
1. Commissive: a speech act that commits the speaker to doing something in the future, such
as a promise or a threat. Other examples of commissives are agreeing, contracting, betting,
guaranteeing, inviting, offering, promising, pleading, threatening, refusing, swearing,
vowing, and volunteering. For example:
If you don’t stop fighting, I’ll call the police. (threat)
I’ll take you to the movies tomorrow. (promise)
I’ll be back.
I’m going to get it right next time.
We will not do that.
2. Declarative: a speech act which changes the state of affairs in the world. For example,
during the wedding ceremony the act of marriage is performed when the phrase I now
pronounce you man and wife is uttered. Declaratives include blessings, firings, baptisms,
arrests, marrying, juridical speech acts such as sentencings, declaring a mistrial, declaring
someone out of order, etc. More examples include:
Referee: You’re out!
Judge: I sentence you to six months in prison!
3. Directive: a speech act that has the function of getting the listener to do something.
Directives include commanding, ordering, requesting, requiring, suggesting, advising,
admonishing, asking, begging, forbidding, warning, urging, excusing, permitting,
dismissing, challenging, inviting, summoning, etc. For example:
Please sit down.
Why don’t you close the window?
Could you lend me a pen, please?
361
4. Expressive: a speech act in which the speaker expresses feelings and attitudes about
something, such as an apology, a complaint, thanksgivings, greetings, condolences,
congratulations, thanking someone, etc. For example:
The meal was delicious.
I’m really sorry!
Congratulations!
5. Representative: a speech act which describes states or events in the world, such as an
assertion, a claim, a report, a hypothesis, a description, etc. For example:
This is a German car.
The earth is flat.
Linguistics
Chomsky didn’t write about peanuts.
It was a warm sunny day.
Performatives vs. Constatives

To reiterate: In his influential book, ‘How to do things with words’ (1962), Austin makes a
distinction between ‘constatives’ and ‘performatives’. A performative is an utterance which
performs an act, such as Watch out (= a warning), I promise not to be late (= a promise). A
constative is an utterance which asserts, states or reports something that is either true or false;
for example, Chicago is in the United States.
Explicit Performatives vs. Implicit Performative

To reiterate: Austin further distinguished between explicit performatives (those containing a
“performative verb,” such as promise, warn, and deny, which names the speech act or
illocutionary force of the sentence) and implicit performatives, which do not contain a
performative verb, e.g. There is a vicious dog behind you (= an implied warning). It has even
been suggested that there is no real difference between constatives and implicit performatives
because the sentence Chicago is in the United States can be understood to mean (I state that)
Chicago is in the United States, with the implicit performative verb state.
Concluding remarks
As stated, a perlocutionary act is an act performed by uttering something – an act that produces
an effect on the hearer).
As for choice (1), when you hurt somebody, you produce an effect on him/her. Thus, the
verb ‘hurt’ is used to perform a perlocutionary act.
Regarding choices (2), (3) and (4), the verb ‘declare’, ‘ask’, and ‘approve’ do not produce
an effect on the hearer.
For more information and similar items, see also Year 94, Items 22, 23 and 95; Year 96, Item 5.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Akmajian et al. (2010, pp. 395-399); Nuccetelli and Seay (2007, pp. 329-333);
Richards and Schmidt (2010, pp. 429-430); Yule (1996, pp. 48-52)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
20. In which of the following conversations is the maxim of manner violated?
1) Do you know what we are going to be tested on? Yeah.
2) Where is Bill? There is a yellow BMW outside Sue’s house.
3) What are you baking? Be I are tea aitch dee ay wye see ay key ee.
4) Why didn’t you do your homework? May I go and get some water? I’m thirsty.
Answer: 3
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362
Explanation:
H. Paul Grice attempted to formalize what we know when we know how to perceive
implicature (i.e. an extra conveyed meaning) in a conversation. He concluded that language
users can calculate implicatures because they are all following some implicit principles (and
each language user can therefore assume that others are following those principles). Grice called
these principles “maxims” of discourse, and used them to serve as the foundation of pragmatics,
the study of extra-truth-conditional meaning. Grice’s maxims are:
Maxim of Quality: Truth
• Do not say what you believe to be false.
• Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Linguistics
Maxim of Quantity: Information
• Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the
exchange.
• Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
Maxim of Relation: Relevance
• Be relevant.
Maxim of Manner: Be perspicuous: Be clear.
• Avoid obscurity of expression.
• Avoid ambiguity.
• Avoid unnecessary wordiness.
• Be orderly.
These are not prescriptive rules but rather part of a strategy used by the community of language
users to enable the use of conversational implicature. They tend to be violated only by
uncooperative people (The Maxims are sometimes referred to as Grice’s cooperative
principle).
In cases of equivocation, a speaker deliberately says something ambiguous so as to avoid
being committed to the interpretation that is true.
Consider a situation in which a professor, H, is considering hiring John, an ex-student of a
colleague, Smith, from a different institution. The professor asks Smith whether he would
recommend John. Smith wants the professor to hire John because, even though John is not very
bright, Smith is very fond of him and knows that John desperately needs a job. In order to
prevent the professor from coming to believe the truth that John is not very bright, while also
wanting to free himself of a real commitment, Smith says, “I can’t recommend John highly
enough.” In this way, the burden of getting to the truth is placed on the professor. Does Smith
mean “John is so good that there is no limit to how highly I can recommend him” or something
more like “John is not good enough for me to recommend him sufficiently highly to impress
you.” It, thus, carries “bipolar” ambiguity.
Since equivocation is the use of ambiguity (i.e. it is not clear or perspicuous), it violates
the maxim of manner.
Concluding remarks
In the case of choice (3), the maxim of manner is violated because the reply to the question is
not clear.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Akmajian et al. (2010, pp. 400-402); Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 171-173); Yule
(1996, pp. 36-39); Yule (2014, pp. 144-145)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
363
21. Which of the following expressions would NOT be generated by the given phrase
structure rule: NP (Art) Adj. N (S)?
1) Small girl who came
2) The boy who came
3) Long ladder
4) The tall boy
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Linguistics
The PS (phrase structure) rule NP (Art) Adj. N (S) states that the two obligatory elements are
Adj. and N. Choice (2) lacks the obligatory element of Adj. Thus, the PS rule cannot generate
this structure.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
22. Which of the following is NOT an example of a commissive?

1) Promising
2) Volunteering
3) Betting
4) Condoling
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
For more information, see Year 94, Item 19; Year 96, Item 5.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Cruse (2000, pp. 342-343); Richards and Schmidt (2010, p. 543); Yule (1996,
pp. 53-56)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
23. The constative utterance has the property of being-----------.

1) explicit
2) true or false
3) implicit
4) performing an action
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
For explanation and a similar item, refer to Year 94, Item 19
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Nuccetelli and Seay (2007, pp. 329-333); Richards and Schmidt (2010, pp. 429-
430)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
364
24. In the following sentence, the constituency test ----------- has been applied on the
constituent -------------.
The boss says he’s very sharp, and so he may be.
1) proform/ is very sharp
2) coordination /is very sharp
3) movement / he is very sharp
4) replacement / very sharp
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Linguistics
Explanation:
Constituents
The natural groupings or parts of a sentence are called constituents. In other words, a
constituent is a word or a group of words that function(s) as a single unit within a hierarchical
structure. Note that the smallest constituent is a single word. For example, in the sentence
The man in the black hat is my brother
‘the man in the back hat’ is a constituent, and ‘is my brother’ is another constituent. But these
constituents are composed of other constituents. Thus, a constituent is “a syntactic unit that
functions as part of a larger unit within a sentence”.
Constituents? Competing Theories

Alternate theoretical approaches to syntax make different assumptions regarding what is
considered a constituent. In mainstream phrase structure grammar (and its derivatives),
individual words are constituents in and of themselves as well as being parts of other
constituents, whereas in dependency grammar, certain core words in each phrase are not a
constituent by themselves, but only members of a phrasal constituent. The following trees show
the same sentence in two different theoretical representations, with a phrase structure
representation on the left and a dependency grammar representation on the right. In both trees,
a constituent is understood to be the entire tree or any labelled subtree (a node plus all the nodes
dominated by that node); note that words like killed and with, for instance, form subtrees (and
are considered constituents) in the phrase structure representation but not in the dependency
structure representation.
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Constituency Tests
There are a lot of constituency tests listed in the syntactic literature. Some of them are listed
below. The following tests help us to determine whether a string of words forms a constituent.
Warning: Not all tests will work for all constituent types!
1. Stand-alone Test
2. Proform Substitution Test
3. ‘Move as a Unit’ Test (or Movement Test)
(1) Topicalization Test (Fronting/Preposing Test)
(2) Postposing Test
Linguistics
(3) Clefting Test
(4) Pseudoclefting Test
(5) Passivization Test
4. Coordination/Conjunction Test
5. Omission/Deletion Test
6. Intrusion Test
7. VP-Deletion Test
1. Stand-alone Test
This constituency test is also called Answer ellipsis, Question test, Sentence fragment test
or Fragment answers.
The first test we use is the stand-alone test. If the words can stand alone in response to a
question, then they probably constitute a constituent. Consider the sentence in (1a) and repeated
in (1b). We are going to test for the constituency of the italicized phrases.
(1) a. Paul ate at a really fancy restaurant.
b. Paul ate at a really fancy restaurant.
If we ask the question “What did Paul do yesterday afternoon?” we can answer with the
italicized group of words in (2a), but not in (2b):
(2) a. Ate at a really fancy restaurant.
b. *Ate at.
Neither of these responses is proper English in prescriptive terms, but you can easily tell that
(2a) is better than (2b).
In other words, if a group of words can stand alone, for example, as an answer to a question,
they form a constituent. So in response to the question “What did you find?” a speaker might
answer ‘a puppy’, but not ‘found a’. ‘A puppy’ can stand alone while ‘found a’ cannot. We have
a clear intuition that one of these is a meaningful unit and the other is just a list of words.
More example:
(3) a. Where did the puppy play?
b. In the garden
(4) a. Who stole the money?
b. The man.
(5) a. What did the man do?
b. Stole the money.
(6) a. What did he steal?
b. The money.
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2. Proform Substitution Test (also called Replacement Test or Substitution Test)

A proform is another test. ‘pro’ means ‘(stands) for’. The cover term used for all pro‑phrases
is proform: A proform takes the place of a sequence of words which form a constituent, and so
any string of words that can be replaced by an appropriate proform must be a constituent. In
other words, a proform is a word, substituting for other words, phrases, clauses, or sentences,
whose meaning is recoverable from the linguistic or extralinguistic context.
In linguistics, a proform is a type of function word or expression that stands in for
(expresses the same content as) another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is
recoverable from the context. They are used either to avoid repetitive expressions or in
quantification (limiting the variables of a proposition).
Linguistics
Pro-forms are divided into several categories, according to which part of speech they substitute:
 A pronoun (or pronominal) substitutes a noun or a noun phrase, with or without a
determiner: it, this. (Compare also prop-word; this denotes a word like one in "the blue one".)
 A pro-adjective substitutes an adjective or a phrase that functions as an adjective: so as in
"It is less so than we had expected."
 A pro-adverb substitutes an adverb or a phrase that functions as an adverb: how or this way.
 A pro-verb substitutes a verb or a verb phrase: do.
 A pro-sentence substitutes an entire sentence or sub-sentence: Yes, or that as in "That is
true".
 An interrogative proform is a proform that is used in questions to stand for the item
questioned.
(7) a. I put the book on the table.
b. You put what on the table? (substitution by interrogative proform)
(8) a. Sally married a student of linguistics with long hair.
b. Who married who(m)? (substitution by interrogative proform)
Pronouns can substitute for natural groups. In answer to the question “Where did you find
a puppy?” a speaker can say, “I found him in the park.” Words such as do (which is a pro-verb)
can also take the place of the entire predicate found a puppy, as in “John found a puppy and Bill
did too.” If a group of words can be replaced by a pronoun or a word like do (i.e. a pro-verb),
it forms a constituent.
More examples:
(9) a. The man stole the money.
b. He stole the money. (he substitutes the man)
c. The man stole it. (it substitutes the money)
(9) a. Who stole the money?
b. The man did. (did substitutes stole)
(10) a. Jim cooks better than Mary cooks.
b. Jim cooks better than she does. (she substitutes Mary and does substitutes cooks)
(11) a. Who broke the door?
b. Bob did so. (did substitutes broke)
(12) a. I really like this coffee.
b. So do I. (do substitutes like)
To reiterate, the smallest constituent is a single word, so it follows that if you can replace
a group of words with a single word, then we know that group forms a constituent. Consider
the italicized NP in (13). It can be replaced with a single word (in this case a pronoun). This is
the replacement test.
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(13) a. The man from NY flew only ultra-light planes.

b. He flew only ultra-light planes.
There is one important caveat to the test of replacement: There are many cases in our rules
of optional items (those things marked in parentheses like the AdjP in NP  (D) (AdjP) N).
When we replace a string of words with a single word, how do we know that we aren’t just
leaving off the optional items? To avoid this problem, we have to keep the meaning as closely
related to the original as possible. This requires some judgment on your part. None of these
tests is absolute or foolproof.
3. Move as a unit/Movement Test
Linguistics
A third test of constituency is the “move as a unit” test. If a group of words can be moved,
they form a constituent. For example, if we compare the following sentences to the sentence
“The child found a puppy,” we see that certain elements have moved:
(14) a. It was a puppy that the child found.
b. A puppy was found by the child.
In the first example, the constituent a puppy has moved from its position following found; in
the second example, the positions of a puppy and the child have been changed. In all such
rearrangements the constituents a puppy and the child remain intact. Found a does not remain
intact, because it is not a constituent. In the sentence “The child found a puppy,” the natural
groupings or constituents are the subject the child, the predicate found a puppy, and the direct
object a puppy.
Some sentences have prepositional phrases in the predicate. Consider
(15) a. The puppy played in the garden.
We can use our tests to show that in the garden is also a constituent, as follows:
(15) b. In the garden is where the puppy played. (move as a unit)
c. It was in the garden that the puppy played. (move as a unit)
This constituency test subsumes:

1.1. Topicalization/Fronting/Preposing
1.2. Postposing
1.3. Clefting
1.4. Pseudo-clefting
1.5. Passivization
3.1. Topicalization (or Fronting or Preposing)

Topicalization refers to moving a constituent to the beginning/topic position of a sentence. (as
opposed to in a canonical position further to the right). Typical cases of topicalization are
illustrated with the following examples:
(16) a. I like big bowls of beans.
b. Big bowls of beans are what I like.
(17) a. The boys roll rocks for entertainment.
b. For entertainment, the boys roll rocks. (Topicalization of the adjunct for
entertainment)
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(18) a. Everyone refused to answer because the pressure was too great.
b. Because the pressure was too great, everyone refused to answer. (Topicalization of
the adjunct because the pressure was too great)
(19) a. I won't eat that pizza.
b. That pizza, I won't eat. (Topicalization of the object argument that pizza)
(20) a. I am terrified of those dogs.
b. Those dogs, I am terrified of. (Topicalization of the object argument those dogs)
More examples:
Linguistics
Constituents can often be preposed. Non-constituents can never be preposed.
Noun Phrase (NP) preposing:
(21) a. I can’t stand your younger brother.
b. Your younger brother, I can’t stand [---] (though your elder brother’s OK).
c. * Your younger, I can’t stand [--- brother].
d. * Younger brother, I can’t stand [your ---].
e. * Brother, I can’t stand [your younger ---].
f. * Your, I can’t stand [--- younger brother].
g. * Your brother, I can’t stand [--- younger ---].
Prepositional Phrase preposing:

(22) a. Peter gave a book to your brother.
b. To your brother, Peter gave a book [---] (but not to mine).
c. * To your, Peter gave a book [--- brother].
d. * To, Peter gave a book [--- your brother].
e. Your brother, Peter gave a book [to ---] (but not to mine).
f. * Your, Peter gave a book [to brother].
g. * To brother, Peter gave a book [--- your ---].
Why is (22e) ok? Because ‘your brother’ is a constituent.
3.2. Postposing
Postposing refers to moving a constituent to a position to the right of its current position. Only
constituents can be postposed. Typically this test is only applicable to NP objects.
(23) a. He explained all of the terrible problems that he had encountered to her.
b. He explained to her all of the terrible problems that he had encountered.
c. * He explained [all of ---] to her the terrible problems that he had encountered.
d. * He explained [all ---] to her of the terrible problems that he had encountered.
3.3. Clefting
Clefting involves placing a sequence of words X within the structure beginning with It is/was:
It was X that...
(24) a. She bought a pair of gloves with silk embroidery.
b. It was a pair of gloves with silk embroidery that she bought.
(25) a. He bought a brand new car.
b. It was a brand new car that he bought.
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3.4. Pseudo-clefting
Pseudoclefting is similar to clefting in that it puts emphasis on a certain phrase in a sentence.
It involves inserting a sequence of words before is/are what or is/are who:
(26) a. She bought a pair of gloves with silk embroidery.
b. A pair of gloves with silk embroidery is what she bought.
3.5. Passivization
Passivization involves changing an active sentence to a passive sentence, or vice versa. The
object of the active sentence is changed to the subject of the corresponding passive sentence:
Linguistics
(27) a. A car driving too fast nearly hit the little dog.
b. The little dog was nearly hit by a car driving too fast.
In case passivization results in a grammatical sentence, the phrases which have been moved
can be regarded as constituents.
4. Coordination/Conjunction Test
The coordination test assumes that only constituents can be coordinated, i.e., joined by means
of a coordinator such as and:
(28) a. He enjoys writing sentences and reading them.
b. He enjoys writing and she enjoys reading sentences.
c. He enjoys but she hates writing sentences.
Based on the fact that writing sentences and reading them are coordinated using and, one can
conclude that they are constituents.
More Examples:
(29) Tom and the man stole the money.
(30) The man stole the money and disappeared.
(31) The man stole furniture and the money.
Coordinate structures are constituents linked by a conjunction like and or or. Only constituents
of the same syntactic category can be conjoined:
(32) a. [John] and [the man] went to the store.
b. *John and very blue went to the store.
If you can coordinate a group of words with a similar group of words, then they form a
constituent.
5. Omission/Deletion Test: Omission test for complements and adjuncts

Complements are obligatory and adjuncts are optional, so the latter but not the former should
be omissible.
(33) a. Sally can easily [open the door with her credit card].
b. Sally can easily [open the door].
c. * Sally can easily [open with her credit card].
Sentence (33b) is correct because ‘with her credit card’ is an adjunct and optional. However,
sentence (33c) is incorrect because ‘the door’ is a complement and obligatory.
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6. Intrusion Test: Intrusion test for VPs and their NP complements

Certain adverbs, such as easily, occur only as adjuncts within the VP, and hence cannot be
positioned between V and its complements (since they must be sister to V').
(34) a. Sally can easily [open the door with her credit card].
b. * Sally can [open easily the door with her credit card].
c. Sally can [open the door easily with her credit card].
d. Sally can [open the door with her credit card easily].
These examples show that easily the door cannot be an NP; the door must be a complement
and with her credit card must be an adjunct.
Linguistics
7. VP-deletion Test: Omission test for VPs: VP-deletion (VP-ellipsis)
If two sentences have identical VPs, the second VP can be omitted.
(35) a. John should take the blame but Sally might.
b. * John should take the blame but Sally not.
This example again demonstrates that the modal is not part of the VP.
Concluding Remarks
In the sentence, The boss says he’s very sharp, and so he may be, “very sharp” is replaced with
the proform “so”. Hence, Choice (4) is the correct option. Choice (1) would also be correct if it
didn’t have the verb “is” because replacement is another name for the proform test.
For more information and similar items, refer to Year 94, Item 30; Year 96, Item 10; Year 97,
Item 19.
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 See also: Carnie (2014, pp. 98-99); Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 577); Tallerman (2011, pp.160)
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25. What is the function of with her new pen in the following VP?
Wrote the note with her new pen
1) Head
2) Complement
3) Adjunct
4) Specifier
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
The core of every phrase is a lexical category of its same syntactic type (italicized), which is its
head; for example, the NP the mother of James Whistler is headed by the noun mother; the VP
sing an aria is headed by the verb sing; the AP wary of snakes is headed by the adjective wary;
the PP over the hill is headed by the preposition over. Loosely speaking, the entire phrase refers
to whatever the head refers to. For example, the VP sing an aria refers to a “singing” event; the
NP the mother of James Whistler to someone’s mother.
A complement is defined as a phrasal category that may occur next to a head, and only
there, and which elaborates on the meaning of the head. The complements are underlined: For
example, the head N mother takes the PP complement of James Whistler; the head V sing takes
the NP an aria; the head A(djective) wary takes the PP of snakes, and the P(reposition) over
takes the NP the hill as complement.
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In addition, a phrase may have an element preceding the head. These elements are called
specifiers. For example, in the NP the mother of James Whistler, the determiner the is the
specifier of the NP. In English, possessives may also be specifiers of NP, as in Nellie’s ball.
Similarly, in the PP just over the hill, just is the specifier. The specifier position may also be
empty, as in the NP dogs with bones or the PP over the hill. Specifier is a purely structural
notion. In English it is the first position in the phrase, if it is present at all, and a phrase may
contain at most one specifier. APs and VPs also have a specifier position and their specifiers
usually show up when the phrase is embedded in another sentence, as in:
a. Betty made [Jane wary of snakes].
b. I heard [Pavarotti sing an aria].
Linguistics
c. I saw [everyone at the stadium].
In (a) Jane is the specifier of the AP wary of snakes, in (b) Pavarotti is the specifier of the VP
sing an aria, and in (c) everyone is the specifier of the PP at the stadium.
An adjunct is an optional category that may occur after the complements of a VP. In fact,
an adjunct is part of the basic structure of the clause or sentence in which it occurs, and modifies
the verb. Adverbs of time, place, frequency, degree, and manner, are examples of adjuncts. In
the following examples, the underlined phrases are adjuncts.
d. He died in England.
e. Jane cleaned the door with a rag.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 88, 102-103)
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26. Which of the following does NOT have structural ambiguity?
1) The police arrested the burglar immediately.
2) The reporter talked about an explosion in Paris.
3) The house in the woods near the park was destroyed.
4) The police officer stopped the murderer with a knife.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Structural ambiguity exists when a phrase or sentence has two or more meanings because of
structure, either of grouping or function (i.e. grammatical relations).
Grouping ambiguity: A case of grouping ambiguity is The police searched for the car
with broken headlights. This sentence has two structures, one in which the prepositional phrase
with broken headlights is about the car, and is grouped with car in a noun phrase, and another
in which it is about the searching, and is grouped apart from the noun phrase but still with
searched in the verb phrase.
Function ambiguity: Function ambiguity exists when a word or phrase potentially fulfills
two or more grammatical relations, and morphemes and groupings are the same for both
meanings. An example is visiting professors can be boring. This sentence concerns either
professors who visit, or professors who get visited.
Choices 2, 3, and 4 are all examples of grouping ambiguity.
For complementary explanation and similar items, refer to Year 95, Item 4; Year 96, Item 1;
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27. What is the thematic role of each of the underlined expressions in the following
sentence?
Ann was reading stories to the kids in the garden.
1) Agent, theme, goal
2) Experience, theme, goal
3) Agent, theme, location
4) Experiencer, theme, location
Answer: 3
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Linguistics
Explanation:
“Ann” is the agent, “stories” is the theme, and “in the garden” is the location.
For explanation and similar items, see Year 91, Item 28; Year 93, Item 24; and Year 95, Item 7.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 163-165); Hudson (2000, pp. 276-277); Richards and
Schmidt (2010, p. 52); Yule (2014, pp. 112-113)
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28. John cannot name the foods he is shown, although he can describe what they look like,
what they taste like, and so on. John is suffering from -----------.
1) aphasia
2) alexia
3) agraphia
4) anomia
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Aphasia (also dysphasia): It refers to the loss of the ability to use and understand language,
usually caused by damage to the brain. The loss may be total or partial, and may affect spoken
and/or written language ability.
There are different types of aphasia: agraphia is difficulty in writing; alexia is difficulty
in reading; anomia is difficulty in using proper nouns; and agrammatism is difficulty in using
grammatical words like prepositions, articles, etc. Aphasia can be studied in order to discover
how the brain processes language.
For more information and a similar item, refer to Year 92, Items 22 and 28.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 463-470); Richards and Schmidt (2010, p. 28); Yule
(2014, pp. 160-161)
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29. Consider how the sounds of bold letters are produced in the following words. Which
features distinguish them from each other?
Hip hill
1) Voice and place
2) Manner and voice and place
3) Place and manner
4) Manner and voice
373
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
The traditional phonetic classification of consonant sounds specifies three variables: (1) their
manner of articulation, (2) their place of articulation, and (3) their voice: whether or not they
are accompanied by vibration of the vocal cords. Accordingly,
/p/ has the following features: stop, bilabial, and voiceless.
/l/ has the following features: lateral, alveolar, and voiced.
Thus, with regard to the manner of articulation, /p/ is stop, and /l/ is lateral. With regard to the
place of articulation, /p/ is bilabial and /l/ is alveolar. And finally in terms of voiced/voiceless
Linguistics
classification, /p/ is voiceless, and /l/ is voiced. Therefore, choice (2) is the best option.
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30. Move α is a general ------------that reorders nodes in trees.

1) transformation
2) structural relation
3) recursive rule
4) phrase structure rule
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Move (also called “Move X” or “Move α (alpha)”) relocates/transforms elements placed by
the X-bar schema (the phrase structure rules) to different parts of the structure to help account
for sentence relatedness such as a declarative sentence and the corresponding yes-no question.
For more explanation and similar items, refer to Year 94, Item 24; Year 96, Item 10; Year 97,
Item 19.
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31. With regard to type of interpretation, criterion-referenced tests-------------.

1) require a clearly defined group and a delimited achievement domain
2) produce scores that can be compared to a particular criterion in relative terms
3) relate to the degree of competence attained by the students in percentage terms
4) examine the relationship of a particular student’s performance to that of other students
in percentile terms
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Differences between Norm-Referenced and Criterion-Referenced Tests
Characteristic Nom-Referenced Criterion-Referenced
Type of Relative (A student’s Absolute (A student’s
Interpretation performance is compared to that performance is compared only to
of all other students in percentile the amount, or percentage, of
Testing
terms.) material learned.)
Type of To measure general language To measure specific objectives-
Measurement abilities or proficiencies based language points
Purpose of Testing To spread students out along a To assess the amount of material
continuum of general abilities or known, or learned, by each
proficiencies student
Distribution of Normal distribution of scores Varies, usually non-normal
Scores around a mean (students who know all of the
material should all score 100%)
Test Structure A few relatively long subtests A series of short, well-defined
with a variety of question subtests with similar question
contents contents
Knowledge of Students have little or no idea Students know exactly what
Questions what content to expect in content to expect in test questions
questions
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 See also: J. D. Brown (2005, pp. 2-5)
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32. Which of the following statements is NOT correct about internal consistency reliability
approaches?
1) They are concerned primarily with sources of error from within the test and scoring
procedures.
2) They are appropriate for heterogeneous tests designed to measure different traits.
3) They examine how different parts of a single test relate to each other.
4) They treat error variance as homogeneous in origin.
375
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
 Internal consistency estimates are concerned primarily with sources of error from within
the test and scoring procedures. (p. 172)
 Internal consistency is concerned with how consistent test takers’ performances on the
different parts of the test are with each other. (p. 172)
 The CTS model treats error variance as homogeneous in origin. (p. 186)
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33. The use of pair or group modes in the testing of speaking -------------.
1) eliminates the need for equalizing the output between the test-takers
2) reduces the proportion of construct-irrelevant variance in the scores
3) minimizes the impact of adaptivity on test takers’ performance
4) taps into an individual’s interactional competence
Testing
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
The origin of interactional competence can be traced to Kramsch (1986), who argued that talk
is co-constructed by the participants in communication, so responsibility for talk cannot be
assigned to a single individual. It is this that makes testing interactional competence challenging
for language testing, for as He and Young (1998, p.7) argue, interactional competence is not a
trait that resides in an individual, nor a competence that “is independent of the interactive
practice in which it is (or is not) constituted.”
The chief insight is that in communication, most clearly in speaking, meaning is created by
individuals in joint constructions (McNamara, 1997). This is part of the theoretical rationale for
the use of pair or group modes in the testing of speaking (Fulcher, 2003, pp. 186–190), as
these modes have the potential to enrich our construct definition of the test.
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 See also: Fulcher (2003, pp. 186-190); Fulcher and Davidson (2007, pp. 49-50)
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34. Which of the follow ng is NOT a characteristic of Dynamic Assessment (DA)?

1) It is a type of formative assessment.
2) It is useful for minimizing test bias.
3) It is based on Vygotsky’s concept of ZPD.
4) It focuses on promoting change in the learners through mediation.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Key Features of Non-Dynamic Assessment vs. Dynamic Assessment
Non-Dynamic Assessment Dynamic Assessment

1. It is a past-and-present approach to 1. It is a present-and-future approach to
assessment: It focuses on what the students assessment: It focuses on what the students
have already learned. NDA focuses on the can achieve with and without mediation. DA
outcome of past development. foregrounds future development.
2. It is based on the psychometric approach 2. It is based both on the edumetric approach
to testing. to assessment and on the notion of ZPD.
3. It is the testing “of” learning: It is not 3. It is the testing/assessment “for” learning:
used for promoting change in the learners; Assessment is believed to promote and
rather it is used to assess what has already enhance learning/change.
been learned.
4. NDA foregrounds the test instrument. 4. DA foregrounds individuals.
Testing
5. Normative comparison: a person’s 5. Non-normative comparison: a person’s
achievement is compared to the achievement is compared to his own
performance of other learners. previous states of knowledge, hence the use
of ipsative assessment.
6. Examiners are expected to adopt a neutral 6. The examiner intervenes in the
and disinterested stance as a means of assessment process.
minimizing measurement error.
7. Examinees are given little or no feedback 7. A specific form of feedback (mediated
on the quality of their performance until assistance) is provided and this is the crux of
assessment is complete. the assessment process.
According to Vygotsky, what the child is able to do independently represents a view of the
child’s past development, but what the child is able to achieve with mediation provides insight
into the child’s future development (Lantolf & Poehner, 2004, p. 2). The Zone of Proximal
Development (ZPD) is described as the difference between what a child can do independently
and what the same child can achieve by mediation. This interaction in the ZPD is not only a
way of predicting a child’s future development, but also a way of promoting that development.
From a DA perspective, good instruction involves assessment, a good assessment involves
instruction.
DA minimizes the risk of an erroneous evaluation, by definition. It provides mediation that
is constantly adjusted and attuned to the learner’s or group’s responsiveness to mediation. At
the same time, it promotes the very development it seeks to assess in the first place.
A distinction has been made between non-dynamic assessment (NDA) and dynamic
assessment (DA). NDA procedures traditionally isolate individuals from all forms of external
mediation while DA procedures were specifically designed to supply assistance. NDA is
concerned with the test instruments and with the scores as they show the amount of knowledge
gained as a result of instruction. DA, on the other hand, focuses on promoting change in the
learners. Furthermore, it recognizes that mediation, which is a form of instruction, is a necessary
feature of genuine assessment. To sum up, NDA foregrounds the test instrument whereas DA
foregrounds individuals (Poehner & Lantolf, 2003, p. 22).
377
DA is not a type of formative assessment, rather the information achieved in formative

assessment can provide the assessor as to the learner’s actual zone of development and the
amount of hints and prompts required to activate his zone of proximal development (ZPD).
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 See also: Poehner and Lantolf (2005)
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35. Messick (1989) incorporated all of the following within his validity matrix EXCEPT
-------------.
1) performance outcomes and valued knowledge
2) fairness-oriented dimensions of assessment
3) construct validity and value implications
4) aspects of the social context of testing
Answer: 1
Testing
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Explanation:
The most influential current theory of validity of relevance to language testing remains that
developed by Samuel Messick in his years at Educational Testing Service, Princeton from the
1960s to the 1990s, most definitively set out in his much-cited 1989 article (Messick, 1989).
Samuel Messick (1989) incorporated a social dimension of assessment quite explicitly
within his model. Messick saw assessment as a process of reasoning and evidence gathering
carried out in order for inferences to be made about individuals and saw the task of establishing
the meaningfulness and defensibility of those inferences as being the primary task of assessment
development and research. This reflects an individualist, psychological tradition of
measurement concerned with fairness. He introduced the social more explicitly into this picture
by arguing two things: that our conceptions of what it is that we are measuring and the things
we prioritize in measurement, will reflect values, which we can assume will be social and
cultural in origin, and that tests have real effects in the educational and social contexts in which
they are used and that these need to be matters of concern for those responsible for the test.
Messick saw these aspects of validity as holding together within a unified theory of validity,
which he set out in the form of a matrix (Figure 1).

Construct validity Construct validity
Evidential Basis + Relevance/
Utility
Sources of
Construct validity + Construct validity
Justification
Consequential Value Implications + Relevance/
Basis Utility + Social
Consequences
Figure 1: Facets of Validity (from Messick 1989)
We can gloss the meaning of each of the cells in such a way as to make clear the way in
which Messick’s theory takes theoretical account of aspects of the social dimension of
assessment (Figure 2). It will be clear from this gloss that aspects of the social context of testing
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are more overtly present in the model, in the bottom two cells of the matrix. One addresses the
social and cultural character of the meanings attributed to test scores; the other considers the
real-world consequences of the practical use of tests. The question naturally arises of the
relationship of the fairness oriented dimensions of the top line of the matrix to the more overtly
social dimensions of the bottom line, a question it could be argued that Messick never resolved
and remains a fundamental issue facing our field.
What test scores are assumed to When tests are actually used
mean
What reasoning and empirical Are these interpretations
Using evidence in
evidence support the claims we meaningful, useful and fair in
support of claims:
wish to make about candidates particular contexts?
test fairness
based on their test performance?
What social and cultural values and What happens in our
The overt social assumptions underlie test constructs education systems and the
context of testing and hence the sense we make of larger social context when we
scores? use tests?
Testing
Figure 2: Understanding Messick’s Validity Matrix.
91, Items 31, 33, 44, 45, and 48; Year 92, Items 55, and 56; Year 93, Item 50; Year 94, Item
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36. To what quality of assessment does the following statement refer?

An assessment conducted by one person at one time could potentially be replicated by
another person at another time.
1) Substantive grounding
2) Procedural nature of assessment
3) Systematicity
4) The use of assessment for description
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Bachman (2004) defines assessment as the process of collecting information about a given
object of interest according to procedures that are systematic and substantively grounded. By
systematicity, he means that assessments are designed and implemented in a way that is clearly
described and potentially replicable by other individuals. And by substantively grounded, he
means that assessment must be based on a widely-accepted theory about the nature of language
ability, language use or language learning, or prior research, or accepted and current practice in
a particular field.
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37. Both CTS theory and G-theory ------------.

1) assume that error sources affect individual test takers’ performance differently
2) can be used directly to interpret individual test scores
3) examine different sources of error simultaneously
4) are based on group performance
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
The approaches to estimating reliability that have been developed within both CTS theory and
G-theory are based on group performance and provide information for test developers and test
users about how consistent the scores of groups of individuals are on a given test.
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38. Which of the following statements is NOT correct about the test information function
(TIF)?
1) It is the sample-dependent indicator of precision of measurement in IRT models.
Testing
2) It provides estimates of measurement errors at different ability levels.
3) It is generalizable across different samples of individual test takers.
4) It is the IRT analog of CTS theory reliability and SEM.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Test information function
The test information function (TIF) is the sum of the item information functions, each of which
contributes independently to the total, and is a measure of how much information a test provides
at different ability levels. The TIF is the IRT analog of CTS theory reliability and the standard
error of measurement (SEM), and offers two important advantages over these indicators of
precision of measurement. Since the standard error of the ability estimates at a given ability
level are inversely related to the TIF, it provides estimates of measurement errors at each
ability level. An additional advantage is that the TIF is independent of the particular sample
of individuals upon whose responses it is based. This is because the TIF is a function of the
individual item information functions, each of which is based on ICCs that are sample
independent. The TIF is thus generalizable across different samples of individual test
takers.
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39. Which of the following best describes the relationship between measurement and
evaluation?
1) Both necessarily entail testing.
2) Both are instruments designed to elicit specific samples of an individual’s behavior.
3) Evaluation only involves qualitative assessment, but measurement involves the
assigning of numbers.
4) Measurement has an information-providing function, while evaluation has a decision-
making function.
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Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Bachman (1990) believes that it is important to distinguish the information-providing function
of measurement from the decision-making function of evaluation.
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40. A characteristic of performance assessment is that -------------.

1) tasks assess language skills and components separately
2) depth of a student’s mastery is emphasized over breadth
3) peer assessment is preferable to self-assessment
4) it assesses the process rather than the product
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Testing
According to O’Malley and Valdez Pierce (1996, p. 5), the following are characteristics of
performance assessment:
1. Students make a constructed response (as opposed to selecting a response from among
options given to the students).
2. They engage in higher-order thinking with open-ended tasks.
3. Tasks are meaningful, engaging, and authentic.
4. Tasks call for the integration of language skills.
5. Both process and product are assessed.
6. Depth of a student’s mastery is emphasized over breadth.
For items on “performance assessment, refer to Year 91, Item 38; and Year 97, item 26.
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 See also: H. D. Brown (2004, p. 255); H. D. Brown (2010, p. 127)
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41. If half the items on a test are answered correctly by the good students and incorrectly
by the poor students while the remaining items are answered incorrectly by the good
students but correctly by the poor students, ………….
1) then no discrimination will be possible
2) the test items have either very high or very low facility values
3) it is still possible to separate the good students from the bad ones
4) the items will work against each other and have discrimination indices of -1
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
An item with an ID of 1.00 indicates that the item separates the upper and lower groups in the
same manner as the whole test scores. Such an item is therefore a good candidate for retention
in any revised version of the test, although the adequacy of the item format and the suitability
of the item facility index must also be considered for each and every decision. ID indexes can
range from 1.00 (if all the upper-group students answer correctly and all the lower-group
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students answer incorrectly) to -1.00 (if all the lower group students answer correctly and all
the upper-group students answer incorrectly). Naturally, ID indexes can take on all the values
between +1.00 and -1.00, as well.
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 See also: Bachman (2004, pp. 127-130); J. D. Brown (2005, pp. 68-70)
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42. In a test, authenticity may be present in all of the following ways EXCEPT----------.
1) topics are meaningful for the learner
2) items include some thematic organization
3) items are isolated rather than contextualized
4) tasks closely approximate real-world tasks
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Brown (2010) provides an authenticity checklist to evaluate the extent to which a test is
authentic. The checklist is composed of five questions:
Testing
1. Is the language in the test as natural as possible?
2. Are items as contextualized as possible rather than isolated?
3. Are topics and situations interesting, enjoyable, and/or humorous?
4. Is some thematic organization provided, such as through a story line or episode?
5. Do tasks represent, or closely approximate, real-world tasks?
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43. Holistic scoring of writing tasks -----------.

1) focuses on the writer’s strengths and weaknesses
2) enjoys relatively high inter-rater reliability
3) provides formative washback into the writer’s further stages of writing
4) focuses on how well students can write within a narrowly defined range of discourse
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Brown (2010) identifies five advantages of holistic scoring:
1. Fast evaluation
2. Relatively high inter-rater reliability
3. The fact that scores represent "standards" that are easily interpreted by lay persons
4. The fact that scores tend to emphasize the writer’s strengths (Cohen, 1994, p. 315)
5. Applicability to writing across many different disciplines
He also lists four disadvantages for holistic scoring:

1. One score masks differences across the subskills within each score.
2. No diagnostic information is available (no washback potential).
3. The scale may not apply equally well to all genres of writing.
4. Raters need to be extensively trained to use the scale accurately.
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 See also: H. D. Brown (2004, p. 242); H. D. Brown (2010, p. 283); J. D. Brown (2005,
pp. 54-55)
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44. If the distribution of scores obtained from a test is negatively skewed, it means that --
-----------.
1) the test is valid but not reliable
2) the scores are norm-referenced
3) most test takers obtained low grades
4) the test items are below average difficulty level
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
A skewed distribution is one that does not have the prototypical, symmetrical bell shape. To
keep them straight, J. D. Brown (2005) states that skewed distributions characteristically have
a “tail” pointing in one of the two possible directions. When the tail is pointing in the direction
of the lower scores (-), the distribution is said to be negatively skewed. When the tail points
Testing
toward the higher scores (+), the distribution is positively skewed.
When the question items are difficult for the students, we will have a positively skewed
distribution, but when the question items are easy for the students, we will have a negatively
skewed distribution. And when the question items are so easy that all the items are answered
correctly by all the students, we will have a ceiling effect.
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 See also: Bachman (2004, pp. 50-53); J. D. Brown (2005, pp.129-131)
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45. All of the following led to the development of communicative language testing
EXCEPT ------------.
1) a quest for authenticity
2) the importance of strategic competence
3) an indivisible view of language proficiency
4) a correspondence between language test performance and language use
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Communicative Language Testing
By the mid-1980s, especially in the wake of Canale and Swain’s (1980) seminal work on
communicative competence, the language-testing field had begun to focus on designing
communicative language-testing tasks. Bachman and Palmer (1996) included among
"fundamental" principles of language testing the need for a correspondence between language
test performance and language use: "In order for a particular language test to be useful for its
intended purposes, test performance must correspond in demonstrable ways to language use in
non-test situations" (p. 9). The problem that language assessment experts faced was that tasks
tended to be artificial, contrived, and unlikely to mirror language use in real life. As Weir (1990)
383
noted, "Integrative tests such as cloze only tell us about a candidate’s linguistic competence.
They do not tell us anything directly about a student’s performance ability" (p. 6).
Thus a quest for authenticity was launched, as test designers centered on communicative
performance. Following Canale and Swain’s (1980) model, Bachman (1990) proposed a model
of language competence consisting of organizational and pragmatic competence, respectively
subdivided into grammatical and textual components and into illocutionary and sociolinguistic
components.
Bachman and Palmer (1996, pp. 70-75) also emphasized the importance of strategic
competence (the ability to employ communicative strategies to compensate for breakdowns as
well as enhance the rhetorical effect of utterances) in the process of communication. All
elements of the model, especially pragmatic and strategic abilities, needed to be included in the
constructs of language testing and in the actual performance required of test-takers.
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 See also: H. D; Brown (2004, pp. 10-11); H. D. Brown (2010, pp. 14-15)
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Testing
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46. Which of the following matches qualitative research?

1) Hypotheses emerge as the study advances.
2) Precise definitions must be specified at the beginning of the study.
3) Conditions must be manipulated when studying complex phenomena.
4) A lot of attempt must be made to improve the reliability of scores obtained from
instruments.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
In qualitative research, hypotheses emerge as the study proceeds and are redefined when
appropriate (Ary et al., 2014, p. 639).
Comparison of Quantitative Inquiry and Qualitative Inquiry
Quantitative Inquiry Qualitative Inquiry

Purpose
To generalize findings To contextualize findings
To predict behavior To interpret behavior and intention
Research
To provide causal explanations To understand perspectives
Approach
Uses theory to ground the study May create theory grounded in the findings
Uses manipulation and control of variables Portrays the natural context
Deductive then inductive Inductive then deductive
Seeks to analyze discrete components Searches for larger patterns
Looks for the norm Looks for complexity
Reduces data to numbers Relies on words and only minor use of
numbers
Reports written in precise, abstract language Reports written in descriptive, holistic
language
Assumptions
There is an objective reality Reality is socially constructed
The world is stable The world is not stable
Variables can be identified and measured Complex variables are difficult to measure
Is rooted in logical empiricism Is rooted in symbolic interactionism
Role of Researcher
Detached and impartial Personally involved
Objective portrayal Empathic understanding
Inquiry should be as value free as possible Inquiry is always value bound
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Methods
Focused on quantity (how much, how many) Focused on quality (nature, essence)
Experimental, empirical, statistical focus Fieldwork, ethnographic, naturalistic focus
Predetermined, structured methods, precise Flexible, evolving, emergent methods
Random sampling is the ideal Typically uses purposive sampling
Uses inanimate instruments (scales, tests,Researcher as the primary instrument
questionnaires, observation checklists, etc.)
(observations, interviews, document
analysis)
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, p. 639, 450)
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47. A theory that arises from previously collected data is called ------------.
1) cross-sectional
2) quasi experimental
3) grounded
4) longitudinal
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Grounded theory has its roots in sociology. Its goal is to inductively build a theory about a
Research
practice or phenomenon using interviews and observation as the primary data collection tools.
This emphasis on theory distinguishes it from other qualitative approaches. Glaser and Strauss
(1967) developed grounded theory as a way of formalizing the operations needed to develop
theory from empirical data. This research approach focuses on gathering data about peoples’
experiences in a particular context and then inductively building a theory “from the bottom up.”
The theory is grounded in the data and “conceptually dense”; that is, it presents many
conceptual relationships that are stated as propositions pertaining to a particular context,
situation, or experience. Grounded theory moves beyond description to generate or discover a
theory that emerges from the data and that provides an explanation of a process, action, or
interaction.
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48. The results of a study on the effect of corrective feedback among male and female
learners of English as an L2 on attitude change are shown in the following table. At
alpha risk of.05, the critical value of F for 1 and 80 degrees of freedom is 3.96.
Based on these data which of the following is FALSE?
ANOVA Table
Source d.f. Mean Square F Eta
Corrective Feedback 1 50.5 10.1 .1
Gender 1 15.0 3.0 .03
Corrective Feedback * Gender 1 20.0 4.0 .04
Within Groups 80 5.0
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1) The learners’ gender has a main effect.

2) The variable corrective feedback has a main effect.
3) Each independent variable in this study has two levels.
4) There is a significant interaction between corrective feedback and learners’ gender.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
In this study which focuses on “the effect of corrective feedback among male and female
learners of English as an L2 on attitude change”, there are two kind of effects (i.e. in ANOVA):
a main effect and an interaction effect. There are two main effects: one is the effect of the
independent variable (i.e. corrective feedback) on the dependent variable (i.e. attitude change),
and the other is the effect of the moderator variable (i.e. gender) on the dependent variable (i.e.
attitude change).
The interaction effect is the effect of the interaction between the independent variable (i.e.
corrective feedback) and the moderator variable (i.e. gender) on the dependent variable (i.e.
attitude change).
A main effect is the effect of one independent variable on the dependent variable. It ignores
the effects of any other independent variables. In general, there is one main effect for each
dependent variable.
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F value of Gender = 3.0
Critical Value of F = 3.96
Figure 1: The Main Effect of Gender
With regard to choice (1), as can be seen in Figure 1, the learners’ gender does not have a
main effect on learners’ attitude change. That is, as seen in the table, the F value is 3.0 and the
critical F value is 3.96, thus the F value of gender remains in the null hypothesis region and
does not pass the Critical F value. Therefore, Choice (1) is false and is the answer of this
question.
As for choice (2), as can be seen in Figure 2, the corrective feedback has a main effect on
learners’ attitude change. That is, the F value (10.1) is far beyond the Critical F value (3.96).
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F value of Corrective Feedback = 10.1
Figure 2: The Main Effect of Corrective Feedback
Regarding choice (3), there are two independent variables in this study: (1) corrective
feedback (with two levels – its existence and non-existence), and (2) gender (with two levels –
male and female). Hence, choice (3) is true and not the answer.
As for choice (4), as can be seen in Figure 3, there is a significant interaction effect
between corrective feedback and the learners’ gender. That is, the F value (4.0) is more than
the Critical F value (3.96).
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F value of CF * Gender = 4.0
Figure 3: The Interaction Effect between Corrective Feedback and Learners’ Gender
The column for Eta provides misleading information for this question. To answer this question,
no such information is required.
According to the data presented in this question, there is no main effect for gender because
the F value of gender which is 3.0 is smaller than the critical value of F which is 3.96, i.e. the
F value of gender has not exceeded the critical value of F and, thus, the learner’s gender does
NOT have a main effect.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 193-197); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991)
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388
49. A negative correlation typically means that ------------.

1) variables are unrelated
2) variables are related inversely
3) variables are related directly
4) variables are only weakly related
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Correlation
Correlation is the measurement of the extent to which pairs of related values of two variables
tend to change together or ‘co-vary’; it is a standardized measure of co-variation. If one variable
tends to increase with the other, the correlation is positive. If the relationship is inverse, it is a
negative correlation. In other words, Correlation means the extent to which the two variables
vary directly (positive correlation) or inversely (negative correlation).
A lack of relationship is signified by a value close to zero, but a value of zero could occur
for a curvilinear relationship, as well.
Correlation coefficient has two components:

(1) The direction of the correlation: The sign (+ or −) indicates the direction of the slope.
(2) The strength/magnitude of the correlation: The numerical value (e.g. 1.00, 0.30, 0.70,
0.00) indicates the strength of the correlation. The closer the numerical value is to 1.00
(either positive or negative), the greater the strength of the relationship is.
Research
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, p. 30); Hakala (2006, p. 46)
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50. How many independent variables are there in a 3*3 factorial design?
1) 1
2) 2
3) 3
4) 9
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
In a factorial design, the number of independent variables is related to the number of digits. For
example, a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design has 4 independent variables. A 2 × 3 × 2 factorial
design has 3 independent variables.
389
The number of the digits shows the levels of the independent variable. For example, the
first digit in a 2 × 3 factorial design shows that the independent variable has 2 levels and the
second digit (i.e. 3) shows that the independent variable has 3 levels.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 334-338); Cohen et al. (2007, p. 280); Hatch and Lazaraton
(1991, p. 369)
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51. Inferential statistics use ------------.

1) a sample to calculate the probability of an event and to generalize the likelihood of the
event back to the larger population
2) a population to calculate the probability of an event occurring in a sample
3) both a sample and a population to determine whether the statistic can be applied to real
life circumstances
4) none of the above
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
An important characteristic of inferential statistics is the process of going from the part to
the whole. For example, you might study a randomly selected group of 500 students attending
a university in order to make generalizations about the entire student body of that university.
The small group that is observed is called a sample, and the larger group about which the
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generalization is made is called a population. A population is defined as all members of any
well-defined class of people, events, or objects. For example, in a study in which students in
American high schools constitute the population of interest, you could define this population as
all boys and girls attending high school in the United States.
A sample is a portion of a population. For example, the students of Washington High
School in Indianapolis constitute a sample of American high school students. Statistical
inference is a procedure by means of which you estimate parameters (characteristics of
populations) from statistics (characteristics of samples). Such estimations are based on the laws
of probability and are best estimates rather than absolute facts. In making any such inferences,
a certain degree of error is involved. Inferential statistics can be used to test hypotheses about
populations on the basis of observations of a sample drawn from the population.
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52. A researcher has conducted an experiment with four levels of one independent
variable. What type of test should he use to calculate the results?
1) Paired samples t test
2) Repeated measures t test
3) Independent samples t test
4) Between groups ANOVA
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
T-tests
T-test is of two types: (1) independent samples t-test, and (2) dependent samples t-test (a.k.a.
paired /matched samples t-test or repeated-measures t-test). The former is used when we have
two samples that are independent. The latter is used when (a) we have one sample, (b) the
samples are drawn on the basis of randomized matching, or the samples are drawn from a blood-
related population. In brief, generally speaking, t-test is used when we have two means.
ANOVA
The goal of ANOVA is to explain the variance in the dependent variable in terms of variance
in the independent variables. In a one-way ANOVA, there is only one dependent variable and
only one independent variable with three or more levels. The comparisons of the means on the
dependent variable are made across the levels. The levels, however, may be within-groups, a
repeated-measures design where the same students do different tasks or the same task at
different times, or between-subjects, where each group is composed of different students.
When we compare the scores of our students before instruction, and every two weeks thereafter,
the comparison is within-groups. When we compare the final exam scores of students in five
sections of a course, the comparison is between groups. In the explanations that follow we will
be discussing the use of One-way ANOV A with between-groups design. There are ANOVA
procedures for repeated-measures designs so by understanding how ANOV A works, you will
also understand how a repeated-measures ANOVA works.

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Research
 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 192-193); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, pp. 312)
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53. Methods that rely severely on rating scales, tests, and questionnaires are called -------
-----, while methods of investigation mostly producing narrative descriptions of events
or processes are called ------------.
1) subjective / objective
2) quantitative / qualitative
3) objective / subjective
4) qualitative /quantitative
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Methods like rating scales, tests, and questionnaires that lead to “numerical data” are called
quantitative methods of inquiry. Quantitative methods emphasize objective measurements and
the statistical, mathematical, or numerical analysis of data collected through polls,
questionnaires, and surveys, or by manipulating pre-existing statistical data using
computational techniques. Quantitative research focuses on gathering numerical data and
generalizing it across groups of people or to explain a particular phenomenon.
But qualitative methods of inquiry rely on “descriptions” of phenomena. Qualitative
observations rely on narrative or words to describe the setting, the behaviors, and the
interactions. In other words, qualitative researchers analyze data inductively by organizing data
into categories, identifying patterns and themes, and writing descriptive narratives.
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Subjective/objective dichotomy refers to the types of scoring involved in research or

testing.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, p. 450, 472, 479)
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54. Which of the following is a set of variables?

1) salary, Republican, age
2) designer, engineer, lawyer
3) years of training, gender, religious membership
4) female, Protestant, years in college
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
A variable can be defined as a quality of a person, people, or situation that takes on different
values. In other words, variables are empirical phenomena that take on different values or
intensities.
In a study asking respondents to identify themselves as Republican, Democrat or
Independent or Other, each respondent will answer with exactly one of these. These are the
values the variable takes. Republican is not a variable (it does not vary from person to person)
but party affiliation is (it does vary from person to person).
By the same token, Protestant is not a variable: it is a value of the variable ‘religious
affiliation/membership’.
Research
Moreover, designer, engineer, and lawyer are not variables: they are three of the values of
the variable of ‘job’.
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 See also: Johnson and Christensen (2013, p. 39)
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55. A null hypothesis -------------.

1) states that there is an indirect relationship between the variables
2) postulates the absence of a relationship between the variables
3) proposes a reverse relationship between the variables
4) makes a guess about the direction of a relationship
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
The null hypothesis is a statistical hypothesis. It is called the null hypothesis because it states
that there is no relationship between the variables in the population. A null hypothesis states
a negation (not the reverse) of what the experimenter expects or predicts. A researcher may
hope to show that after an experimental treatment, two populations will have different means,
but the null hypothesis would state that after the treatment the populations’ means will not be
different.
What is the point of the null hypothesis? A null hypothesis lets researchers assess whether
apparent relationships are genuine or are likely to be a function of chance alone. It states, “The
results of this study could easily have happened by chance.” Statistical tests are used to
determine the probability that the null hypothesis is true. If the tests indicate that observed
392
relationships had only a slight probability of occurring by chance, the null hypothesis becomes
an unlikely explanation and the researcher rejects it. Researchers aim to reject the null
hypothesis as they try to show there is a relationship between the variables of the study.
Testing a null hypothesis is analogous to the prosecutor’s work in a criminal trial. To
establish guilt, the prosecutor (in the U.S. legal system) must provide sufficient evidence to
enable a jury to reject the presumption of innocence beyond reasonable doubt. It is not possible
for a prosecutor to prove guilt conclusively, nor can a researcher obtain unequivocal support
for a research hypothesis. The defendant is presumed innocent until sufficient evidence
indicates that he or she is not, and the null hypothesis is presumed true until sufficient evidence
indicates otherwise.
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56. Reliability is mostly a matter of ----------- while validity is mostly about -----------.
1) accuracy / consistency
2) similarity / consistency
3) similarity / dissimilarity
4) consistency / accuracy
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
There are two important psychometric properties – reliability and validity. Reliability deals
Research
with the extent to which a measure yields consistent results across two attempts of testing.
Validity refers to the extent to which a study actually captures or measures what it purports
to examine. Two broad categories of validity are external and internal validity. External validity
refers to the generalizability of the research findings.
The real difference between reliability and validity is mostly a matter of definition.
Reliability estimates the consistency of your measurement, or more simply the degree to which
an instrument measures the same way each time it is used under the same conditions with the
same subjects. Validity, on the other hand, involves the degree to which you are measuring
what you are supposed to, more simply, the accuracy of your measurement.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, p. 242, 253)
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57. Which of the following expressions makes no sense?
1) Manipulated dependent variable
2) Manipulated independent variable
3) Measured independent variable
4) Measured dependent variable
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Experimental research involves a study of the effect of the systematic manipulation of one
variable(s) on another variable. The manipulated variable is called the experimental
treatment or the independent variable. The observed and measured variable is called the
dependent variable.
393
Independent variable is of two general types: researchers either “manipulate” or “do not
manipulate” an independent variable. The former is called a “manipulated independent
variable” and the latter is referred to as a “measured independent variable”. For example, in a
study in which we wish to research the effect of vocabulary instruction on reading scores of
male and female learners, the manipulated independent variable is ‘vocabulary instruction’ and
the measured independent variable is ‘gender’. We cannot manipulate the gender of the
participants, and we can just measure its effect on the dependent variable (i.e. reading scores,
in this example).
Also, there is only one type of dependent variable: “measured dependent variable”. If we
manipulate a variable, it is called a ‘manipulated independent variable’. There is no such thing
as a manipulated dependent variable.
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58. The Kuder-Richardson coefficient, or KR-20, comes closest to ---------- reliability?
1) test-retest
2) inter-rater
3) split-half
4) multiple forms
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Research
Kuder and Richardson (1937) developed procedures that have been widely used to determine
homogeneity or internal consistency. Probably the best known index of homogeneity is the
Kuder–Richardson formula 20 (K–R 20), which is based on the proportion of correct and
incorrect responses to each of the items on a test and the variance of the total scores. Thus, it
comes closest to split-half reliability, which also is a procedure to determine the internal
consistency of measures. In fact, K-R 20 is a way of estimating the average of all the possible
split-half coefficients on the basis of the statistical characteristics of the test items.
Split-half reliability is a type of internal-consistency reliability obtained by artificially
splitting a test into two halves and correlating individuals’ scores on the two half tests.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 261-263); Bachman (1990, p. 176)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
59. Which statistic relies upon information provided in a crosstab to tell if a relationship
is statistically significant and that we can reject the null hypothesis?
1) R-squared
2) ANOVA
3) Pearson’s correlation coefficient
4) Chi-square
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
This question item is concerned with how we run statistical analyses in the SPSS software.
R-squared is run following the path: Analyze  Regression  Linear, opening then Statistics
tab and selecting/ticking R-squared change.
394
ANOVA is run following the path: Analyze  Compare Means  One-Way ANOVA
Pearson’s correlation coefficient is run following the path: Analyze  Correlate  Bivariate.
Chi-square is run following the path: Analyze  Descriptive Statistics  Crosstabs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 412-414); Pallant (2011)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
60. In doing a test of statistical significance, you will make a Type I error if you conclude
that -----------.
1) there is a difference between means when in fact there is no difference
2) there is no difference between means when in fact there is a difference
3) the absence of a difference in the samples is due to chance
4) any difference in the samples is due to chance
Answer: The correct choice is (1). But the key provided by Sazman Sanjesh is choice (2), which
is wrong.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
For explanation and for similar items, please refer to Year 91, Item 52; Year 92, Item 37; Year
96, Item 54; Year 97, Item 46.
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Research
395
61. Which approach to teaching writing claims that the skills learned in practicing
personal writing will transfer to the skills required to produce academic writing?
1) The rhetorical patterns approach
2) The focus on form approach
3) The discovery approach
4) The genre-based approach
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
As the object of any writing class is to have students work on their writing, the topics students
write about must be carefully designed, sequenced, and structured so that the teacher knows
exactly what the learning goal of each paper is so that the student gains something by working
on the assignment. There are many factors to consider in selecting topics for student writing,
but even if not consciously aware of it, the teacher will be primarily influenced by a particular
philosophy about teaching writing which he or she (or the textbook being followed) adheres to
and which significantly shapes the approach to topic design.
One very common approach to topic generation may be referred to as the "rhetorical
patterns" approach, in which EFL students are exposed to a variety of types of discourse
structure common to English prose. This is done by presenting examples of professional writing
or samples of prose written by textbook writers for the purposes of illustrating a particular
pattern that forms the focus of a lesson or sequence of lessons. Some textbooks also offer edited
or unedited essays written by EFL students as samples of the various prose patterns. Then,
typical writing assignments which derive from this philosophy ask students to imitate the
structural pattern of the prose model--be it a genuine piece of professional or student writing or
an artificially constructed one--using different content.
A completely different philosophy of teaching leads to viewing writing as a vehicle of self-

revelation and self-discovery, and assignments are presented to students in which they must
reflect on and analyze their own personal experiences. Some examples would be asking students
to write about their experiences as second language learners or to reflect on a lesson learned in
Skills
childhood. The content in either case would arise from their own personal biographies. This
type of assignment has the potential of allowing the writer to feel invested in his or her work,
not usually the case with the rhetorical pattern approach. Perhaps more centrally, the value of
writing is seen in its role as a tool of discovery of both meaning and purpose. Proponents of the
discovery approach claim that the writing skills learned in practicing personal writing will
transfer to the skills required to produce academic papers.
Genre approach (also genre-based approach): It is an approach to the teaching of

writing, particularly L1 writing, which bases a writing curriculum on the different types of text
structures or genres children encounter in school and which are crucial to school success.
Genre-based approaches are particularly strong in Australia as a result of the work of functional
linguists such as Halliday and Martin. Examples of genres encountered in school work are
Observation and Comment, Recount, Narrative, and Report. A report, for example, has the
structure of a general classificatory statement, a description, and a final comment. Proponents
of a genre approach argue that control over specific types of writing are necessary for full
396
participation in social processes. In adult second language teaching, a genre-based approach

starts from a recognition of the discourse community in which the learners will be functioning,
e.g. a hotel, factory or hospital. Discourses from the target speech community are studied in
terms of the text types and text roles that characterize them. Thus, in the genre-based
approach, samples of a specific genre are introduced, and some distinctive characteristics of
the given genre are pointed out so that students notice specific configurations of that genre.
Next, students attempt to produce the first draft through imitating the given genre.
A distinction must be made between what is commonly referred to in the literature as a

‘focus on form’ and a ‘focus on formS’ (a distinction first made by Long, 1991). A ‘focus on
formS’ approach refers to the type of teaching based on a structural syllabus where grammatical
forms are selected and then presented to learners. Learners will then practice these forms often
in controlled activities and then will be given opportunity for meaning-centered production.
This is the model which has been also described as PPP. ‘Focus on form’ occurs, however,
when classroom interactions are primarily meaning focused and attention is shifted (by either
teacher or learner) to specific linguistic forms. Many scholars have rejected a structural syllabus
and the PPP paradigm. This has led to some researchers advocating the focus-on-form approach
(Long, 1991, 1998; Doughty, 2001). The focus on form approach is popular among teachers
because it allows for the integration of both fluency and accuracy.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Celce-Murcia (2001, pp. 225-226); Murray and Christison (2011, pp. 174-175);
Richards and Renandya (2002, pp. 304, 321-327); Richards and Schmidt (2010, p.245)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
62. Which of the following is NOT true about repeated reading?

1) It is the same as rereading.
2) It is done both assisted and unassisted.
3) It is best done with passages that include between 70 and 200 words.
4) It is an important component of the reading curriculum in English L1 settings.
Answer: 1
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Skills
Explanation:
Rereading. EAP students are rarely asked to reread texts for additional purposes, despite the
fact that the rereading of familiar texts represents (1) one of the best ways to build reading
fluency, and (2) a common practice among skilled readers in academic settings to consolidate
content learning. On completion of a textbook chapter, EAP teachers usually direct students to
turn to the next chapter instead of giving students a new reason for reading the previously read
text at least one more time. And even when in the midst of a textbook unit, students are rarely
given a good reason to return to the text, even though so many tasks (Figure 1) can lead to
purposeful rereading. Each rereading of a text provides fluency practice as well as vocabulary
recycling.
397
 Confirming an answer to a comprehension question

 Confirming the main idea (skimming)
 Locating details (scanning)
 Preparing for a summary or synthesis task
 Reading between the lines (inferencing)
 Filling in a graphic organizer that reflects text organization
 Determining author stance, bias, and position (and possibly taking a position different from that of the
author)
 Locating discourse-structure and main-idea signals
 Finding points of agreement or disagreement with another information source (e.g., a video)
 Connecting information with a previously encountered information source (e.g. another passage,
teacher mini-lecture video, or field trip)
 Preparing for a follow-up activity requiring the use of text information (e g. a radio report, essay or
debate)
 Reading a full text after a jigsaw activity in which students have read only one part of the text
Figure 1. Rereading tasks that promote reading-fluency development.
Repeated reading. In English L1 settings, repeated reading (not to be confused with rereading)
has become an important component of reading curricula (Rasinski, 2010; Rasinski,
Blachowicz, & Lems, 2006). Repeated reading, unassisted or assisted, is equally valuable for
L2 students in EAP settings. Unassisted repeated reading involves students reading short
passages aloud alone (either in class or at home) until they reach a set reading rate. Assisted
repeated reading encourages students to read passages: (1) silently along with an audiotape or
CD; (2) aloud with an audiotape or CD; (3) with a teacher; or (4) after first listening to the
passage and then reading along (among other variations). The nine tips listed here can help
teachers initiate a repeated reading routine:
1. Teachers should keep passages to between 70 and 200 words.
2. Teachers should assign only texts for rereading practice that students have already read or
heard, or that will be easy for students’ reading levels.
3. Teachers should limit reading of the same passage to three to four times.
4. Students should read with reasonable accuracy and an effort to pronounce intelligibly.
5. Pronunciation should not be considered a key issue for repeated reading unless the word is
pronounced so poorly that it could be confused with a different word.
Skills
6. Students can time their reading of a whole passage (from start to finish), or they can read
for a set number of seconds (e.g., 60, 90 or 120 seconds), even though in the latter case
they may not finish the whole passage.
7. Students can read in pairs, with one student reading and the other listening (and helping
out, when necessary).
8. When students read at an improved rate, or when they improve their rate three times in a
row with a single passage, they should move to another text.
9. Students chart their progress (time and accuracy) on a record-keeping chart.
For a similar item, refer to year 96, Item 75.

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 See also: Celce-Murcia et al. (2014, pp. 200-201)
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398
63. Which one of the following types of listening practice are students involved in when
they listen to a text several times and carry out increasingly challenging tasks each
time?
1) Reciprocal listening
2) Recursive listening
3) Top-down listening
4) Nonreciprocal listening
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The concept of recursion (i.e. the repeated application) has also been used to promote more
effective teaching techniques, as in recursive listening: In recursive listening activities,
students listen to the same text several times each time with a different listening purpose.
Anderson and Lynch (1988) distinguish between reciprocal listening and non-reciprocal
listening. Reciprocal listening refers to those listening tasks where there is the opportunity for
the listener to interact with the speaker and to negotiate the content of the interaction. Non-
reciprocal listening refers to tasks such as listening to the radio or a formal lecture where the
transfer of information is in one direction only - from the speaker to the listener.
There is a basic distinction between top-down and bottom-up approaches to language

comprehension and production. Bottom-up approaches focus on the various components of
language. Bottom-up processing refers to the use of incoming data as a source of information
about the meaning of a message. From this perspective, the process of comprehension begins
with the message received, which is analyzed at successive levels of organizing sounds, words,
clauses, and sentences - until the intended meaning is arrived at. Comprehension is thus viewed
as a process of decoding.
Top-down approaches utilize knowledge of the larger picture, the language and then fit
these together in comprehending or producing as it were, to assist in comprehending or using
smaller elements. Top-down processing refers to the use of background knowledge in
understanding the meaning of a message. Background knowledge may take several forms. It
may be previous knowledge about the topic of discourse, it may be situational or contextual
knowledge, or it may be knowledge stored in long term memory in the form of “schemata” and
“scripts” - plans about the overall structure of events and the relationships between them. Skills
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Nunan (1989, p. 23); Richards (1990, pp. 50-51)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
64. According to Ellis, which of the following is NOT a component of an awareness raising
grammar lesson involving listening?
1) Listening to comprehend
2) Error correction
3) Listening to notice
4) Role play
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
399
Explanation:
Ellis (2002, pp. 30-31) outlines five teaching activities to develop grammatical knowledge of
a problematic feature:
1. Listening to comprehend: Students listen to comprehend a text that has been structured to
contain several examples of the target form.
2. Listening to notice: Students listen to the same text again, but are given a gap-fill exercise.
The target form is missing and the students simply fill it in exactly as they hear it to help
them notice the form.
3. Understanding the grammar point: With help from the teacher, the students analyze the
data and "discover" the rule.
4. Checking: Students are given a written text containing errors and are asked to correct them.
5. Trying it: Students apply their knowledge in a production activity.
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 See also: Ellis (2002); Ellis (2003, pp. 38-45)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
65. Which of the following refers to grammar instruction concerning a whole range of
structures within a lesson so that each structure receives only minimal attention?
1) Intensive teaching
2) Extensive teaching
3) Inductive teaching
4) Deductive teaching
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Intensive grammar teaching refers to instruction over a sustained period of time (which
could be a lesson or a series of lessons covering days or weeks) concerning a single
grammatical structure or , perhaps, a pair of contrasted structures (e.g., English past
continuous vs. past simple). Extensive grammar teaching refers to instruction concerning
a whole range of structures within a short period of time (e.g., a lesson) so that each
structure receives only minimal attention in any one lesson. It is the difference between
shooting a pistol repeatedly at the same target and firing a shotgun to spray pellets at a
variety of targets. Instruction can be intensive or extensive irrespective of whether it is
massed or distributed. The massed-distributed distinction refers to how a whole grammar
course is staged, while the intensive-extensive distinction refers to whether each single Skills
lesson addresses a single or multiple grammatical feature(s).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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66. Which of the following is NOT one of Nation's four major strands regarding
vocabulary learning?
1) Fluency development
2) Meaning-focused input
3) Complexity development
4) Meaning-focused output
Answer: 3
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400
Explanation:
Research on second language acquisition can be interpreted to show that a well-balanced
language course should contain four major strands: meaning-focused input, meaning-focused
output, fluency development and language-focused instruction.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Nation and Macalister (2010, pp. 51-52); Richards and Renandya (2002, p. 267)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
67. Which of the following sets of factors forms the foundation of competent L2 speaking?
1) Fluency, accuracy, appropriacy, authenticity
2) Fluency, accuracy complexity, authenticity
3) Fluency, accuracy, complexity, flexibility
4) Fluency, accuracy, flexibility, appropriacy
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Lazaraton (2014) identifies four factors that are at the foundation of component L2 speaking:
fluency, accuracy, appropriacy, and authenticity.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------
68. Which of the following best shows a hierarchical level of difficulty with respect to
different modes of speaking?
1) Instruction, narration, opinion expressing, description
2) Narration, description, instruction, opinion expressing
3) Narration, instruction, opinion expressing, description
4) Description, instruction, narration, opinion expressing
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Skills
There are variable degrees of difficulty inherently present in different types of speaking. Taking
short turns is generally easier than long turns. Talking to a familiar, sympathetic individual is
less demanding than talking to an unfamiliar, uninvolved individual or group. Something one
knows about and has well-organized in memory is naturally easier to talk about than a new
topic or an experience which has little internal organization in itself. Bearing these distinctions
in mind, the teacher should be able to judge what type of speaking activity the student would
find reasonably 'unstressful' at a particular point in his course. Deciding what speech activity
the student will record has to be determined in terms of the level of communicative stress which
the teacher believes the student can cope with, at a particular point.
401
Figure 1
Perhaps it should also be borne in mind that even native speakers of English find that a
straight description is easier, in some sense, than telling a story and, in turn, that telling a story
is easier than a justification of an opinion. This is a rather general guide to level of difficulty.
Naturally, a short narrative involving a single character and only two or three events may be
easier than a lengthy description covering many details and relationships. Let us try to capture
this general differentiation between modes of speech in a fairly informal grid, as shown in figure 1.
The grid in figure 1 is organized around the speech modes rather than the written modes.
It is presented in this way in order to show that if the teacher can control some of the interactive
parameters mentioned earlier, then he can also use the grid to control, to some extent, the level
of difficulty of the content of the speech activity. In a school or college, controlling the
interactive parameters should be relatively easy. The teacher can make sure that each student
has a comparable listener. The length of turn required can be set as brief or extended, according
to the type of speech activity selected from the grid in figure 1.
What we hope the grid in figure 1 will ensure is that the student is given the opportunity to
produce different types of speech and is not always recorded performing in a single mode.
Giving instructions on how to do something requires different structures and often quite
different vocabulary from relating a sequence of events involving two or three characters. It is
quite possible that a student who can cope easily, for a variety of background reasons, with
relating a complex sequence of events, has great difficulty producing even a brief set of
instructions on how to do something. If the teacher can use this assessment methodology to
discover such gaps in his students' spoken English abilities, then it clearly has a valuable
function in assisting the teacher to decide what to emphasize in his teaching.
----------------------------------------------------------------- Skills
 See also: Brown and Yule (1983a, pp. 107-108).
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69. Which of the following is NOT a reason for lack of attention to listening as a language
skill until the 1970s?
1) Speech and grammar were considered more important than listening.
2) Listening was considered a skill that could be picked up without explicit instruction.
3) The interpersonal function of language was absolutely ignored in language classes.
4) Language teachers themselves had probably never been taught how to listen in a second
Language.
Answer: 3
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402
Explanation:
Until the 1970s, listening, per se, was not seen as a language skill that required much attention.
There were several reasons for this: (1) speech and grammar were considered more important
than listening; (2) listening was considered a skill that could be "picked up" without overt
instruction; and (3) because language teachers and researchers themselves had probably
never been taught how to listen in a second language, they did not see the need to explicitly
teach this skill or conduct research into it (Gilman & Moody, 1984). As we moved into the
1970s and realized that listening was a core language skill that should have its own pedagogical
approach and be taught, a research agenda began to appear. This agenda was later extended to
listening in academic contexts, J. C. Richards (1983) being an early example and J. Flowerdew
(1994) being the first volume specifically devoted to academic listening.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
70. Which of the following distinguishes lexical phrases from collocations?

1) Lexical phrases are usually shorter units than collocations.
2) Lexical phrases are multiword units that are completely fixed.
3) The key word in lexical phrases always occurs as the first word.
4) Lexical phrases are often associated with various discourse functions.
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Collocations
Vocabulary knowledge involves considerably more than just knowing the meaning of a given
word in isolation; it also involves knowing the words that tend to co-occur with it. These
patterns, or collocations, consist of pairs or groups of words that co-occur with very high
frequency and are important in vocabulary learning because, as Nattinger notes, "the meaning
of a word has a great deal to do with the words with which it commonly associates" (1988, p.
69). These associations assist the learner in committing these words to memory and also aid in
defining the semantic area of a word.
If collocational associations are not learned as part of L2 vocabulary knowledge, the
resulting irregularities will immediately mark die learner's speech or writing as deviant or odd
Skills
in some way and as decidedly non-native. Native speakers of English, for example, refer to
"spoiled" butter as rancid butter and "spoiled" milk as sour milk, but not as *sour butter or
*rancid milk. A few examples of wrong word combinations that have occurred in non-native
speech are *feeble tea, Laugh broadly, *hold a burial, and *healthy advice (Bahns, 1993).
Idioms
Collocations have been discussed in terms of restricted pairs or sets of multiword combinations.
Restrictions on patterns are described in terms of key words and the range or set of associated
words that can co-occur with them. Not all collocational patterns are entirely equal, however,
as some are relatively more "fixed" than others. Idioms are multiword units that are completely
fixed. They are further distinguished as having a unitary meaning that cannot be derived from
the meanings of the component parts. That is, the combination of words in blow one's mind
have the unitary meaning astonish; those in be under the weather have the unitary meaning feel
ill. This unitary meaning is the main characteristic that sets idioms apart from ordinary colloca-
tions, in which the meanings do reflect the meaning of each constituent part. It is the unitary
403
meaning of idioms that makes them particularly troublesome for second language learners since
the meaning cannot normally be guessed by the meaning of the words that make them up.
Learners are likely to be mystified by idioms such as to let the cat out of the bag (to reveal a
secret), to shoot the breeze (to engage in casual conversation), to shed crocodile tears (to be
insincere), or to bite the dust (to die). On the other hand, they are likely to be entirely misled by
what appears to be a transparent literal meaning of other idioms such as to have cold feet (to
lack courage), to have second thoughts (to have doubt), to tighten one's belt (to be more
economical), or to have a good heart (to be a kind person).
Lexical Phrases
Lexical phrases represent another common type of multiword unit. Nattinger and DeCarrico
(1992) define lexical phrases as "chunks" of language of varying length, conventionalized
form/function composites that occur more frequently and have more idiomatically determined
meaning than language that is put together from scratch. Some are completely fixed expressions
such as by the way, how do you do?, give me a break. Others are relatively fixed phrases that
have a basic frame with slots for various fillers. They include shorter phrases such as a____
ago, or longer phrases or clauses such as the___er X, the____er Y; If I X, then I’ll Y. Examples
with the slots filled are a year ago; a month ago; the higher the mountain, the harder the climb;
the longer you wait, the sleepier you get; if I hear that one more time, I'll scream.
Lexical phrases are types of collocations and they are more or less idiomatic (e.g., more
so in by the way, how do you do?, but less so in the higher the mountain, the harder the climb).
However, they differ from idioms and other ordinary collocations in that each is
associated with a particular discourse function, such as expressing time, greetings,
relationships among ideas, or condition. The evidence from various studies, especially
computer analyses of texts, indicates that lexical phrases and other prefabricated units are
pervasive in language.
In other words, lexical phrases differ from other conventionalized or frozen forms such
as idioms or clichés mainly in that they are used to perform certain functions. For example,
it's raining cats and dogs, kick the bucket, powder room are idioms that appear to have no
particular function; how do you?, the _____er, the ______er, on the other hand, can be used in
discourse to perform the functions of greeting, expressing time relationships, and expressing
comparative relationships among ideas.
More Explanation
Skills
Lexical phrases, collocations, and syntactic strings
It is also important to distinguish clearly between lexical phrases and collocations, or ordinary
syntactic strings that do not count as lexical phrases.
1. Syntactic strings are strings of category symbols, such as “NP + AUX + VP”, which are
generated by syntactic competence and which underlie all grammatical (canonical) structures
of the language.
2. Collocations are strings of specific lexical items, such as rancid butter and curry favor,
which co-occur with a mutual expectancy greater than chance. These strings have not been
assigned particular pragmatic functions by pragmatic competence.
3. Lexical phrases are collocations, such as how do you do? and for example, that have been
assigned pragmatic functions.
Thus, there are three different sorts of phrasal combinations in the language (aside from
idioms). There are those produced by the general rules of syntax and considered regular, freshly
created constructions. These have traditionally been the center of most linguistic investigation.
Then there are those other two sorts of phrases that are produced more as prefabricated "chunks'
404
than as newly minted constructions. These have usually been assigned to the periphery of
linguistic investigation. Prefabricated phrases are collocations if they are chunked sets of
lexical items with no particular pragmatic functions; they are lexical phrases if they have such
pragmatic functions.
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 See also: Celce-Murcia (2001, pp. 292-296); Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992, pp. 36-37)
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Skills
405
71. Why is the argument “Language is grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar”
most likely to be achieved through the functional-notional approach (FNA)?
1) FNA lends itself to the teaching of routines.
2) FNA does not lay emphasis on grammar teaching.
3) FNA is a good vehicle for combination of grammar and lexis.
4) FNA is no more suitable for advanced levels where grammar is not much needed.
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Lewis (1993) has argued that "language is grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar" and
has developed his lexical approach to prioritize formulaic chunks at first. One way of achieving
this is by means of a notional-functional approach. This lends itself perfectly to the teaching of
routines (i.e., expressions that are completely formulaic, such as I don't know) and prefabricated
patterns (i.e., expressions that are partly formulaic but have one or more empty slots, such as
Can I have a _ ?) , and may provide an ideal foundation for direct intervention in the early
stages of language learning. Clearly, though, a complete language curriculum needs to ensure
that it caters to the development of both formulaic expressions and rule-based knowledge.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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72. Which of the following is NOT a criticism against Krashen's Input Hypothesis?
1) The relationship between comprehension and acquisition is not clearly spelled out.
2) It is nativist in nature with too much emphasis on innate capacities.
3) There is no place for output as a causative factor for acquisition.
4) The “i+1” construct is not operationally defined.
SLA
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Monitor Theory
One of the most ambitious and influential theories in the field of SLA, and one that is probably
the most familiar to language instructors, is Monitor Theory, developed by Stephen Krashen in
the 1970s and early 1980s. It was the first theory to be developed specifically for SLA. It has
been particularly influential among practitioners, and it has also laid the foundation for
important ideas in contemporary theorizing within SLA. Its broader success rests, in part, on its
resonance with the experience of language learners and language teachers. An understanding
of this theory is crucial to understanding the field of SLA theory and research as a whole.
The Theory and Its Constructs

Monitor Theory was the first in the field that was broad in scope and attempted to relate and
explain a variety of phenomena in language learning, ranging from the effect of age on SLA to
the apparently uneven effects of instruction. Unlike behaviorism, it proposes a language-
specific model of language learning, though the actual processes involved in learning are not
explained; thus labeling the Monitor Theory a theory of learning may be somewhat overstated.
Though not articulated in Krashen’s writing, Monitor Theory seems to be connected to
406
Chomsky’s theory of language, which states that humans are uniquely endowed with a specific
faculty for language acquisition. Much of what we consider linguistic knowledge is, according
to this view, part of our biological endowment. In other words, children come to the task of
language already knowing a great deal; they simply need the triggering data in the input for
language acquisition to take place. Krashen maintains that a similar process occurs in SLA, that
is, that child and SLA processes are fundamentally similar.
Within Monitor Theory, the driving force behind any kind of acquisition is the
comprehension of meaningful messages and the interaction of the linguistic information in
those messages with the innate language acquisition faculty. According to Krashen, Monitor
Theory can explain why what is taught is not always learned, why what is learned may not have
been taught, and how individual differences among learners and learning contexts is related to
the variable outcome of SLA. Monitor Theory consists of five interrelated hypotheses: the
Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis, the Monitor Hypothesis, the Natural Order Hypothesis, the
Input Hypothesis, and the Affective Filter Hypothesis. These, in turn, rest on several important
constructs, key concepts that are inferred but are not directly observable. Here, the Input
Hypothesis is discussed.
The Input Hypothesis

According to Monitor Theory, humans acquire language in only one way—by understanding
messages in the L2 or, as Krashen says, by receiving comprehensible input, another central
construct in the theory. This aspect of Monitor Theory is referred to as the Input Hypothesis.
Comprehensible input is input that contains language slightly beyond the current level of the
learner’s internalized language. In defining comprehensible input, Krashen introduces two
more constructs: i, which he defines as a learner’s current level of proficiency, and i + 1, which
is a level just beyond the learner’s. Krashen considers input that is i + 1 to be the most valuable
data for SLA. It is not clear in Monitor Theory exactly what 1 is, or how either it or i is
identified. In practical terms, however, their precise definitions are unimportant since these
levels of input are never isolated from the general input. Krashen specifies that roughly tuned
input will automatically include several levels of input, including i, i + 1 and probably i − 1 and
i + 2 as well. In other words, as long as a teacher or native speaker does not speak extremely
SLA
quickly, using very complex language to a low-level learner, the presence of comprehensible
input is probably assured. Learners will naturally access and use what they need, allowing
acquisition to take place spontaneously as long as they are exposed to this rich and
comprehensible input. This is most likely to occur when communication consistently focuses
on meaning rather than form. This means that, not only is instruction about grammatical rules
of little use, but according to this theory, output (production) activities are not of much value
either. Production is considered the result, rather than the cause, of acquisition. Forcing learners
to produce language before they are ready can even inhibit the acquisition process by taking
learners’ focus away from comprehension and processing of input. Rich input, combined with
the power of the language acquisition faculty, is all that is needed to promote successful
language acquisition. Indeed, Krashen has claimed that comprehensible input is not just a
necessary condition for SLA, it is the sufficient condition. In the presence of comprehensible
input, SLA is an inevitable result.
Criticisms of the Input Hypothesis

Mitchell and Myles (2004):
Krashen's Input hypothesis has been frequently criticized for being vague and imprecise: how
do we determine level i, and level i + 1? (no operational definition). Nowhere is this vital
point made clear. Moreover, Krashen's claim is somewhat circular: acquisition takes place if
407
the learner receives comprehensible input, and comprehensible input (it is claimed) has been
provided if acquisition takes place. The theory becomes impossible to verify, as no
independently testable definitions are given of what comprehensible input actually consists of,
and therefore of how it might relate to acquisition (relation between comprehension and
acquisition is not clearly spelled out). Nor, of course, does the theory specify the internal
workings of the 'Language Acquisition Device' where acquisition actually takes place - this
remains an opaque black box.
H. D. Brown (2014):
Krashen's hypotheses had some intuitive appeal to language teachers: They were, in the words
of H. L. Mencken, "short and simple," easy for teachers to grasp and faithfully follow. Many
researchers, however, with Mencken, have hotly disputed Krashen's claims as "wrong"
(McLaughlin, 1978; Gregg, 1984; White 1987; Brumfit, 1992; Swain & Lapkin, 1995; de Bot,
1996; Gass & Selinker, 2001; Swain, 2005). Let's look briefly at the criticisms.
1. Consciousness. Barry McLaughlin (1978, 1990a) sharply criticized Krashen's fuzzy

distinction between subconscious (acquisition) and conscious learning) processes, claiming that
an SLA theory that appeals to conscious/subconscious distinctions is greatly weakened by our
inability to identify just what that distinction is.
2. No interface. Kevin Gregg (1984) eloquently refuted the claim of no interface – no overlap
–between acquisition and learning. Arguing that there is no evidence to back up the claim,
Gregg showed that implicit explicit learning can indeed complement each other.
3. No explicit instruction. Studies repeatedly showed that Krashen's zero option" (don't ever
teach grammar) cannot be supported (Long, 1983, 1988; R. Ellis, 1990b, 1997; Lightbown &
Spada, 1990; Buczowska & Weist, 1991; Doughty, 1991; Doughty & Willia 1998, Swain,
1998). Explicit strategy training (Cohen, 2011; Oxford, 2011a) and FFI.
4. i +1. As shown in decades of learning psychology (Ausubel, 1968) and in Vygotsky's (1987)
SLA
Zone of proximal Development (ZPD), the notion of i + 1 is simply a reiteration of a general
principle of learning. Gregg (1984) and White (1987) also noted that we are unable to define
either i or 1.
5. Speech will emerge. In claiming that speech will naturally emerge when the learner is
"ready," the input hypothesis diminishes the learner's own initiative in seeking input. Seliger
(1983) distinguished between High Input Generators (HIGs), learners who are good at initiating
and sustaining interaction, and Low Input Generators (LIGs) who are more passive, reticent,
and less assertive. HIGS were superior learners in Seliger's (1983) study.
6. Output Hypothesis. Claiming input as "the only causative variable” (Krashen, 1986, p. 62)
in SLA ignores (a) the distinction between input and intake (Gass & Selinker, 2001), (b) the
importance of social interaction (Dunn & Lantolf, 1998; Lantolf, 2000; Kinginger, 2001;
Young, 2011) in SLA, and (c) what Merrill Swain (Swain, 1993, 1995, 2000, 2005: Swain &
Lapkin, 2005), called the Output Hypothesis. Swain offered convincing evidence that output
was at least as significant as input, if not more so. Kees de Bot (1996) argued that "output serves
an important role in second language acquisition because it generates highly specific input the
cognitive system needs to build up a coherent set of knowledge" (p. 529). Others have strongly
supported the central role of output (Izumi & Bigelow, 2000; Shehadeh, 2001; Whitlow, 2001).
408
Criticisms 4, 5, and 6 above are related to the Input Hypothesis of the Monitor Theory.
Liu (2015):
SLA cannot be attributed to comprehensible input alone, in that in the SLA framework, a lot of
factors are needed for successful acquisition. The Input Hypothesis needs to be supplemented
by other theories, such as the interaction hypothesis and the output hypothesis. Some
researchers endeavour to explain precisely how to make the input comprehensible, which
Krashen fails to do. Notably, Long (1983) proposes one way, i.e. through “modified interaction”
in his Interaction Hypothesis. Through an empirical study of conversations between native
speakers and non-native speakers, he describes three kinds of devices for the modification of
interaction: strategies, tactics, and both. Later, Long (1996) stresses corrective feedback and
negotiation of meaning in interaction for language acquisition (Lightbown & Spada, 2006,
p.44). Additionally, Swain (2000) gives prominence to output by presenting her
comprehensible output hypothesis, in which she identifies some benefits of output in language
development, such as enabling deeper processing of language, promoting “noticing” in the
sense of recognising where the learner is unable to convey the right meaning at the right time,
and testing the learner’s language learning hypotheses by studying the errors made through
production. Aside from interaction and output, other factors are also relevant, such as those
explained in noticing hypothesis (Schmidt, 1990), input processing (Vanpatten & Cadierno,
1993), etc. All things considered, the exposure to comprehensible input is indeed essential but
not sufficient to explain overall SLA.
Ellis (2008):
There have been a number of critiques of the Input Hypothesis (Greg, 1984; Færch & Kasper
1986a; Sharwood Smith 1986; McLaughlin 1987; White 1987a; Gass 1988; Ellis 1990a,
1991a).
Perhaps the major problem is that Krashen paid little attention to what 'comprehension'
entails. Rost defined listening comprehension as 'essentially an inferential process based on the
perception of cues rather than straightforward matching of sound to meaning' (1990, p. 33).
SLA
This suggests that understanding does not necessitate close attention to linguistic form. Færch
and Kasper (1986a) also recognized the importance of 'top-down processes', in which learners
utilize contextual information and existing knowledge to understand what is said, but they also
point out that they may sometimes make use of 'bottom-up processes', where they pay closer
attention to the linguistic forms in the message. The question that remains unanswered, then, is
what type of comprehension processes are needed for acquisition to take place. If learners can
rely extensively on top-down processing they may pay little attention to the form of the input
and may therefore not acquire anything new. Færch and Kasper argued that only when there is
a ‘gap’ between the input and the learner's current interlanguage and, crucially, when the learner
perceives the gap as a gap in knowledge, will acquisition take place. Sharwood Smith (1986)
argued similarly that the processes of comprehension and acquisition are not the same, and
suggested that input has a 'dual relevance' - there is input that helps learners to interpret
meaning, and there is input that learners use to advance their interlanguages. Thus, as Gass
(1988) pointed out, it is not comprehensible input but rather comprehended input that is
important. Krashen (1983) appeared to have recognized this when he proposed that learners
learn through comprehension by linking form to meaning and by noticing the gap between the
i + 1 form and their current interlanguage rule. Unfortunately, however, he did not consistently
emphasize this in presentations of the Input Hypothesis. As Carroll (1999) pointed out, what is
required of any account of the role of input in acquisition is 'explicit statements of how what is
409
detected in the acoustic and visual stimuli is mentally represented and how detection and
encoding are guided by internal mechanisms' (p. 39).
A second major criticism focuses on the claim that comprehensible input is necessary for
acquisition. L. White (1987a) argued that a considerable part of acquisition is 'input-free'. She
claimed that certain types of overgeneralizations which learners make cannot be unlearnt simply
by understanding input. They require negative evidence (for example, in the form of corrective
feedback) which in naturalistic acquisition may not be available to the learner. She also claimed
that learners are able to go beyond the evidence available in the input, and develop knowledge
of target-language rules by projecting from their existing knowledge. Finally, she argued that
in the case of some structures (for example, English passive constructions), it may be the failure
to understand input that leads to learning. As she puts it “the driving force for grammar change
is that input is incomprehensible, rather than comprehensible” (1987a, p. 95). White's idea was
that failure to understand a sentence may force the learner to pay closer attention to its
syntactical properties in order to obtain clues about its meaning and, as such, reflected the views
of Færch and Kasper (1986a) and Sharwood Smith (1986) about comprehension and learning
discussed above.
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 See also: Ellis (2008, p. 251); Brown (2014, p. 289-90); Liu (2015, pp. 144-5); Mitchell
and Myles (2004, p. 48); VanPatten and Williams (2015, pp. 24-27)
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73. Why is focusing on pragmatic meaning often preferred to emphasizing semantic

meaning?
1) It facilitates the process of acquisition, develops fluency, and is intrinsically motivating.
2) It facilitates the process of acquisition, promotes accuracy, and is intrinsically motivating.
3) It maximizes learner engagement, promotes accuracy, and fosters learner autonomy.
4) It maximizes learner engagement, develops fluency, and fosters learner autonomy.
Answer: 1
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SLA
Explanation:
Ellis (2014) has provided 10 principles to guide both researchers and practitioners when it
comes to the role and status of instruction in second language acquisition. Principle 2 of his
provisional specifications reads: Instruction needs to ensure that learners focus
predominantly on meaning.
He believes that the term focus on meaning is somewhat ambiguous. It is necessary to
distinguish two different senses of this term. The first refers to the idea of semantic meaning
(i.e., the meanings of lexical items or of specific grammatical structures). For example, can in
the sentence I can swim expresses a semantic meaning (i.e., ability). The second sense of focus
on meaning relates to pragmatic meaning (i.e., the highly contextualized meanings that arise in
acts of communication). Can also encodes pragmatic meaning, as when it is used in requests
such as Can you pass the salt? To provide opportunities for students to attend to and perform
pragmatic meaning, a task-based (or, at least, a tasks-supported) approach to language teaching
is required. It is clearly important that instruction ensures opportunities for learners to focus on
both types of meaning, but arguably, it is pragmatic meaning that is crucial to language learning.
There is an important difference in the instructional approaches needed for semantic versus
pragmatic meaning. In the case of semantic meaning, the teacher and the students can treat
language as an object and function as pedagogue and learners. But in the case of pragmatic
meaning, they need to view the L2 as a tool for communicating and to function as
410
communicators. 2 In effect, this involves two entirely different orientations to teaching and
learning.
The opportunity to focus on pragmatic meaning is important for a number of reasons:
 In the eyes of many theorists (e.g., Prabhu, 1987; Long, 1996), only when learners are
engaged in understanding and producing messages in the context of actual acts of
communication are the conditions created for acquisition to take place.
 To develop true fluency in an L2, learners must have opportunities to create pragmatic
meaning (DeKeyser, 1998).
 Engaging learners in activities during which they are focused on creating pragmatic
meaning (and, therefore, treating language as a tool rather than as an object) is
intrinsically motivating.

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74. Which SL.A theory does the principle "Learners will process lexical items for meaning
before grammatical forms when both encode the same semantic information" belong to?
1) Sociocultural Theory
2) Autonomous Induction Theory
3) Input Processing
4) Skill Acquisition Theory
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
For Input Processing, refer to Year 92, Item 72 or Year 96, Item 64.
For Sociocultural Theory, refer to Year 92, Item 87; and Year 94, Item 86.
SLA
Autonomous Induction Theory
Carroll (2001) proposes the Autonomous Induction theory, which attributes difficulties in
learning a second language to parsing problems. Acquisition moves forward when there is a
failure in the parsing of utterances. Learning is an inductive process in this view (learning
takes place by being presented with examples—input—and making generalizations from those
examples) and learning is triggered by a failure to process incoming stimuli. Parsing involves
a categorization of the stream of sounds that one hears into some meaningful units (e.g., lexical,
functional, syntactic). When one hears an L2 utterance, one has to assign appropriate
relationships, that is, one has to parse the elements into something that makes sense. Thus, let’s
assume a complex sentence such as That’s the cat whom the dog bit. Let’s further assume that
a learner hears this and parses it as if it were That’s the cat who bit the dog, given that the latter
is an “easier” relative clause structure. Finally, let’s assume that the learner knows from prior
events that it was the dog who had done the biting. It is at this juncture that there is a signal to
the parser that there needs to be an adjustment. This is not to say that there will always be a
positive result and that the parsing mechanism will be adjusted; it is to say that this is the
mechanism by which such adjustments may take place. As Carroll (2007, p. 161) puts it, the
language acquisition device “is triggered when the parsing system fails.”
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Skill Acquisition Theory (Most closely associated with Robert DeKeyser)

Skill Acquisition Theory (a derivative of Adaptive Control of Thought) is a theory in cognitive
psychology centered on three stages of development: cognitive (or declarative), associative (or
procedural), and autonomous (or automatic). The three stages are distinguished by major
differences in the nature of knowledge, usage, and behavior. Learners can gain some declarative
knowledge (“knowledge that”) through observation or analysis without being required to use any
skill at the initial learning stage. The second stage is when the learning is visible as behavior or
procedural knowledge (“knowledge how”). Thus, declarative knowledge is transformed into
procedural knowledge. This proceduralization of knowledge is not particularly difficult or time
consuming providing that the relevant declarative knowledge is available to the learner. This is
achieved by engaging in the target behavior while relying on declarative knowledge (paying
attention to something while practicing). Once the procedural knowledge has been realized,
continued practice reinforces the skill. This practice is called automatization. As a general rule,
the more the learner practices the skill, the more automatic the skill becomes.
Another important concept of Skill Acquisition Theory is the role of explicit or implicit
learning in acquiring rules. This is very much dependent on the complexity of the rule. Simple
rules can be learned explicitly, while more ‘complex’ ones may be better acquired implicitly.
According to Skill Acquisition Theory, the gradual automatizing of a rule essentially means that
a rule becomes implicitly acquired. Therefore, practice leading to automatization is not always at
odds with implicit learning. Also important to the theory is the idea of appropriate practice. That
is, for someone to get control over a skill and automate a behavior, that person must engage in
the very skill he or she wishes to acquire. One does not learn to cook by eating. One learns to
cook by actually cooking over and over again. Applied to the second language context, the
implications should be clear. Learners first learn “rules” about language explicitly. They have
declarative knowledge about language. Learners must engage in appropriate practice. For
example, if a skill they wish to acquire is speaking, then learners must engage in speaking (not
rote practice, not repetition, not classic “drills”). Practice for speaking, then, would mean events
in which learners are attempting to communicate information. The process is slow, but as learners
engage more and more in such appropriate practice, the skill becomes fine-tuned and more and
SLA
more automatic. That is, the learner becomes more fluent with the language and more error free.
For similar items on “input processing”, refer to Year 92, Item, 72; Year 93, Items 61 and 89;
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 See also: Gass and Selinker (2008, p. 240); VanPatten and Benati (2015, pp. 81-84);
VanPatten and Williams (2015, pp. 113-134)
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75. According to Anderson's ACT model, which stages are involved in the move from
declarative to procedural knowledge?
1) Cognitive, metacognitive, and associative
2) Cognitive, associative, and autonomous
3) Metacognitive, operational, and associative
4) Metacognitive, associative, and autonomous
Answer: 2
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412
Explanation:
One of the processing models from cognitive psychology, which has also been applied to
aspects of SLL, is Anderson's (1983, 1985) ACT model. This model is not dissimilar from
McLaughlin's. It is more wide-ranging, and the terminology is different, but practice leading to
automatization also plays a central role. It enables declarative knowledge (i.e. knowledge that
something is the case) to become procedural knowledge (i.e. knowledge how to do
something). One of the major differences is that Anderson posits three kinds of memory: a
working memory, similar to McLaughlin's short-term memory and therefore tightly capacity-
limited, and two kinds of long-term memory - a declarative long-term memory and a procedural
long-term memory. Anderson believes that declarative and procedural knowledge are different
kinds of knowledge that are stored differently.
According to Anderson, the move from declarative to procedural knowledge takes place in three
stages:
1. The cognitive stage: A description of the procedure is learnt.
2. The associative stage: A method for performing the skill is worked out.
3. The autonomous stage: The skill becomes more and more rapid and automatic.
For similar items, refer to Year 91, Item 66; and Year 92, Items 83 and 90.
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76. Which of the following is TRUE about constructivists' views towards language
learning?
1) They view human mind as a limited-capacity processor.
2) They focus on the computational dimension of language learning.
3) They see human mind as a general-purpose, symbol-processing system.
4) They refute the need for an innate, language specific acquisition device.
Answer: 4
SLA
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Explanation:
Cognitive approaches to second language acquisition put more emphasis on the learning
component of SLL, that is, they are interested in transition theories. They view SLL as just
one instantiation (i.e. working example) of learning among many others, and they believe that
we can understand the second language acquisition process better by first understanding how
the human brain processes and learns new information. The focus is very much on the learner
as an individual (unlike the work of social theorists), but, unlike Universal Grammar theorists
who draw their hypotheses from the study of linguistic systems, the hypotheses they are
investigating come from the field of cognitive psychology and neurology, and from what we
know about the acquisition of complex procedural skills in general.
According to Mitchell and Myles (2004), cognitive theorists fall into two main groups:
A. The theorists such as Pienemann, or Towell and Hawkins (1994), who believe that language
knowledge might be 'special' in some way, but who are concerned to develop transition or
processing theories to complement property theories such as Universal Grammar or Lexical
Functional Grammar.
B. Theorists such as N.C. Ellis, MacWhinney, or Tomasello, who do not think that the
separation between property and transition theories is legitimate, as they believe that you can
413
explain both the nature of language knowledge and how it is processed through general
cognitive principles. In fact, they do not generally make the distinction between competence
and performance, as they see these as being one and the same thing. In this view, the learner is
seen as operating a complex processing system that deals with linguistic information in similar
ways to other kinds of information.
The first group of linguists belong to processing approaches, and the second group to
emergentist or constructionist approaches.
Processing approaches, as their name indicates, investigate how second language learners
process linguistic information, and how their ability to process the second language develops
over time. They are focused primarily on the computational dimension of language
learning, and might or might not believe that language is a separate innate module.
Constructivist or emergentist views of language learning share a usage-based view of
language development, which is driven by communicative needs, and they refute the need to
posit an innate, language specific, acquisition device. They include approaches known as
emergentism, connectionism or associationism, constructivism, functionalism, cognitivism,
Competition Model, etc. “They emphasize the linguistic sign as a set of mappings between
phonological forms and conceptual meanings or communicative intentions” (N.C. Ellis, 2003,
p. 63). Learning in this view is seen as the analysis of patterns in the language input, and
language development is seen as resulting from the billions of associations which are made
during language use, and which lead to regular patterns that might look rule-like, but in fact are
merely associations. “Constructivists believe that the complexity of language emerges from
associative learning processes being exposed to a massive and complex environment” (N.C.
Ellis, 2003, p. 84). Many researchers within emergentist frameworks believe that language
develops as learners move from the learning of exemplars (words, formulae) that are committed
to memory; from these, regularities emerge, giving rise to slot-and-frame patterns, such as all-
gone + referent or / can't + verb. As more and more of these formulae develop, they are
compared and analyzed, regularities extracted and applied elsewhere. This phenomenon is well
documented in early first language acquisition, and many emergentist first language
acquisitionists believe it drives the acquisition process. “The children are picking up frequent
patterns from what they hear around them, and only slowly making more abstract
SLA
generalizations as the database of related utterances grows” (Ellis, 2003, p. 70). Verbs have
been found to be particularly productive in allowing children to make abstract generalizations
about their argument structure on the basis of the formulaic sequences they appear in (Goldberg,
1999). In second language acquisition, chunks are also very common in the early stages, and
learners have been shown to gradually analyze them into their constituents. N. C. Ellis (2003)
has also argued that these processes of chunking (i.e. moving from unanalyzed chunks to
abstract generalizations) are central to second language acquisition.
Choices 1 and 3 refer to McLaughlin's information-processing model, which is
categorized under the processing approaches mentioned above.
In general, the fundamental notion of the information-processing approach to
psychological inquiry is that complex behavior builds on simple processes (McLaughlin and
Heredia, 1996, p. 213). Moreover, these processes are modular and can therefore be studied
independently of one another. The main characteristics of such an approach include:
1. Humans are viewed as autonomous and active.
2. The mind is a general-purpose, symbol-processing system.
3. Complex behavior is composed of simpler processes; these processes are modular.
4. Component processes can be isolated and studied independently of other processes.
5. Processes take time; therefore, predictions about reaction time can be made.
6. The mind is a limited-capacity processor.
414
For similar items, refer to Year 91, Items 63 and 73; Year 92, Items 73 and 80; and Year 93,
Item 82.
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77. Which of the following statements is TRUE?

1) Analyzed knowledge is the unconscious awareness of how a structure works.
2) Developing explicit knowledge should be the ultimate goal of any instructional program.
3) A person can possess explicit knowledge even though she lacks the metalanguage needed
to express it.
4) The same neural structures are involved in acquiring and storing the analyzed and the
metalinguistic explanation knowledge.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Principle 4 of the principles proposed by Ellis regarding the role of instruction in SLA reads:
Instruction needs to be predominantly directed at developing implicit knowledge of the L2
while not neglecting explicit knowledge. As it was previously mentioned, Rod Ellis (2014)
makes a distinction between implicit knowledge and explicit knowledge.
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78. Which of the following terms refers to the qualitative changes that take place in
learners' interlanguage at certain stages of development?
1) Restructuring
2) Parameter setting
SLA
3) Horizontal variation
4) Grammaticalization
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
The term restructuring refers to the qualitative changes that take place in learners’
interlanguages. These changes relate to both the way knowledge is represented in the minds
of learners and also the strategies they employ. One way of characterizing restructuring is in
terms of Anderson’s ACT Theory, whereby declarative knowledge is organized into procedural
knowledge. Another way is in terms of the shift from exemplar-based to rule-based
representation. McLaughlin (1990, p. 118) gave the ‘classic’ example of the U-shaped learning
of the past tense in English and also the process by which formulaic sequences become
analyzed. The primary mechanism of restructuring is automatization. McLaughlin (1987)
claimed that “once procedures at any phase become automatized … learners step up to a
‘metaprocedural’ level which generates representational change and restructuring” (p. 138). In
other words, restructuring involves the replacement of existing procedures with more efficient
ones. This process is facilitated by the flexible use of learning strategies.
415
More Explanation of Restructuring

McLaughlin (1990) noted two concepts that are fundamental in second language learning and
use: automaticity and restructuring. Automaticity refers to control over one’s linguistic
knowledge. In language performance, one must bring together a number of skills from
perceptual, cognitive, and social domains. The more each of these skills is routinized, the
greater the ease with which they can be put to use.
Restructuring refers to the changes made to internalized representations as a result of new

learning. Changes that reflect restructuring are discontinuous or qualitatively different from
a previous stage. Learning means the inclusion of additional information which must be
organized and structured. Integrating new information into one’s developing second language
system necessitates changes to parts of the existing system, thereby restructuring, or
reorganizing, the current system and creating a (slightly) new second language system. Mere
addition of new elements does not constitute restructuring.
Parameters/parameter setting
Parameters are mostly associated with syntactic theory, specifically Chomskyan theory and
Universal Grammar. Parameters are particular variations on a type of syntactic feature, and
these features are finite in number. One such parameter is the null subject parameter. A null
subject refers to the fact that verbs can appear without an explicit or overt subject, and the
sentence is grammatical. For example, in Spanish Hablo ‘I speak’ and Habla ‘he speaks’ are
allowed. In addition, Está lloviendo ‘It’s raining’ is allowed; in fact, it is required that weather
expressions in Spanish have no equivalent of it. These are all grammatical sentences. In English,
however, such sentences are prohibited: ‘*Speaks,’ ‘*Is raining.’ In short, languages vary as to
whether they allow null subjects or not, and linguists talk about the parameter being set one
way or another. Spanish and Italian, for example, are null subject languages and thus have the
parameter set to +null subjects. English and French are not null subject languages and have the
parameter set to –null subjects. Developments in syntactic theory have led to increasingly
abstract notions of parameters, such as +/–strong agreement, which may affect word order.
SLA
In SLA, the question has been whether or not learners can “reset” parameters to the L2
value if their L1 value is different. In the case of going from Spanish to English, the learner
would have to reset from + to –null subject, while the English speaker learning Spanish would
have to reset from – to +null subject. Resetting of parameters occurs when appropriate input
data from the environment interact with the information contained in Universal Grammar.
Research to date suggests that parameter resetting can occur, but it is not a given.
Some scholars have argued that only certain kinds of parameters can be reset. And, of
course, there has been discussion of the degree to which L1 parameters are transferred into SLA
from the beginning. One of the most widely read and cited scholars working within parametric
matters in SLA (as well as Universal Grammar) is Lydia White, although there are many others
who have examined SLA from a Universal Grammar framework.
Horizontal variation
It refers to the variation evident in learner language at a particular moment or stage in a learner’s
development. It contrasts with vertical variation which refers to the differences in learner
language evident from one time to another. It reflects the development that is taking place in
the learner’s interlanguage.
416
More Explanation
A typology of variability in learner language
The outline of the typology is shown in the following figure. The typology addresses variation
in choice of linguistic form. It excludes functional variation (i.e. variation in the choice of
language function).
vertical
variation Inter-learner
Variation variation
horizontal free variation
variation internal (linguistic)
Intra-learner sociolinguistic
variation external (social)
systematic variation
(form-function) planning
psycholinguistic
monitoring
A typology of variation in the choice of linguistic form found in learner language
A basic distinction is made tween horizontal and vertical variation. Horizontal variation refers
to the variation evident in learner language at any single time, while vertical variation refers to
variation over time and is, therefore, coterminous with order/sequence of development. There
is some evidence to suggest that horizontal variation mirrors vertical variation for, as
Widdowson puts it, “change is only the temporal consequence of current variation” (1979b, p.
195), a view that accords with the role of change in the dynamic paradigm.
Horizontal variation is subdivided into inter-and intra-learner variation. Inter-learner
variability reflects individual learner factors such as motivation and personality, but it also
arises as a result of social factors such as social class and ethnic grouping, as the Labovian
paradigm has demonstrated, and also as a result of psycholinguistic factors, such as working
memory. As these same social and psycholinguistic factors are also involved in intra-learner
SLA
variation, there is clearly an interaction between individual learner factors such as sex, social
class, and working memory and the situational factors involved in style shifting; the markers
involved in stylistic variation also function as social indicators.
Intra-learner variation can take the form of either free variation or systematic variation.
Free variation arises when linguistic choices occur randomly, making it impossible to predict
when a learner will use one form as opposed to another. The existence of free variation in
learner language is, however, controversial. Many sociolinguists consider that free variation
does not exist or that it occurs for only a very short period of time and is of minor interest.
Gatbonton (1978) and I Ellis 1980c, 1989c, 1999c) have, however, argued that free variation
constitutes an important mechanism of development. Systematic variation occurs when it is
possible to identify some factor that predisposes a learner to select one specific linguistic form
over another. Systematic variation is evident in form-function analyses that demonstrate that,
at any one time of development, learners' grammars reflect particular configurations of form-
function mapping. That is, learners organize their linguistic systems in such a way that specific
forms are used to realize specific language functions. Thus, the choice of one linguistic form in
preference to another is determined by the language function the learner wishes to perform.
Systematic variation is conditioned by both sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic factors.
Sociolinguistic accounts of variation distinguish internal and external sources. Internal
variation is determined by linguistic context (i.e. the elements that precede and follow the
417
variable structure in question) and other linguistic factors such as markedness. External
variation is accounted for in terms of the social factors that are configured in different
situational contexts of language use that conspire to categorically or probabilistically influence
the learner's choice of linguistic forms. The situational context covers a whole host of factors.
Preston (1989) offers a detailed breakdown (for example, time, topic, purpose, and tone).
Psycholinguistic sources of variability include the means learners use to control their linguistic
resources (i.e. planning and monitoring) under different conditions of language use. They
have been investigated in terms of task-induced variability.
The goal of variationist research is to describe and account for learners’ choice of linguistic
forms. The assumption is made that variability in learner language is systematic (i.e. that it is
possible to identify the factors that will account for why one form is preferred to another in
different sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic contexts). There remains the possibility, however,
that at least some of this variability is non-systematic (i.e. learners select randomly from their
linguistic repertoires).
Grammaticalization
Some functionalist models of L2 acquisition consider that early L2 acquisition is characterized
by the use of pragmatic strategies for conveying meanings that are conveyed grammatically by
native speakers. Gradually, learners move from this pragmatic mode to a grammatical mode as
they learn the grammatical properties of the L2.
The term grammaticalization was first introduced at the beginning of the 20 th century to
refer to a specific process whereby content words change into function words such as
prepositions and auxiliaries, or even become grammatical markers such as affixes. However,
the concept has also been used in a more general sense to denote the transformation whereby a
lexical item gradually acquires grammatical status. Ramat (2001) points out that the implicit
notion of grammaticalization goes back as far as the 19th century when it was used within a
historical linguistic framework to indicate one of the most characteristic developments
languages may undergo. It is this broader sense of the term that usage-based linguists have
used to explain the emergence of grammar from functional language use. Tomasello (2003)
argues that during the process of communication words are strung together into sequences,
SLA
forming patterns of use that become consolidated into grammatical constructions. Non-nativist
linguists offer this process as the alternative to the seeing the origins of grammatical structures
in some sort of inherent human linguistic endowment:
Grammaticalization processes are well-attested in the written records of numerous
languages in their relatively recent pasts, and it is a reasonable assumption that the
same processes were at work in the origin and early evolution of language, turning
loosely organized sequences of single symbols into grammaticized linguistic
constructions (Tomasello, 2000, p. 162).
N. Ellis and Larsen-Freeman (2006) argue that the grammaticalization process involves, in
effect, the automatization of frequently occurring sequences of linguistic elements, which
results in the emergence of syntactic constructions and then in subsequent shifts in their function
due to frequency effects. Thus, frequency plays a crucial role in the diachronic development
and change of languages. It is important to note that this diachronic evolution is a gradual
process, which has been indicated in linguistic accounts by using metaphors such as ‘graded
scales’ or ‘grammaticalization chains’.
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 See also: Dörnyei (2009, pp. 118-119); Ellis (2008, pp. 129-30, 442, 964, 977-8, 982);
Gass and Selinker (2008, pp. 230-236); VanPatten and Benati (2015, pp. 155-156)
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79. Which of the following is NOT an instance of language-related episode?

1) When a learner implicitly or explicitly corrects his own or another's usage of a word.
2) When a learner uses formulaic language to compensate for a communication failure.
3) When a learner questions the correctness of the spelling of a word.
4) When a learner questions the meaning of a linguistic form.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Language-related episodes (LREs) is a construct studied within the context of interaction.
Briefly defined, LREs refer to instances where learners consciously reflect on their own
language use, or, more specifically “instances in which learners may (a) question the meaning
of a linguistic item; (b) question the correctness of the spelling/pronunciation of a word;
(c) question the correctness of a grammatical form; or (d) implicitly or explicitly correct
their own or another's usage of a word, form or structure” (Leeser, 2004, p. 56; see also
Swain & Lapkin, 1998; Williams, 1999). LREs, as Williams (1999) notes, encompass a wide
range of discourse moves, such as requests for assistance, negotiation sequences, and explicit
and implicit feedback, and are generally taken as signs that learners have noticed a gap between
their interlanguages (or their partners’ interlanguages) and the system of the target language.
The following example illustrates a language-related episode where students discuss the gender
of the word for ‘map’.
Language-Related Episode (from Gass et al., 2005):
LEARNER 1: Los nombres en el mapa. ¿Es el mapa o la mapa?

The names on the map. Is it the (m.) map or the (f.) map?
LEARNER 2: El mapa
The (m.) map
SLA
Based on this example, it might be possible to conclude that Learner 1 recognized a gap in her
knowledge of Spanish gender, and thus produces an LRE (an explicit request for assistance). A
number of studies investigating L2 learners’ use of LREs have found that LREs not only
represent language learning in process but are also positively correlated with L2 development.
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 See also: Ellis (2008, p. 265, 830); VanPatten and Williams (2015, p. 190)
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80. What does the “butterfly effect" in chaos/complexity theory make researchers aware
of?
1) False dichotomies
2) Causal approaches to theorizing
3) Overgeneralization
4) Reductionist thinking
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Complex dynamic systems exhibit nonlinearity, which means that an effect is not
proportionate to a cause. In a nonlinear system, a small change in one parameter can have huge
implications downstream. This sensitivity has been called the “butterfly effect,” to make the
point that a small change, such as a butterfly’s flapping its wings in one part of the world,
can have a big impact on the weather elsewhere.
What follows includes a brief introduction to chaos-complexity theory and its main tenets and
characteristics.
Chaos/Complexity Theory
Complexity theorists are fundamentally concerned with describing and tracing emerging
patterns in dynamic systems in order to explain change and growth. As such, Complexity
Theory (CT) is well-suited for use by researchers who study second language acquisition
(SLA), and it is not surprising, therefore, that its influence has been increasing. In fact, the
famous physicist Stephen Hawking (2000) has called the 21st century “the century of
complexity.” CT has a broad reach. It is transdisciplinary in two senses of the term: first, in
that it has been used to inform a variety of disciplines, for example, epidemiology in biology,
dissipative systems in chemistry, stock market performance in business—and more germane to
our interests—investigations of language (e.g., Bybee & Hopper, 2001), language change (e.g.,
Kretzschmar, 2009), language evolution (e.g., MacWhinney, 1999), language development
(e.g., Larsen-Freeman, 2006), discourse (e.g., Cameron, 2007), and multilingualism (e.g.,
Herdina & Jessner, 2002). The second way that it is transdisciplinary is that complexity
contributes a new cross-cutting theme to theory development, comparable to prior revolutionary
transdisciplinary themes such as structuralism and evolution (Halliday & Burns, 2006). Diane
Larsen-Freeman was the first individual to apply CT to language development.
Characteristics of Complex Systems

Emergence: Complexity introduces the theme of emergence (Holland, 1998), “the
spontaneous occurrence of something new” (van Geert, 2008, p. 182) that arises from the
SLA
interaction of the components of a complex system, just as a bird flock emerges from the
interaction of individual birds. Since a bird flock cannot be understood from examining a single
bird, the search for understanding a phenomenon shifts from reductionism, or explaining the
phenomenon by describing its simpler components, to understanding how complex order
emerges from interacting components.
Self-organizing: Furthermore, the above-mentioned order emerges “without direction from

external factors and without a plan of the order embedded in an individual component”
(Mitchell, 2003, p. 6). In other words, complex systems are self-organizing.
Dynamic and Open: It is important to add that saying that order emerges does not mean that
the resulting pattern remains static, just as a bird flock is not fixed. In this regard, complex
systems are also known as dynamic systems. Calling them such highlights their ceaseless
movement: they attain periods of stability, but never stasis. They are about becoming, not being
(Gleick, 1987, p. 5). Complexity theorists study change through time, sometimes continuous
change, sometimes sudden. Dynamic systems are represented as trajectories in state space (de
Bot, 2008). As the systems evolve, they undergo phase transitions, in which one more or less
stable pattern gives rise to another. One way to think of phase transitions is to observe a pot of
water on a stove. As the water heats, it changes from a seemingly inert phase to a roiling phase.
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Provided that complex systems are open, that is, they interact with their environment (and
depending on the type of system, they exchange information, matter, or energy with it), they
will show the emergence of order. Think of an eddy in a stream. The water molecules that
comprise it are constantly changing because it is an open, dynamic system. However, the whorl
remains more or less constant—a pattern emergent in the flux.
Adaptive: Complex systems are also adaptive. An adaptive system changes in response to
changes in its environment. Successful adaptive behavior entails the ability to respond to
novelty. For example, a human being’s adaptive immune system lacks centralized control and
does not settle into a permanent, fixed structure; for this reason, it is able to adapt to combat
previously unknown invaders.
Nonlinear: Discussed above.
Therefore, complexity theorists seek to explain the functioning of emergent, complex, dynamic,
open, adaptive, and nonlinear systems (Larsen-Freeman, 1997). Ellis (2008) explicates that,
drawing on work in the physical sciences that has shown that complex systems are random,
non-linear, unpredictable, self-organizing, and subject to strange attractors (i.e., they tend
to focus on a particular pattern that determines the boundaries of the phenomenon), Larsen-
Freeman has proposed that language and L2 acquisition are best viewed as complex systems.
She identified a number of features of L2 acquisition that justify this analogy: it constitutes a
dynamic process characterized by variability, this process is self-evidently complex (i.e., it
involves a number of interacting factors), it is non-linear (i.e., learners do not master one item
and then move on to another), the learner’s interlanguage system is self-organizing (i.e., it
manifest restructuring), and the learner’s L1 functions as a strange attractor. Larsen-
Freeman’s application of chaos theory is fundamentally emergentist in that it conflates how L2
knowledge is represented with how it is used and develops over time.
In sum, complexity theory seeks to explain complex, dynamic, open, adaptive, self-
organizing, nonlinear systems. It focuses on the close interplay between the emergence of
SLA
structure on one hand and process or change on the other. Language, its use, its evolution, its
development, its learning, and its teaching are arguably complex systems. Thus, complexity
theory offers a way to unite all these phenomena. Complexity theory can therefore be tapped
for its useful perspective on dynamic phenomena such as L2 development. No longer must we
decontextualize, segregate, idealize, and atemporalize language (Larsen-Freeman, 2008). One
of complexity theory’s innovations is that in acknowledging the complexity of natural systems,
it avoids reductionist solutions. It sees complex behavior as arising from interactions among
many components—a bottom-up process based on the contributions of each, which are subject
to change over time.
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 See also: Atkinson (2011, p. 52); Ellis (2008, p. 465); VanPatten and Williams (2015, pp.
227-228)
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81. Which of the following is captured by the automatic-focal cell in the information
processing model of second language learning?
1) Performance based on formal rule learning
2) Performance in communication situations
3) Performance in a test situation
4) Performance based on implicit learning
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
One way of viewing SLA is to see it as the acquisition of complex skills, much like learning
other skills such as playing tennis or playing the violin. From this perspective, the role of
automaticity assumes great importance. When learning to play tennis, for example, one cannot
be deliberative about every movement of the racket or movement of one’s feet. Rather, when
one is approaching the net, one automatically moves one’s feet in a particular way and gets the
racket set without thinking deliberately about each step or position of the racket.
There are a number of ways that automaticity can be conceptualized, but the most central of
these is that there is fast, unconscious, and effortless processing. When there has been a
consistent and regular association between a certain kind of input and some output pattern,
automatization may result; that is, an associative connection is activated.
Controlled processing is another mechanism of language use. With controlled processing, the
associations have not been built up by repeated use. Rather, attentional control is necessary.
Thus, one would expect a slower response.
The distinction between controlled and automatic processing is one of routinization and the
creation of associations in long-term memory, not one of conscious awareness, as Krashen’s
acquisition–learning distinction suggests. The distinction is also not one of separateness,
because automatic processing presupposes the existence of controlled processing. Second
language acquisition, in this view, takes place by the initial use of controlled processes. With
time and with experience in specific linguistic situations, learners begin to use language more
SLA
automatically, thus leaving more attentional resources for new information that requires more
control. Segalowitz (2003) points out that the picture in reality is not so clear cut. Grammatical
learning is not simply a matter of moving from the knowledge of examples to automatic use
based on rules; nor does it move from the effortful use of rules to automatic retrieval of chunks
stored in memory. Segalowitz and DeKeyser (2001) suggest a need to investigate these two
modes together (rule-based learning and exemplar-based learning) in order to understand how
learners put information together to produce language in a way that native speakers do; that is,
fast, effortless, and unconscious.
The role of attention is intimately connected to automaticity in that when information use
(e.g., in production or in reading, or in going to the net in tennis) is automatic, there is less
attention paid to each action along the way. Consider table below from McLaughlin, Rossman,
and McLeod (1983). Here we have a sketch of different types of processing information
depending on two variables: degree of control and degree of attention.
There are various ways in which learners can “attack” the process of learning a second
language, depending in large part on where they focus attention. Cell A reflects a learner who
focuses attention on formal properties of learning in a controlled way. This would most likely
be the type of learner who would come out of a formal classroom learning experience. Cell C
reflects a learner in a situation in which the use of the language is not automatic, but in which
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the use of the language does not necessitate explicit attention. Cells B and D reflect automatic,
routinized language use. In Cell B, however, task demands, such as a formal test, might
necessitate a learner’s attention, whereas Cell D reflects the normal situation of language use
by native speakers and by fluent nonnative speakers.
Attention to formal Information processing

properties of language
Controlled Automatic
Focal (Cell A) (Cell B)
Performance based on Performance in a test
formal rule learning situation
Peripheral (Cell C) (Cell D)
Performance based on Performance in
implicit learning or analogic communication situations
learning
Possible second language performance as a function of information processing procedures and

attention to formal properties of language
Segalowitz (2003) describes the interaction as follows:

“As various component mental activities become practiced, their time of operation
will speed up, and less of the total time of performance will be devoted to those
particular mental operations. Mechanisms that were formerly rate-determining
because they were quite slow may, after training, no longer be so because they
operate so quickly that other, slower mechanisms become the rate-determining
components by default. The now fast mechanisms may operate so rapidly that the
remaining slower processes may not be able to interfere with their operation. The
SLA
products of these now fast mental operations may no longer be available for verbal
report and hence not experienced as being consciously executed, etc. In this sense,
they have become automatic” (pp. 386–387).
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82. Which of the following are the phases involved in Dörnyei’s cycle of motivation?
1) Choice motivation, executive motivation, motivational retrospection
2) Choice motivation, integrative motivation, instrumental motivation
3) Integrative motivation, executive motivation, instrumental motivation
4) Integrative motivation, instrumental motivation, motivational retrospection
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Dörnyei and Ottó (1998) proposed a model of motivation that allows for changes over time.
Essentially, there are three components to this model which represent three temporal steps. The
model chronicles how initial wishes are transformed into goals, how intentions are
423
operationalized, then how they are enacted, and finally how a goal is accomplished and
evaluated. The three phases are:
• Preactional (Choice) stage. This is the stage during which motivation is generated. This leads
to the selection of the goal that will be pursued.
• Actional stage. This is referred to as executive motivation and it relates to the sustaining of
the activity even with distracting influences.
• Postactional stage. The third phase follows the completion of the action. This is referred to
as motivational retrospection. This refers to the evaluation of how the activity went and feeds
into future activities that might be pursued in the future. These are schematized in the following
figure:
Preactional stage Actional stage Postactional stage
CHOICE MOTIVATION EXECUTIVE MOTIVATION MOTIVATIONAL RETROSPECTION

Motivational Functions
Motivational Functions Motivational Functions  Forming casual attributions
 Setting goals  Generating and carrying out  Elaborating standards and
 Forming intentions subtasks strategies
 Launching action  Ongoing appraisal (of one’s  Dismissing the intention and
achievement) further planning
 Action control (self-regulation)
Main motivational influences

Main motivational influences Main motivational influences  Attributional factors (e.g.
 Various goal properties (e.g.  Quality of the learning attributional styles and biases)
goal relevance, specificity and experience (pleasantness, need  Self-concept beliefs (e.g. self-
proximity) significance, coping potential, confidence and self-worth)
 Values associated with the self and social image)
 Received feedback, praise, grades
learning process itself, as well as  Sense of autonomy
with its outcomes and  Teachers’ and parents’ influence
consequences  Classroom reward and goal
 Attitudes towards the L2 and its structure (e.g. competitive or
speakers cooperative)
 Expectancy of success and  Influence of the learner group
SLA
perceived coping potential  Knowledge and use of self-
 Learner beliefs and strategies regulatory strategies (e.g. goal
 Environmental support or setting, learning, and self-
hindrance motivating strategies)

A Process Model of L2 Motivation
As Dörnyei (2005) points out, the division between stages is not as abrupt as would seem by
this diagram on paper. Where one stage ends and another begins most likely includes some
overlap. The model, however, is intended to show that different motives may be involved at
different points in time. Further motives can be reassessed and modified during the process.
Shoaib and Dörnyei (2005) found that specific episodes in people’s lives had the consequence
of restructuring their motivation.

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83. What does the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis claim?

1) Second language grammars are impaired by Universal Grammar.
2) Second language grammars are constrained by Universal Grammar.
3) Child first language and adult second language acquisition are different.
4) There are fundamental differences between principles and parameters in a second
language.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Some Introductory Issues
Linguistics has impacted research in second language acquisition since the early days of SLA
research, with virtually every theory of linguistics having had some relevance to SLA research.
In this chapter, we focus our discussion of that relationship on the, Universal Grammar. In the
meanwhile, nativist approaches to language claim that at least some aspects of language
learning involve innateness. Within this general category, two main positions are noted: general
nativism and special nativism. The general nativist position (see Eckman, 1996; Hamilton,
1996; O’Grady, 1996, 2005; Wolfe-Quintero, 1996) maintains that there is no specific
mechanism designed for language learning. Rather, “there are general principles of learning
that are not particular to language learning but may be employed in other types of learning”
(Eckman, 1996, p. 398). Special nativism includes theories of language (learning) that posit
special principles for language learning, principles that are unique to language (learning) and
that are not used in other cognitive endeavors. Both the general nativist and special nativist
positions agree that there is something innate involved in language learning; it is the nature of
the innate system that is in question. Is it available only for the task of language learning or is
it also available for more general learning tasks? The special nativist approach, known as
Universal Grammar (UG) is an area of research that has dominated the theoretical study of
second language acquisition over the years. Central such an approach is an understanding of
language as a system with its own rules.
SLA
Universal Grammar
The UG approach to second language acquisition begins from the perspective of learnability.
The assumption of innate universal language properties is motivated by the need to explain the
uniformly successful and speedy acquisition of language by children in spite of insufficient
input. In UG theory, universal principles form part of the mental representation of language,
and it is this mental grammar that mediates between the sound and meaning of language.
Properties of the human mind are what make language universals the way they are. As Chomsky
(1995, p. 167) noted: “The theory of a particular language is its grammar. The theory of
languages and the expressions they generate is Universal Grammar (UG); UG is a theory of the
initial state S◦ of the relevant component of the language faculty.” The assumption that UG is
the guiding force of child language acquisition has long been maintained by many, but only in
the past two decades has it been applied to second language acquisition. After all, if properties
of human language are part of the mental representation of language, it is assumed that they do
not cease being properties in just those instances in which a nonnative language system is being
employed. The theory underlying UG assumes that language consists of a set of abstract
principles that characterize core grammars of all natural languages. In addition to principles
that are invariable (i.e., all languages have them) are parameters that vary across languages.
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In sum, Universal Grammar is “the system of principles, conditions, and rules that are elements
or properties of all human languages” (Chomsky, 1975, p. 29). It “is taken to be a
characterization of the child’s prelinguistic state” (Chomsky, 1981, p. 7). Thus, the necessity of
positing an innate language faculty is due to the inadequate input, in terms of quantity and
quality, to which a learner is exposed. Learning is mediated by UG and by the L1. How does
this relate to second language acquisition? The question is generally posed as an access-to-UG
problem. Does the innate language faculty that children use in constructing their native
language grammars remain operative in second language acquisition? More recently, this
question is formulated as an issue of initial state. What do second language learners start with?
Initial State
The question posed in this regard is: What is the nature of the linguistic knowledge with which
learners begin the second language acquisition process? That is, what is the unconscious
linguistic knowledge that learners have before receiving L2 input, or, to take a variant of the
question, what are early L2 grammars like? The two variables influencing this debate are
transfer (i.e., the availability of the first language grammar) and access to UG (i.e., the extent
to which UG is available).
Two broad views are discussed generally: the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis
(Bley-Vroman, 1989; Schachter, 1988), which argues that what happens in child language
acquisition is not the same as what happens in adult second language acquisition, and the
Access to UG Hypothesis, which argues that the innate language facility is alive and well in
second language acquisition and constrains the grammars of second language learners as it
does the grammars of child first language learners.
Fundamental Difference Hypothesis

Much of the work in second language acquisition is driven by the notion that first and second
language acquisition involve the same processes. This is not to say that differences are not
noted; rather, proposals to account for these differences are made with an attempt to salvage
the major theoretical claim of L1 and L2 similarities. The Fundamental Difference Hypothesis
starts from the belief that, with regard to language learning, children and adults are
SLA
different in many important ways. For example, the ultimate attainment reached by children
and adults differs. In normal situations, children always reach a state of “complete” knowledge
of their native language. In second language acquisition (at least, adult second language
acquisition), not only is “complete” knowledge not always attained, it is rarely, if ever, attained.
Fossilization, representing a non-TL stage, is frequently observed (Han, 2004; Long, 2007).
Another difference concerns the nature of the knowledge that these two groups of learners
have at the outset of language learning. Second language learners have at their command
knowledge of a full linguistic system. They do not have to learn what language is all about at
the same time that they are learning a specific language. For example, at the level of
performance, adults know that there are social reasons for using different language varieties.
What they have to learn in acquiring a second language system is the specific language forms
that may be used in a given social setting. Children, on the other hand, have to learn not only
the appropriate language forms, but also that there are different forms to be used in different
situations. Related to the idea that adults have complete knowledge of a language system is the
notion of equipotentiality, expressed by Schachter (1988). She pointed out that children are
capable of learning any language. Given exposure to the data of a language (i.e., the input), a
child will learn that language. No language is easier to learn than another; all languages are
equally learnable by all children. This is not the case with second language learners. Spanish
speakers have less difficulty learning Italian than they do Japanese. If language relatedness
426
(perceived or actual) were not a determining factor in ultimate success, we would expect all
learners to be equally able to learn any second language. This is not borne out by the facts.
One final difference to mention is that of motivation and attitude toward the target
language and target language community. It is clear that, as in any learning situation, not all
humans are equally motivated to learn languages, nor are they equally motivated to learn a
specific language. Differential motivation does not appear to impact a child’s success or lack
of success in learning language. All human beings without cognitive impairment learn a first
language.
In sum, the basic claim of the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis is that adult second
language learners do not have access to UG. Rather, what they know of language universals is
constructed through their NL. In addition to the native language, which mediates access to UG,
second language learners make use of their general problem-solving abilities. Second
language learners come to the language-learning situation knowing that a language contains an
infinite number of sentences; that they are capable of understanding sentences they have never
heard before; and that a language has rules of syntax, rules of combining morphemes, limits on
possible sounds, and so forth. With specific regard to syntax, learners know that languages can
form questions and that the syntax of questions is syntactically related to the syntax of
statements. They know that languages have a way of modifying nouns, either through adjectives
or relative clauses. This information is gleaned by means of knowing that the NL is this way
and by assuming that these facts are a part of the general character of language rather than a
part of the specific nature of the native language. Thus, the learner constructs a pseudo-UG,
based on what is known of the native language. It is in this sense that the NL mediates
knowledge of UG for second language learners.
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 See also: Gass and Selinker (2008, pp. 159-165 )
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84. Which of the following informed and influenced Long's (1996) updated version of the
Interaction Hypothesis?
SLA
1) The Input Hypothesis
2) The Topicalization Hypothesis
3) The Discourse Hypothesis
4) The Output Hypothesis
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
The Interaction Hypothesis (IH) (Originally Developed by Michael Long)
This framework was developed in the early 1980s with the view that comprehensible input is a
key factor in second language. The research associated with this framework focused on how
input can be made comprehensible. Interaction refers to conversations between learners and
other interlocutors, and the Interaction Hypothesis focuses on how such interactions might
affect acquisition by positing that interactions play a central role in second language acquisition
processes. They may do so in essentially two ways: (1) by modifying input, (2) by providing
feedback related to the linking of meaning and form. Input modification occurs when the
interlocutor perceives that the learner does not understand what is being said, and restates
something by simplifying, exemplifying, or otherwise altering the original statement. Feedback
occurs when the interlocutor uses particular devices to inform the learner about something he
427
or she has said. These include such things as “Do you mean…?”, “I’m sorry. I don’t
understand”, and “OK. I get it.” According to the Interaction Hypothesis, both input
modifications and feedback can bring something in the input into the learner’s focal attention
at a given moment, offering an opportunity to perceive and process some piece of language the
learner might miss otherwise. Following is an interaction that occurred in a men’s locker room
after a tennis match.
Bob is the native speaker and Tom is the non-native (of Chinese L1 background). Dave,
Tom’s tennis partner, was absent that day and a substitute played for him.
Bob: So where’s Dave?

Tom: He vacation.
Bob: He’s on vacation?
Tom: Yes, on vacation.
In this interaction, Tom produced a non-native sentence ‘He vacation.’ Bob responded with
what is called a confirmation check. Using rising intonation, he wanted to see if he understood
Tom correctly: ‘He’s on vacation?’ We can deduce from the interchange that this confirmation
check brought the preposition ‘on’ into Tom’s focal attention, but not the contracted copular
verb ’s on the end of ‘he’ which is why Tom repeats the preposition in his response to the
confirmation check. In this episode, the confirmation check is a type of “conversational
feedback” to the learner, but note that is natural to conversations as such things also exist among
native speaker interactions. Imagine the above scenario with the following fictitious counterpart
between two native speaking adults in the same context:
Fred: So where’s Dave?
Harry: He’s on vacation.
Bob: He’s on vacation?
Harry: Yep, on vacation.
The confirmation check plays the exact same conversational purpose in each interchange.
However, for a language learner, it may serve as an additional prompt to bring something into
SLA
focal awareness or attention.
The Interaction Hypothesis makes a number of claims in terms of the role of input,
interactional modifications, feedback, and output in second language acquisition.
A. Input plays a crucial role in second language acquisition. Like all mainstream SLA models
and theories, the data for learners reside in the communicative language they are exposed to.
B. Input is crucial but it is not sufficient. Interaction also plays a key role. Through interactions
learners may be led to notice things they wouldn’t notice otherwise, and this noticing can affect
acquisition. How learners are led to notice things can happen in several ways, including the
following: input modifications—the other speaker adjusts his or her speech due to perceived
difficulties in learner comprehension (see caretaker speech); feedback—the other speaker
indicates in some way that the learner has produced something non-native-like.
C. Output is necessary for the development of language. Output modifications through
negotiation of meaning help learners to notice important aspects of the target language.
D. Negative feedback obtained during negotiation of meaning might facilitate the acquisition
of vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and pronunciation. When the learner does not understand
the other interlocutor, interactions that elicit negative feedback can have a facilitative role in
acquisition. Feedback is seen a natural part of the conversation and not as error correction.
428
Long’s Updated Version of the Interaction Hypothesis

The early version of the IH was subjected to a number of criticisms. (See Ellis 1991a.) First, as
Hawkins (1985) showed, learners often fake comprehension. That is, they frequently pretend
they have understood as a result of negotiating a comprehension problem when, in fact, they
have not. Clearly, there are social constraints that influence the extent to which learners are
prepared to negotiate to achieve understanding. Second, Aston (1986) pointed out that the forms
used to realize the topic management functions associated with meaning negotiation can also
be used to realize entirely different functions. For example, modified repetitions of learner
utterances need not be confirmation checks; they might simply function as conversational
continuants. The identification of negotiation sequences, therefore, is problematic, although this
is rarely acknowledged by IH researchers. A third problem is that the early version of the IH,
like the Input Hypothesis, failed to explain how the comprehensible input resulted in
acquisition.
Long's (1996) updated IH, which emphasized that the role of negotiation is to facilitate
attention to form, addressed this last criticism. Long wrote:
.. negotiation for meaning, and especially negotiation work that triggers
interactional adjustments by the NS or more competent interlocutor, facilitates
acquisition because it connects input, internal learner capacities, particularly
selective attention, and output in productive ways (pp. 451-2).
In contrast to the early version of the IH, which simply postulated an effect for comprehensible
input, this later version sought to account for how interactionally modified input contributes
to acquisition by specifying the learner internal mechanisms involved. Interactionally modified
input works for acquisition when (1) it assists learners to notice linguistic forms in the input
and (2) the forms that are noticed lie within the learner's processing input and capacity.
The updated version of the IH also afforded a much richer view of how negotiation can
assist language learning. As in the early version, negotiation was seen as providing learners
with comprehensible input, thereby supplying them with positive evidence (i.e. ‘models of what
is grammatical and acceptable’, Long 1996, p. 413). Pica (1992) illustrated how the negotiation
of meaning provides learners with information about the semantic and structural properties of
SLA
the target language (English). Native speakers respond to non-native speakers' triggers by
modifying their utterances semantically and/or formally through the segmentation and
movement of input constituents, as in this example:
NS with a small pat of butter on it and above the plate
NNS hm hmm what is buvdaplate?
NS above
NNS above the plate
NS yeah
(Pica 1992: 225)
However, as Pica admitted, it is not clear from such data whether learners use the information
supplied by such exchanges to adjust their interlanguage systems.
The later version of the IH also posits two other ways in which interaction can contribute
to acquisition: through the provision of negative evidence and through opportunities for
modified output. Long (1996, p. 4) defined negative evidence as ‘input that provides direct or
indirect evidence of what is ungrammatical'. It arises when learners receive feedback on their
own attempts to use the L2. Gass (1997a) suggested that the negative evidence learners obtain
through negotiation serves to initiate interlanguage change but that permanent restructuring
may only take place after an 'incubation period' during which the learner has access to input
that provides further evidence of the need for the change. In other words, the effects of negative
429
evidence may be delayed. Modified output occurs in cases where there is learner uptake-with-
repair. In positing a role for this, Long was incorporating Swain’s (1985, 1995)
Comprehensible Output Hypothesis.
The Output Hypothesis

Output refers to the language that learners produce during communicative interactions or for
the purpose of expressing a message. The Output Hypothesis (also known as the
Comprehensible Output Hypothesis) is associated with Merrill Swain. In the mid-1980s, she
expressed concern that the field placed too much emphasis on the role of input in SLA,
claiming that learners in Canadian immersion programs still demonstrated significant
divergence from natives after years of study. She claimed that what was missing was output,
and in direct contrast to Krashen’s concept of comprehensible input, she argued that learners
need to be pushed to make comprehensible output during acquisition. According to her, pushed
output moves learners to greater reliance on syntax and less reliance on semantics; that is, they
will pay more attention to how something is supposed to be said and not just to the message. In
the 1990s, Swain expanded the Output Hypothesis and suggested that there were three roles
that learner output might play in acquisition. The first role causes more noticing. The second
allows learners to test hypotheses they have about the language. If the hypothesis “works,”
then they will be inclined to continue using it. If it doesn’t, then they will be more inclined to
abandon it and search for a better hypothesis. Hypothesis testing happens during
communicative interactions. Positive feedback about what learners are doing in terms of
communicating well confirms hypotheses. Negative evidence might push learners away from
their hypotheses. The third function of output, according to Swain, lies in the use of metatalk.
Metatalk is the use of language about language: for example, when learners ask overt questions
about language during interactions such as “I think that word needs a se, doesn’t it?” Swain has
argued that any one or all of these roles of output can aid acquisition in some way. Other names
associated with output and the Output Hypothesis include Shinichi Izumi and Sharon Lapkin.
The Input Hypothesis

The Input Hypothesis is a component of Monitor Theory. The Input Hypothesis claims that
SLA
learners acquire language in only one way: by exposure to input. In other words, it is only
through consistent attempts to comprehend language directed at them that learners acquire
language. In its strongest form, the Input Hypothesis rejects any significant role for formal
instruction (i.e., a focus on grammar in the classroom) and for negative evidence (i.e., certain
kinds of feedback on learners’ non-native-like production). That is, the strong version of the
Input Hypothesis would claim that only exposure to input can cause acquisition to happen. In a
weaker form of the Input Hypothesis, formal instruction and/or negative evidence might be
beneficial, but not necessary.
Because Monitor Theory fell out of favor by the late 1980s, the Input Hypothesis figures
little in contemporary research. However, it is fair to say that all major linguistic and
psycholinguistic theories of SLA in use today assume some version of the Input Hypothesis;
that is, these theories assume that input contains the data necessary for acquisition and that
acquisition is partially a by-product of comprehension. Steven Krashen is the scholar who
originated the Input Hypothesis.
Topicalization
Topicalization is a synonym of topic-marking, making reference to the notions topic (what an
utterance is about) and focus (new information about the topic). Topicalization is the process
by which a speaker signals that a constituent or segment of an utterance constitutes its topic.
430
Cross-linguistically, topicalization operates via syntactic, lexical, morphological, or phonetic

means. In the sentence As for John, he loves Mary, John constitutes the topic, about which new
information (focus) is provided. John is topicalized lexically by the expression as for.
Syntactically, John represents the grammatical subject, frequently associated with topic. In
(adult) SLA, learners possess knowledge of discourse organization (acquired in L1)—including
the notion of topic—but must acquire the specific mechanisms by which the L2 signals these
relations. The topicalization strategies available in the L2 may differ from those of the L1, and
L1 preferences for discourse organization—including topicalization strategies—may influence
L2 production.
The Discourse Hypothesis: Origin

Functionalist approaches to language
Functionalist approaches to language hold that language is primarily used for communication
and does not exist without language users. Functionalism views language in terms of form-to-
function and function-to-form mappings. Functional approaches to second language acquisition
investigate such mappings in interlanguage and are especially interested in how these change
over time in the developing interlanguage system. Functionalist approaches to linguistics in
general and to second language acquisition in particular are not common in North America.
A functionalist approach can take either a form-oriented approach or a concept- (or
meaning-) oriented approach. A form-to-function approach would begin with a form such as
the English past tense (- ed ) and follow the use of the form to discover how it functions. If we
took this approach in second language acquisition to examine the acquisition of the simple past,
we would likely discover that the first use of the simple past is as a marker of completion with
a certain class of predicates. We would also discover a second function of indicating the main
events in a story. Finally, we would observe that the morphological past takes the function of
expressing past time regardless of predicate type or role in a story. These observations have
been made under the auspices of the Aspect Hypothesis (Andersen, 1991; Bardovi-Harlig,
1998, 2000) and the Discourse Hypothesis (Bardovi-Harlig, 1995), examples of the form-to-
function type of functional analysis (N. Ellis, 2013). A function-to-form approach, typically
SLA
called the concept-oriented approach, identifies one function, concept, or meaning and
investigates how it is expressed.
The Discourse Hypothesis: More Elaboration

Another way of looking at the acquisition of tense/aspect is not to consider lexical meaning, as
with the Aspect Hypothesis, but to look at the structure of the discourse in which utterances
appear. In general, there are two parts to discourse structure: background and foreground.
Foreground information is generally new information that moves time forward. Background
information is supporting information. Unlike foregrounded material, it does not provide new
information but might serve the purpose of elaborating on the information revealed through the
foregrounded material. Within the context of the Discourse Hypothesis, it is claimed that
“learners use emerging verbal morphology to distinguish foreground from background in
narratives” (Bardovi-Harlig, 1994, p. 43).
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 See also: Ellis (2008, pp. 254-255); Gass and Selinker (2008, p. 210); Robinson (2013, p.
651); VanPatten and Benati (2015, pp. 76-78, 129, 153-154); VanPatten and Williams
(2015, p. 54)
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431
85. Which of the following is TRUE about the difference between noticing the gap and
noticing the hole?
1) Noticing the hole is a more complicated process.
2) Noticing the gap requires cognitive comparison.
3) Noticing the hole is much more conducive to the second language acquisition process.
4) Noticing the gap occurs when learners realize that they have not developed a necessary
interlanguage form.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Swain has hypothesized that, under certain circumstances, output promotes noticing (one of
the three functions of output that relate more to accuracy than to fluency in second language
learning, the other two being ‘hypothesis formulation and testing’ and ‘metatalk’). There are
several levels of noticing:
1. Noticing the form: Learners may simply notice a form in the target language due to the
frequency or salience of the features themselves.
2. ‘Notice the gap principle’ or ‘cognitive comparisons’ (proposed by Schmidt & Frota, 1986):
Learners may notice not only the target language form itself but also that it is different from
their own interlanguage.
3. Noticing the hole (proposed by Doughty and Williams): Learners may notice that they cannot
say what they want to say precisely in the target language.
Noticing the hole may be an important stimulus for noticing the gap.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Doughty and Williams (1998, pp. 66-67)
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86. Which of the following describes the phenomenon of using language as a cognitive tool
to negotiate meaning and solve language problems?
SLA
1) Languaging
2) Internalization
3) Imitation
4) Regulation
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
These are terms and concepts central to the Socio-Cultural Theory (of Mind) or SCT.
Sociocultural Theory
Sociocultural Theory, based on the work of the Russian psychologist Vygotsky, argues that the
development of human cognitive functions derives from social interactions and that through
participation in social activities individuals are drawn into the use of these functions. The theory
focuses not only on how adults and peers influence individual learning, but also on how cultural
beliefs and attitudes impact how instruction and learning take place. The central constructs of
the theory are: mediation; the zone of proximal development (ZPD); and verbal thought.
Language learning is a socially mediated process and language is a cultural artifact that
mediates social and psychological activities. Mediation refers to the idea that humans possess
432
certain cultural tools, such as language, literacy, numeracy, and others, that they purposefully
use to control and interact with their environment.
The ZPD is a difficult concept to articulate and is often subject to misinterpretation, but to
summarize here, the ZPD refers to the distance between a learner’s current ability to
independently solve problems and the level of potential development present when guided by
more capable persons. According to Vygotsky, learning occurs in this zone and it is achieved
through the cooperation of experts and novices working together. Applied to language, learning
concerns the development of language function and mental function, along with the
combination of language and thought. Generally speaking, acquisition includes the process in
which the low level external or social speech develops into the highest level inner speech or
verbal thought.
For languaging, refer to Year 95, Item 25.
Internalization and Imitation

Vygotsky (1981) stated that the challenge to psychology was to “show how the individual
response emerges from the forms of collective life [and] in contrast to Piaget, we hypothesize
that development does not proceed toward socialization, but toward the conversion of social
relations into mental functions” (p. 165). The process through which cultural artifacts, including
language, take on a psychological function is known as internalization (Kozulin, 1990).
Drawing from earlier theorists such as Janet (see Valsiner & van der Veer, 2000), Vygotsky
(1981) described the process of internalization as follows:
Any function in the child’s cultural development appears twice, or on two planes.
First it appears on the social plane, and then on the psychological plane. First it
appears between people as an interpsychological category, and then within the child
as an intrapsychological category. This is equally true with regard to voluntary
attention, logical memory, the formation of concepts, and the development of
volition (p. 163).
As this quotation makes clear, higher order cognitive functions, which include planning,
categorization, and interpretive strategies, are initially social and subsequently are internalized
and made available as cognitive resources. This process of creative appropriation occurs
through exposure to, and use of, semiotic systems such as languages, textual (and now digital)
SLA
literacies, numeracy and mathematics, and other historically accumulated cultural practices. In
this sense, internalization describes the developmental process whereby humans gain the
capacity to perform complex cognitive and physical-motor functions with progressively
decreasing reliance on external mediation and increasing reliance on internal mediation.
According to Gass and Selinker (2008), internalization is the process that allows us to move
the relationship between an individual and his or her environment to later performance. One
way internalization occurs is through imitation, which can be both immediate and intentional
and delayed, as seen, for example, in early child language research by Weir (1962), in which
imitation/practice was observed by children when they were alone in bed. This is also known
as private speech and has been observed in L2 classrooms by Ohta (2001) and by Lantolf and
Yáñez (2003). The items focused on by learners in these imitation/private speech situations are
controlled by the learner and not necessarily by the teacher’s agenda.
Regulation
Regulation is a form of mediation. As children learn language, they also learn to regulate their
activities linguistically. There are three stages of development on the way to self-regulation.
The first stage involves the use of objects as a way of thinking (object-regulation). One can
think of parents using objects (e.g., pieces of candy) to help children with the abstract concept
of counting. A second stage is known as other-regulation whereby learning is regulated by
433
others rather than objects. Finally, self-regulation, the final stage occurs when activities can be
performed with little or no external support. This occurs through internalization of information
(addition without the use of pieces of candy, although some external support is required in the
case of more complex mathematical manipulations).

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 See also: Gass and Selinker (2008, p. 284); VanPatten and Benati (2015, pp. 81-82);
VanPatten and Williams (2015, pp. 211-212)
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87. Which of the following oral corrective feedback types is a kind of didactic recast?
1) Input-providing and implicit
2) Output-prompting and explicit
3) Output-prompting and implicit
4) Input-providing and explicit
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
88. Which of the following is a required feature of focus-on-form activities?

1) Targetedness
2) Obtrusiveness
3) Problematicity
SLA
4) Proactive-reactive
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Focus on form/s
In the subfield of instructed SLA, many researchers have focused their attention on the key
question Does instruction make a difference? What this question refers to is whether explicit
intervention by teachers or other speakers regarding the formal properties of language (e.g.,
grammar) aids acquisition. Does providing rules help? Does providing feedback help? What
kind of practice is useful for promoting the growth of grammar? These questions are examples
of researchers’ interests in this subfield.
In the early 1990s, a distinction was made in instructed SLA between focus on form and
focus on forms. Focus on form generally refers to any intervention in which simultaneous
attention is brought to both meaning and how that meaning is encoded. Normally, this would
happen in a communicative context as in the case of recasts. In a recast situation, a learner
produces something nonnative-like during a conversation, and the interlocutor responds by
recasting what the learner says in a native-like way as part of that interlocutor’s indication that
he or she understood the learner. Thus, the main focus is on meaning with only a brief sidestep
434
to formal features of language as the conversation continues (overt error correction in which a
teacher stops and corrects a learner explicitly as part of practice).
Focus on forms is generally defined as an explicit or overt focus on the formal properties
with either little or no attention to meaning. Teachers who drill students repetitively engage in
focus on forms. Activities such as fill in the blank, in which the learner does not have to pay
attention to what the sentence means in order to complete the sentence, are focus on forms
exercises. The distinction between focus on form and focus on forms originated with Michael
Long, although other researchers, such as Rod Ellis, Catherine Doughty, and Jessica Williams,
have produced scholarship related to focus on form and forms.
A FonF Taxonomy
There are variety of techniques and activities that have been suggested to promote FonF, many
of which have been discussed in the literature (Doughty & Williams, 1998; R. Ellis, 2001;
Nassaji, 1999; Spada, 1997). Because of the diversity of these ideas, it is useful to situate them
within some sort of taxonomy. It seems evident that some level of attention to form makes
pedagogical sense, yet it is not always clear which are aspects of various FonF activities and
techniques that make them effective, or more likely, sometimes effective and sometimes not. A
taxonomy can help isolate the features of the various instructional techniques in order to analyze
them separately, and ultimately, manipulate them for more effective instruction. Doughty and
Williams (1998) made a first attempt at this. Jessica Williams (in Hinkel, 2005) reevaluates
several of these features, and considers new ones, shown here in the following figure:
Problematicity
 Planning
 proactive  reactive*
 targeted  general
 Obtrusive  unobtrusive * (interrupts processing)
 Teacher  learner responsibility
SLA
Some features of FonF for (re)consideration by Williams (2005)
*from Doughty and Williams (1998)
1. Problematicity
One of the central features of FonF is that it revolves around a learner problem or difficulty.
Ellis et al. (2001) stress this point in particular. They take us back to Long and Robinson's
original definition—that FonF arises out of a (perceived) problem in communication and thus
should perhaps be limited to incidental treatment, that is, responses to problems as they emerge
during a lesson. This is what is referred to as a real-time problem. They make the further claim
that this is likely to lead to what they call extensive FonF, that is, a scattershot treatment in
which various forms come into instructional focus as errors or communicative breakdown
occur. They contrast this with intensive FonF, in which a limited number of forms are selected
in advance for repeated emphasis. Clearly, such treatment is only likely to occur if the focus is
preplanned rather than incidental. Problematiciy is a central and essential feature of FonF.
Broadly speaking, all manifestations of FonF are in response to problems that learners have
with form.
435
2. Planning
Doughty and Williams offered proactive versus reactive as a fundamental distinction in
making FonF decisions. However basic, this distinction may be too broad and has been subject
to varied interpretation, probably due to confusion with the more general term, planning. It may
be more useful to consider several related features, in particular, to distinguish among the
following: (a) overall lesson planning, (b) whether a technique or approach is proactive or
reactive, and (c) the degree to which a technique or an activity has a specific instructional target
(i.e., a form that will be focused on).
Overall planning (a) simply means that the use of specific techniques and activities can
(should) be planned. For example, recasting is clearly a reactive technique (b), yet the decision
to recast, as well as the target of the recasting (c) may be made in advance (a). Reactive FonF
techniques, such as recasting, may be either targeted in order to provide intensive treatment or
may be general, resulting in extensive treatment. Within our definition of FonF, targeted
recasting (c) would be based on a previously established IL profile, rather than a real-time
communication problem, although the individual recasts would be in response to real-time
errors (b).
In summary, planning can be seen in three levels of instructional design:

• Planned choice of techniques and activities (overall plan).
• Reactive versus proactive techniques (reactive-proactive).
• Specification of instructional target (targetedness).
3. Obtrusiveness
A second basic feature discussed in Doughty and Williams is obtrusiveness. In Doughty and
Williams, obtrusiveness simply refers to the degree to which an activity or technique interrupts
the flow of communication. A more crucial issue for acquisition, perhaps, is whether it
interrupts the processing of meaning. This is a cognitive rather than communicative perspective.
4. Locus of Responsibility
SLA
FonF activities have thus far been described in terms of four features: problematicity, proactive-
reactive, targetedness, and obtrusiveness. The first (problematicity) is a required feature; the
last three are continua along which activities may range. However, consideration of these three
features neglects one crucial element in the learning process: who is doing the planning, reacting,
targeting, and interrupting. For the most part, the features described so far refer to choices that
the teacher makes. Since only the leaner can do the learning, it seems appropriate to turn our focus
to the role of the learner. In Doughty and Williams (1998, p. 259), this aspect of FonF was
described in either/or terms: Is the learner's attention attracted (implicitly) or directed (more
forcefully and directly)? Does the learner or teacher manipulate the forms? Both of these point to
the locus of responsibility as another essential feature of FonF: Is it the teacher/materials or the
learner who takes responsibility for initiating the cognitive processes involved in acquisition?
(Always keeping in mind, of course, that ultimately, it is always up to the learner.)
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 See also: Hinkel (2005, pp. 673-670); VanPatten and Benati (2015, pp. 116-117)
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436
89. Which of the following is NOT a term frequently associated with fossilization?
1) Backsliding
2) Learning plateau
3) Ultimate attainment
4) Error gravity
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Fossilization and Learning Plateau
The basic assumption in SLA research is that learners create a language system, known as an
interlanguage (IL). This concept validates learners’ speech, not as a deficit system, that is, a
language filled with random errors, but as a system of its own with its own structure. This system
is composed of numerous elements, not the least of which are elements from the NL and the TL.
There are also elements in the IL that do not have their origin in either the NL or the TL. These
latter are called new forms and are the empirical essence of interlanguage. What is important is
that the learners themselves impose structure on the available linguistic data and formulate an
internalized system (IL). Central to the concept of interlanguage is the concept of fossilization,
which generally refers to the cessation of learning. The Random House Dictionary of the English
Language (Flexner and Hanck, 1988, p. 755) defines fossilization of a linguistic form, feature,
rule, and so forth in the following way: “to become permanently established in the interlanguage
of a second language learner in a form that is deviant from the target-language norm and that
continues to appear in performance regardless of further exposure to the target language.”
Because of the difficulty in determining when learning has ceased, some hold (e.g., Long, 2003)
that it is more appropriate to refer to stabilization of linguistic forms, rather than to fossilization
or permanent cessation of learning. In SLA, one often notes that learners reach plateaus that are
far from the TL norms. Furthermore, it appears to be the case that fossilized or stabilized
interlanguages exist no matter what learners do in terms of further exposure to the TL.
Unfortunately, a solid explanation of permanent or temporary learning plateaus is lacking at
present due, in part, to the lack of longitudinal studies that would be necessary to create databases
SLA
necessary to come to conclusions regarding “getting stuck” in another language.
Ultimate Attainment
Ultimate attainment refers to the point at which learners seem to stop progressing. We say that
their grammar (linguistic system) has reached stasis. Ultimate attainment for all unimpaired L1
learners is a native system. The great question in SLA is whether L2 learners’ ultimate
attainment can be native-like or whether it will always be different in some way from what
native speakers possess as a linguistic system. Concepts integral to the notion of ultimate
attainment include fossilization and stabilization.
Backsliding and Fossilization

The question of what is acquired is not an easy one; it has been operationalized in different
ways in the past (for an extended discussion on this issue, see Norris and Ortega, 2003). One
can be misled into thinking that a correct utterance or even two or three correct utterances
suggest that a particular structure has been acquired. However, there are many factors that one
must consider. For example, learners appear to “backslide;” that is, correct forms appear, but
then seem to disappear. The reasons for this are often complex. The fact of “backsliding,”
however, underscores the need and difficulty of pinpointing second language knowledge.
437
A synthesis of models proposed by Corder (1973), Gass and Selinker (2001), and Long
(2003) suggests that L2 learners progress through four stages, based on observations of learners'
speech (and writing) production and on the errors they make in the process.
1. Presystematic stage. Corder (1973) observed that in the early stages L2 learners may make
a number of random errors, since they are only marginally aware of a given subset of the L2
system. Consider these actual written utterances by ESL students, in which the intended
meaning is quite a mystery:
The different city is another one in the another two. I want to become a
physicotrafic. I will studied for six years. Society has it's hard-living's
bitterness way into the decaded-dragging and full troubled life.
The incoherence of such sentences may have come from learners guesses (do you have any idea
what a "physicotrafic" is?) or bold attempts to express a thought, but without control of structure
and/or lexicon.
2. Emergent stage. Now, the learner's linguistic production becomes more consistent as certain
rules, words, and phrases (possibly correct in the learner's mind) are induced and applied. A
hearer or reader should at this stage be able to discern what the intended meaning is. Here are
more written ESL examples (that might make you smile a little):
He was just a peony in the hands of big powders.
All work without a play makes Jack a doornail.
American food made me interesting to taste.
Wars do not happen on the spot of moments.
While meaning may be interpretable, this stage may also be characterized by some backsliding
(Selinker, 1972), in which the learner seems to have grasped a rule or principle and then
regresses to a previous stage. The phenomenon of moving from a correct form to an incorrect
form and then back to correctness is referred to as U-shaped learning (Gass& Selinker, 2001).
In general the learner is still unable to correct errors when they are pointed out by someone else.
Avoidance of structures and topics is typical. Consider the following conversation between a
SLA
learner (L) and a native speaker (NS) of English:
L: I go New York.
NS: You're going to New York?
L: [doesn't understand What?
NS: You will go to New York?
L: Yes.
NS: When?
L: Uh, 1992.
NS Oh, you went to New York in 1992.
L: Yes, uh, … I go 1992.
Such a conversation is reminiscent of the situation in first language acquisition where children
in LI situations could not discern any error in their speech.
3. Systematic stage. In this third stage the learner is now able to manifest more consistency in
producing the second language. The most salient difference between the second and third stages
is the ability of learners to repair their errors when they are pointed out – even very subtly – to
them. Consider the English learner who described a popular fishing-resort area:
L. Many fish are in the lake. The fish are serving in the restaurants near the lake.
438
NS: [smiling] The fish are serving?

L: Oh, no, [laughing] uh, fish are being served in restaurants!
4. Postsystematic stage. In the final stage, which some researchers (Long, 2005) call
stabilization, the learner has relatively few errors and has mastered the system to the point that
fluency and intended meanings are not problematic. This fourth stage is characterized by the
learner's ability to self-correct.
In this space age when many satellites are hovering on our heads- ah, I mean, uh,
over heads.
He passed out with very high score-s -sorry, I mean, he passed test with high score.
I like Abraham Lincoln because he has known many people in Japan - um, ah, no,
no, he... many, many Japan people know him!
In the fourth stage, learners can stabilize too fast, allowing minor errors to slip by undetected,
and thus manifest fossilization (Selinker & Lamendella, 1979) of their language.
Error Gravity
It concerns the seriousness of an error. Judges appear to use different criteria in
assessing/evaluating error gravity. Khalil (1985) identified three general criteria: intelligibility,
acceptability, and irritation. Intelligibility concerns the extent to which sentences containing
different kinds of error can be comprehended. Acceptability is a rather vague criterion,
involving judgements of the seriousness of an error. Irritation concerns the emotional response
of an addressee but is also related to the frequency of errors.
Of the above discussed concepts, only error gravity is not associated with fossilization.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: H. D. Brown (2014, pp. 244-246); Ellis (2008, pp. 56-57, 961); Gass and Selinker
(2008, pp. 12, 81); VanPatten and Benati (2015, p. 200)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
SLA
90. Which kind of the following learner styles does "I learn better when I experience
doing it myself" represent?
1) Introverted
2) Kinesthetic
3) Field-sensitive
4) Global-oriented
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Drawing on the taxonomies proposed by Ehrman and Leaver (2003), Oxford (1993), and Reid
(1995), three categories of learner styles thought can be outlined to represent natural
orientations of learners:
1. Perceptual preferences. This involves whether or when learners tend to learn by listening
(auditory style), seeing (visual style), or doing things (kinesthetic style). For example, a learner
with a visual style might prefer to learn vocabulary by reading new words rather than by hearing
them.
439
2. Personality preferences. This involves learners' degree of openness to new experiences and
their extroversion versus introversion. For example, learners might prefer to learn by looking
outward in social contexts (extroverted style) or looking inward (introverted style). If asked to
perform a role play in front of the class, learners with an introverted style might feel
embarrassed, causing their performance to suffer.
3. Processing preferences. This concerns whether or when learners prefer to process
information by seeing the big picture (global-oriented style) versus the specifics (detail-oriented
style), by figuring out rules from examples (inductive style) versus learning the rules and
applying them to examples (deductive style), or by bringing the parts together to determine the
whole (synthetic style) versus disassembling the whole into parts (analytic style). For example,
a learner with a global-oriented style might prefer to begin a new lesson by looking over the
entire unit to get the big picture before attending to specifics.
These styles are summarized and exemplified in the following table of Common Learner Styles:
Perceptual preferences
Style Description Example learner self-report
Auditory Prefers learning by hearing. I learn better by hearing someone explain it.
Visual Prefers learning by seeing. I learn by reading it.
Kinesthetic Prefers learning by doing. I learn better when I experience doing it myself.
Personality preferences
Extroverted Prefers to learn by looking outward. I learn better by working with others.
Introverted Prefers to learn by looking inward. I learn better by working alone.
Processing preferences
Global-oriented Prefers focusing on the big picture (top- I learn better by summarizing the information.
down); gravitates first toward the main
ideas, then the details.
SLA
Detail-oriented Prefers focusing on the specifics (bottom- I learn better by understanding the specifics.
up); gravitates first toward the details, then
the main ideas.
Inductive Prefers to start with examples so I learn better by figuring out the rules from
generalizations can be made from the examples in the language.
patterns.
Deductive Prefers to start with the rules or theories so I learn better when I have the language rules before
they can be applied to examples. applying them.
Synthetic Prefers to bring the parts together to I learn better by summarizing what has been said.
construct new ideas.
Analytic Prefers to break information down into I learn better by looking at the parts so l can
components so the relationships can be analyze and understand them.
identified and understood.
Field-sensitive Prefers to get information in context. I learn better if I see new words, structures, or
ideas in context.
Field-insensitive Prefers to get information in the abstract I learn better if new words, structures, or ideas are
rather than in concrete situations. explained without reference to context.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
440
91. Which one of the following best suits the definition below?
The study of what societies do with their languages, that is, attitudes and attachments that
account for the functional distribution of speech forms in society, language shift,
maintenance, and replacement, the delimitation and interaction of speech communities.
1) Macro-sociolinguistics
2) Micro-sociolinguistics
3) The sociology of language
4) Both the sociology of language and sociolinguistics
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
A distinction between sociolinguistics (or micro-sociolinguistics) and the sociology of
language (or macro-sociolinguistics) can be drawn.
In this distinction, (micro-) sociolinguistics is concerned with investigating the

relationships between language and society with the goal being a better understanding of the
structure of language and of how languages function in communication; the equivalent goal in
the sociology of language is trying to discover how social structure can be better understood
through the study of language, for example, how certain linguistic features serve to characterize
particular social arrangements. Hudson (1996, p. 4) has described the difference as follows:
sociolinguistics is “the study of language in relation to society,” whereas the sociology of
language is “the study of society in relation to language.” In other words, in sociolinguistics
we study language and society in order to find out as much as we can about what kind of thing
language is, and in the sociology of language we reverse the direction of our interest. Using
the alternative terms given above, Coulmas (1997, p. 2) says that “micro-sociolinguistics
investigates how social structure influences the way people talk and how language varieties and
patterns of use correlate with social attributes such as class, sex, and age.
Macro-sociolinguistics, on the other hand, studies what societies do with their languages,
that is, attitudes and attachments that account for the functional distribution of speech forms in
society, language shift, maintenance, and replacement, the delimitation and interaction of
speech communities.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Wardhaugh and Fuller (2015, p. 15).
----------------------------------------------------------------- DA & Sociolinguistics
92. Which one of the following is LEAST related to the factors which are to be heeded
when studying social dialects?
1) Religion
2) Ethnicity
3) Dialect geography
4) One's status in society
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The term dialect can also be used to describe differences in speech associated with various
social groups or classes. An immediate problem is that of defining social group or social class,
giving proper weight to the various factors that can be used to determine social position, for
441
example, occupation, place of residence, education, income, ‘new’ versus ‘old’ money, racial
or ethnic category, cultural background, caste, religion, and so on. Such factors as these do
appear to be related fairly directly to how people speak. There is a British ‘public-school’
dialect, and there is an ‘African American’ dialect found in many places in the United States.
Whereas regional dialects are geographically based, social dialects originate among social
groups and are related to a variety of factors, the principal ones apparently being social class,
religion, and race/ethnicity. In India, for example, caste, one of the clearest of all social
differentiators, quite often determines which variety of a language a speaker uses. In a city like
Baghdad in a more peaceful era than at present the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim inhabitants
spoke different varieties of Arabic. In this case, the first two groups used their variety solely
within the group but the Muslim variety served as a lingua franca, or common language, among
the groups. Consequently, Christians and Jews who dealt with Muslims used two varieties: their
own at home and the Muslim variety for trade and in all intergroup relationships.
Studies in social dialectology, the term used to refer to this branch of linguistic study,
examine how ways of speaking are linked to social differences within a particular region.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Wardhaugh and Fuller (2015, pp. 42-43).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
93. According to the ‘foreigner-talk' or 'baby-talk' theory, pidgins ----------.
1) emerge when the languages in contact are two rather than three, with none being a
dominant one
2) originate due to the same simplification process that all languages experience, the only
difference being the different social contexts of their origin and the different
communicative needs of those who use them
3) arise because the people among whom they are found lack the ability to learn the
standard languages with which the pidgins are associated
4) result from the dominant language speakers' deliberately simplifying their languages in
order to communicate with others
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Origins of Pidgins and Creoles
One theory, the theory of polygenesis, is that pidgins and creoles have a variety of origins; any
similarities among them arise from the shared circumstances of their origins. We can contrast
such polygenetic views with monogenetic ones (for more elaboration, see Wardhaugh & Fuller,
2015, pp. 68-69). DA & Sociolinguistics
There are other implausible theories. There is no evidence either for any ‘foreigner-talk’
or ‘baby-talk’ theory (see Bloomfield, 1933, pp. 472–3) for the origin of pidgins and creoles,
i.e., that they result from Europeans deliberately simplifying their languages in order to
communicate with others. According to this theory, these simplified forms then serve to
provide pidgins with their basic structures and vocabularies. There are too many structural
similarities among pidgins and creoles associated with very different European languages to
make such a theory of origin plausible, e.g., between the English-based creole of Jamaica and
the French-based one of Haiti. If there is evidence of simplification, it is evidence of some very
different process at work than any kind of ‘talking down,’ ‘baby-talk,’ or ‘mimicry’ can explain.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Wardhaugh (2010, pp. 68-69)
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442
94. It is TRUE that the diffusion theory and the wave theory--------------.
1) are used to explicate variations in language use synchronically
2) are both concerned with the phenomenon of linguistic change
3) are more concerned with how people are affected by change than how a linguistic
change spreads through a language
4) make claims concerning how a particular change spreads through the set of words in
which the feature undergoing change actually occurs
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Two general views towards change have been proposed by Wardhaugh (2010). An internal
view and an external view. The internal view is also known as the traditional view which holds
that the only changes that are important in a language are those that can be demonstrated to
have structural consequences. Consequently, over a period of time a distinction between two
distinctive sounds may be lost in a language, as occurred historically in most varieties of English
in the vowels of meet and meat or horse and hoarse.
A second kind of change in a language is external in nature. This is change brought about
through borrowing. Changes that occur through borrowing from other dialects or languages are
often quite clearly distinguishable, for a while at least, from changes that come about internally.
The traditional view of language change also favors a ‘family tree’ account of change and
of the relationships among languages. Linguists tend to reconstruct the histories of related
languages or varieties of a language in such a way that sharp differentiations are made between
those languages or varieties, so that at one point in time one thing (that is, a language itself, or
a variety, or even a specific linguistic item) splits into two or more, or is lost. More rarely, there
is coalescence. The alternative ‘wave’ account of change and relationships is much less easy
to work with. In this approach the various changes that occur must be seen as flowing into and
interacting with one another. It is not at all easy to reconcile the need to find contrasts with the
desire to maintain a certain fluidity in boundaries. A variant of this latter view of change is that
particular changes diffuse throughout a language, sometimes in rather idiosyncratic ways. One
extreme version of this last view is the claim that ‘each word has its own history,’ a claim that
would seem to reduce historical linguistics to etymology, the science of tracing the origins of
individual words.
It is in the last view of change, through use of the concepts of ‘wave’ and ‘diffusion,’ that
we see the possibilities that the study of variation opens up to us for understanding the process
of change. The ‘family tree’ view focuses on the consequences of change and, particularly, on
internal change. But if we believe that languages are changing all the time – and all linguists do DA & Sociolinguistics
hold that belief – we should also be able to see change in progress if we can recognize it. If we
can interpret the variation we see, or some of it at least, as a wave of change going through a
language, and if we can see changes apparently diffusing through sets of similar linguistic
items, we may also want to recast or even abandon the traditional Saussurean and Bloomfieldian
view of language.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Wardhaugh (2010, pp. 68-69)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
95. Which of the following speech acts does the statement below represent?
"I will kill you if you do that."
1) Commissive 2) Declarative
3) Assertive 4) Directive
443
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Cruse (2000, pp. 342-343); Richards and Schmidt (2010, p. 543)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
96. If someone is asked a question, and they deliberately equivocate, they are, based on
Grice's model, breaking the maxim of--------------.
1) quality
2) quantity
3) relevance
4) manner
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
For explanation and a similar item, refer to Year 94, Item 20.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Birner (2013, pp. 42-61); Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 1711-173); Yule (1996, pp.
36-39)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
97. To what component of the speech event, as defined by Hymes, does ["how marvelous"
uttered with a sarcastic tone] best fit into?
1) Channel
2) Key
3) Message form
4) Message content
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Teaching English in an EFL context can involve numerous difficulties for both the teacher and
the learner and what is often seen as being the most important element is to prepare the learner
for real life and real situational conversations outside the classroom. To try to produce better
teaching practice within the classroom, it is necessary to study and analyze discourse within the
ESL setting. In order to try to facilitate a better understanding of discourse, which McCarthy DA & Sociolinguistics
(2001, p.48) recognizes as being “...the study of language independently of the notion of the
sentence”, Hymes (1972) proposes seven distinguishable features of spoken discourse, which
are setting, purpose, participants, key, channels, message content and message form. These
allow us to examine spoken discourse in detail in varying settings.
‘Key’ specifically refers to the ‘“tone, manner or spirit’ in which a speech act or event is
performed” which is often recognized through non-verbal and verbal cues. Hymes (cited in
Coulthard, 1996, p. 48) stresses the importance of key, telling us that “when it is in conflict
with the overt content of an act, it often overrides it.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Coulthard (1985, pp. 42-54)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
444
98. In Systemic Functional Linguistics, propounded by Halliday, the theme/rheme system

refers to ------------.
1) resources related to the topic/content
2) resources that enact relationships and convey attitudes
3) the role language plays in the context, for example, whether the language constitutes or
accompanies activity
4) choices about the point of departure of each clause and the new information that it will
present
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
According to Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday, 1985, p. 38), the Theme is defined as
the point of departure of the clause as message. It is the contextual anchor of the clause that is
oriented towards the preceding discourse (Matthiessen, 1995, p.531). The rest of the clause is
the rheme.
Thus, the term theme refers to a formal category, the left-most constituent of the
sentence. Each simple sentence has a theme “the starting point of the utterance” and a rheme,
everything else that follows in the sentence which consists of “what the speaker states about, or
in regard to, the starting point of the utterance” (Mathesius, 1942). The theme, then, is what
speakers/writers use as what Halliday calls a “point of departure” (1967, p. 212). In many cases
(often considered to be the unmarked or neutral cases), the theme of declarative sentences will
be a noun phrase (the grammatical subject), that of interrogatives the interrogative word, and
that of imperatives the imperative form of the verb.
In sum, the known information (i.e. the theme) refers to information that is not new to the
reader or listener. And the rheme refers to information that is new.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Brown and Yule (1983b, pp. 126-127); Flowerdew (2013, pp. 59-78); Paltridge
(2012, pp. 128-130)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
99. Which of the following statements is NOT true about speech community as it is viewed
in discourse analysis?
1) Language is one of the several features that the members of speech community share.
2) Members of a speech community may share a particular set of norms for communication
which reflect certain views on linguistic behavior.
3) Members of a speech community agree on what is the most prestigious variety of the
language in a particular setting, even if not all members of the community actually are DA & Sociolinguistics
able to use this variety.
4) One cannot belong to more than one speech community.
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Defining a speech community
There are a number of factors which help to define a speech community other than just
language. These might include social, geographical, cultural, political and ethnic factors, race,
age and gender. Members of a speech community may share a particular set of norms for
communication which reflect certain views on linguistic behavior such as what is the most
prestigious variety of the language in the particular setting, even if not all members of the
community actually are able to use this variety. A person, further, may be a member of more
445
than the one speech community (as they may be members of more than the one discourse
community). They may switch from identifying with one speech community to another, “even
in the course of a single utterance” (Wardhaugh, 1998, p.124). Speech communities, further,
may be quite separate from each other or they may overlap or intersect with each other.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
100. With which of the following statements Fairclough is LESS likely to agree?
1) We need to figure out how social relationships of power are developed and then
sustained.
2) It is necessary to study not only how social practices are discursively shaped but also the
subsequent discursive effects of social practices.
3) Although all language use is ideological, the related investigations are not, so there is
some hope of an “objective” or “neutral” sociolinguistics.
4) Sociolinguistics is strong on "what?" questions (what are the facts of variation?) but
weak on "why?" and how?" questions (why are the facts as they are?)
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Norman Fairclough (born 1941) is emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Lancaster University.
He is one of the founders of critical discourse analysis (CDA) as applied to sociolinguistics.
CDA is concerned with how power is exercised through language. CDA studies discourse; in
CDA this includes texts, talk, video and practices.
Methodology of CDA
Fairclough's line of study, also called textually oriented discourse analysis or TODA, to
distinguish it from philosophical enquires not involving the use of linguistic methodology, is
especially concerned with the mutual effects of formally linguistic textual properties,
sociolinguistic speech genres, and formally sociological practices. The main thrust of his
analysis is that, if —according to Foucauldian theory— practices are discursively shaped and
enacted, the intrinsic properties of discourse, which are linguistically analyzable, are to
constitute a key element of their interpretation. He is thus interested in how social practices are
discursively shaped, as well as the subsequent discursive effects of social practices.
Fairclough (2001, p.6) expresses what he sees as the failure of sociolinguistics to deal with
such matters as follows: “Sociolinguistics is strong on “what?” questions (what are the facts of
variation?) but weak on “why?” and “how?” questions (why are the facts as they are?; how – DA & Sociolinguistics
in terms of the development of social relationships of power – was the existing sociolinguistic
order brought into being?; how is it sustained?; and how might it be changed to the advantage
of those who are dominated by it?).” He insists that: “The tradition of critical research in the
social sciences focuses upon what are widely seen as the big issues and problems which people
face in their lives in order to arrive at an understanding of the present which can illuminate
possibilities for a better future and inform struggles to achieve it” (2006, 162).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fairclough (2013, p.6); Wardhaugh and Fuller (2015, p.16)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
446

‫سال ‪1395‬‬
1. The productive nature of language is due to ------------.

1) conjoining and embedding
2) complexity
3) deep and surface structures
4) transformations
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Linguistics
Explanation:
The productive nature of language is due to two general features: (1) openness, and (2)
recursion.
Openness
Openness refers to the fact that humans are able to come up with new morphemes to express
new ideas, new things in the world, and new ways of expressing old ones. One of the least
common processes of word formation in English is coinage, that is, the invention of totally new
terms. The most typical sources are invented trade names for commercial products that become
general terms (usually without capital letters) for any version of that product. Older examples
are aspirin, nylon, vaseline and zipper; more recent examples are kleenex, teflon, tylenol and
xerox. It may be that there is an obscure technical origin (e.g. te(tra)-fl(uor)-on) for some of
these invented terms, but after their first coinage, they tend to become everyday words in the
language.
New words based on the name of a person or a place are called eponyms. When we talk
about a hoover (or even a spangler), we are using an eponym. Other common eponyms are
sandwich (from the eighteenth-century Earl of Sandwich who first insisted on having his bread
and meat together while gambling) and jeans (from the Italian city of Genoa where the type of
cloth was first made). Some eponyms are technical terms, based on the names of those who first
discovered or invented things, such as fahrenheit (from the German, Gabriel Fahrenheit), volt
(from the Italian, Alessandro Volta) and watt (from the Scot, James Watt).
Recursion
Recursion refers to the fact that rules are capable of repeated application in generating a
sentence. Recursion allows phrases to expand by the expansion of the phrases within
themselves. Examples of recursion include inserting adjectives before a noun, conjoining, and
embedding.
The two major types of recursion are dealt with here: (1) conjoining/conjunction (using and,
or, but to join sentences), and (2) embedding (including one sentence or subsidiary sentence
within another). Consider first a simple sentence of English: Tim is a Tiny Toy. We can create
a longer sentence of English using this first sentence, by embedding it within a larger sentence:
Nicholas thinks that Tim is a Tiny Toy. In turn, this sentence can be embedded, yielding an
even larger sentence: Joseph knows that Nicholas thinks that Tim is a Tiny Toy. Indeed, there
is in principle no limit on this embedding process: Mark heard that Joseph knows that Nicholas
thinks that Tim is a Tiny Toy. We can also conjoin two sentences to make one: Mark heard that
Joseph knows that Nicholas thinks that Tim is a Tiny Toy and Mary likes small dogs.
Thus, recursion is a property of grammars whereby a finite set of rules with the ability to
apply repeatedly can generate an infinite set of structures.
448
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Akmajian et al. (2010, p. 150, 198, 501); Hudson (2000, pp. 10, 91-93); Fromkin
et al. (2014, pp. 5-6, 52-54, 100-104, 351-353); Yule (2014, pp. 14-15, 56, 105-106)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
2. Which of the following transformations includes a rearrangement of constituents?
1) For to insertion
2) Equi-NP deletion
3) Particle movement
4) Imperative transformations
Linguistics
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
For to insertion applies to produce intermediate structures from deep structures. For example,
the sentence, John is too far away to see is an ambiguous sentence with two different deep
structures. To produce their different deep structures, we require the for to insertion
transformational rule. Consider the following procedure:
Deep structures:
(1) John is too far away – anyone sees John.
Intermediate structures:
(2) John is too far away for anyone to see John. (by for to insertion transformation)
For more information see Falk (1987, pp. 202-203, 206)
Equi-NP deletion is applied to transform deep structure (3) to surface structure (4).
(3) *Marvin expects Marvin to win the game.
(4) Marvin expects to win the game.
For more information see Falk (1987, pp. 200-201)
Particle movement moves particles and rearranges the sentence. In fact, particle
movement converts one structure to another. Example:
(5) That monopolist took over our family business.
(6) That monopolist took our family business over.
Imperative transformation is an optional transformational rule that may operate on an
underlying/deep structure and deletes you (along with the modal auxiliary will) in an
imperative structure. Example:
(7) You will take this basket of cookies to Grandmother’s house! (Underlying deep
structure)
(8) Take this basket of cookies to Grandmother’s house! (Surface structure after the
application of the imperative transformation)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Falk (1987, pp. 198-210)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
3. Which of the following sets of words share the feature +coronal?
1) Glottals, glides, obstruents
2) Alveolars, dentals, alveopalatals
3) Nasals, sonorants, liquids
4) Stops, continuants, affricates
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
449
Explanation:
Coronals [θ] [ð] [t] [d] [n] [s] [z] [ʃ] [ӡ] [ʧ] [ʤ] [l] [r]. Coronal sounds are articulated by
raising the tongue blade. Coronals include the interdentals [θ] and [ð], the alveolars [t], [d], [n],
[s], and [z], the palatals [ʃ] and [ӡ], the affricates [ʧ] and [ʤ], and the liquids [l] and [r].
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 209-210); Hudson (2000, pp. 23-24, 42, 224)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
4. Which of the following does NOT have structural ambiguity?

1) The police officer stopped the murderer with a knife.
Linguistics
2) The reporter talked about an explosion in Paris.
3) The house in the wood near the park.
4) Visiting scholars can be awful.
Answer: Though Sanjesh’s answer is choice 4, there is no correct choice in this item. However,
based on the following explanation, the best answer is choice 4.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Choices 1, 2, and 3 are all examples of grouping ambiguity while choice 4 is an example of
function ambiguity. Most probably, the test developer might have meant to use “grouping
ambiguity” instead of “structural ambiguity” in the stem of the item.
For explanation and similar items, refer to Year 94, Item 26; Year 96, Item 1; and Year 97, Item 6.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
5. Which of the parts in the following sentence forms a constituent?

He put a note on my door.
1) “on my”
2) “put a note”
3) “on my door”
4) “a note on my door”
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
A constituent is a syntactic unit in a phrase structure tree: e.g., the girl is a noun phrase
constituent in the sentence The boy loves the girl. Thus, “on my” does not make an independent
syntactic unit. “Put a note” is composed of two syntactic independent units (i.e. constituents).
“A note on my door” is also composed of two syntactic independent units (i.e. constituents).
To test whether a phrase forms a constituent, we can use different constituency tests. One
such test is the “stand-alone” test. For example, if we ask the question Where did he put the
note?, we can answer on my door. Thus, choice 3 is the best choice.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
450
6. Which of the following shows a pro-form test of constituency?

1) Have you ever been to London? – No, I have never been there.
2) What should Jack do? Give a gift to his mother.
3) She may go to Shiraz and visit her mother.
4) That was great. Great that was.
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
In choice (1), the word there replaces London. In other choices, no word or phrase is replaced
Linguistics
by a proform.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Tallerman (2011, pp.160); Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 577)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
7. John sold his house to a company.
In the above sentence the thematic roles of John, his house and a company are ---------,
respectively.
1) agent, source, benefactive
2) agent, patient, source
3) agent, theme, benefactive
4) agent, locative, instrument
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Agent: In the sentence John sold his house to a company, one semantic role/thematic role is
taken by the noun phrase John as “the entity that performs the action,” technically known as
the agent.
Theme: Another role is taken by his house as “the entity that is involved in or affected by
the action,” which is called the theme (or sometimes the “patient”). The theme can also be an
entity that is simply being described (i.e. not performing an action), as in The ball was red.
Thus, theme refers to the semantic role of the noun phrase used to identify the entity involved
in or affected by the action of the verb in an event.
Benefactive/Beneficiary: a company is the benefactive because it receives his house.
Thus, (in case grammar) the noun or noun phrase that refers to the person or animal who/which
benefits, or is meant to benefit, from the action of the verb is in the benefactive case. For
example, in the sentences:
Joan baked a cake for Louise.
Joan baked Louise a cake.
Louise is in the benefactive case.
For explanation and similar items, refer to Year 91, Item 28; Year 93, Item 24; and Year 94,
Item 27.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 163-165); Yule (2014, pp. 112-113); Hudson (2000,
pp. 276-277); Richards and Schmidt (2010, p. 52)
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451
8. Which of the following is true about synthetic statements?

1) They are necessarily true.
2) They are logical necessities.
3) They are true in virtue of the meanings of the ingredient words.
4) They are claims whose truth or falsity depends on how the world is.
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
For explanation and similar items, refer to Year 94, Item 17, and Year 96, Item 17.
Linguistics
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 140-142); Akmajian et al. (2010, pp. 240-241)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
9. Which of the following phrases CANNOT be produced based on the following rules?
VP  V NP PP
VP  V NP NP
VP  V NP
1) Loves the child
2) Saw a man in the yard
3) Gave him a bunch of flowers
4) Know that he is a great scientist
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
The PS (phrase structure) rule for choice (1) is VP  V NP. The PS rule for choice (2) is VP
 V NP PP. The PS rule for choice (3) is VP  V NP NP. But there is no PS rule in the list
above to represent the sentence in choice (4). The PS rule for choice (4) is VP  V CP
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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10. A man of medium height and average build, between 30 and 50 years old, with
brownish hair, with no particularly distinctive characteristics or defects, could be a/an
------------- of the predicate “man” in certain areas of the world.
1) extension
2) stereotype
3) reference
4) prototype
Answer: 4 (Sazman Sanjesh’s answer is choice 2, which is wrong)

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Explanation:
The notions of reference and extension are clearly related, and are jointly opposed to the
notion of sense. The relationship usually envisaged between sense, extension, and reference
can be summarized thus:
(1) A speaker’s knowledge of the sense of a predicate provides him with an idea of its
extension. For example, the ‘dictionary definition’ which the speaker accepts for cat can be
452
used to decide what is a cat, and what is not, thus defining implicitly the set of all cats. Some
semanticists describe this relationship between sense and extension by saying that the sense of
a predicate ‘fixes’ the extension of that predicate.
(2) The referent of a referring expression used in a particular utterance is an individual member
of the extension of the predicate used in the expression; the context of the utterance usually
helps the hearer to identify which particular member it is. For example, if any English speaker,
in any situation, hears the utterance ‘The cat’s stolen your pork chop’, he will think that some
member of the set of cats has stolen his pork chop, and if, furthermore, the context of the
utterance is his own household, which has just one cat, named Atkins, he will identify Atkins
as the referent of ‘the cat’.
Linguistics
A prototype of a predicate is an object which is held to be very TYPICAL of the kind of
object which can be referred to by an expression containing the predicate. In other words, the
prototype of a predicate can be thought of as the most typical member of the extension of a
predicate. Example:
A man of medium height and average build, between 30 and 50 years old, with brownish
hair, with no particularly distinctive characteristics or defects, could be a prototype of
the predicate man in certain areas of the world.
The stereotype of a predicate is a LIST of the TYPICAL characteristics or features of
things to which the predicate may be applied. Example:
The stereotype of cat would be something like:
Quadruped, domesticated, either black, or white, or grey, or tortoise-shell, or marmalade
in colour, or some combination of these colours, adult specimens about 50 cm long from
nose to tip of tail, furry, with sharp retractable claws, etc., etc.
A stereotype is related to a prototype but is not the same thing. A prototype of elephant is
some actual elephant, whereas the stereotype of elephant is a list of characteristics which
describes the prototype. The stereotype of a predicate may often specify a range of possibilities
(e.g. the range of colours of typical cats), but an individual prototype of this predicate will
necessarily take some particular place within this range (e.g. black).
Another important difference between prototype and stereotype is that a speaker may well
know a stereotype for some predicate, such as ghost, witchdoctor, flying saucer, but not actually
be acquainted with any prototypes of it. Stereotypes of expressions for things learnt about at
second hand, through descriptions rather than direct experience, are generally known in this
way.
The relationships between stereotype, prototype, sense, and extension are summarized very
briefly in the chart.
Thing (or set of Abstract

things) specified specification
Pertaining to all examples EXTENSION SENSE
Pertaining to typical examples PROTOTYPE STEREOTYPE
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 See also: Hurford et al. (2007, pp. 82-103)
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453
Issues of Language Teaching (Questions 11 – 30)
11. Which of the following principles belongs to the Silent Way?

1) Learning is facilitated by mediating physical objects.
2) Language production is the product of previously met examples, not formal rules.
3) Teachers should help learners in any way that motivates them to work with the
language.
4) People learn a second language more successfully when they use it as a means of
obtaining information.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Choice (1) belongs to the Silent Way. See Richards and Rodgers (2014, p. 291)
Choice (2) belongs to the Lexical Approach. See Richards and Rodgers (2014, p. 218)
Choice (3) belongs to the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). See Richards and
Rodgers (2001, p. 157) or Brown (2001, p. 45)
Choice (4) belongs to the Content Based Instruction (CBI). See Richards and Rodgers (2014,
p. 118)
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 See also: Richards and Rodgers (2014, pp. 118, 157, 218, 291); Brown (2001, p. 45)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
12. In what kind of listening activity does the teacher ask the students to listen to a number
of sentences and decide which ones have a rising intonation?
1) Reactive
2) Selective
3) Intensive
4) Responsive
Answer: 3
Issues of Language Teaching

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Brown and Lee (2015) states six types of classroom listening performance:
1. Reactive: Sometimes you want a learner simply to listen to the surface structure of an
utterance for the sole purpose of repeating it back to you.
2. Intensive: Techniques whose only purpose is to focus on components (phonemes, words,
intonation, discourse markers, etc.) of discourse may be considered to be intensive.
3. Responsive: It is an activity in which the teacher wishes to elicit immediate responses. The
students’ task in such listening is to process the teacher talk immediately and to fashion an
appropriate reply.
4. Selective: It is a kind of listening activity in which the task of the student is to scan the
material selectively for certain information.
5. Extensive: It is a kind of activity which aims to develop a top-down, global understanding
of spoken language.
6. Interactive: It is listening performance that can include all five of the above types as learners
actively participate in discussions, debates, conversations, role-plays, and other pair and group
work. Their listening performance must be intricately integrated with listening (and perhaps
other) skills in the authentic give and take of communicative interchange.
454
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Brown and Lee (2015, pp. 328-330)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
13. Which statement is TRUE?

1) Context-embedded communication resembles cognitive/academic language proficiency.
2) Context-reduced communication resembles cognitive/academic language proficiency.
3) Cognitive/academic language proficiency is the capacity that all children acquire in order
to be able to function in daily routines.
4) Basic interpersonal communicative skills is the dimension of proficiency that learners
often use in form-focused exercises and tests.
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
In the process of examining components of Communicative Competence, James Cummins
(1979, 1980) proposed a distinction between basic interpersonal communicative skills
(BICS) and cognitive/academic language proficiency (CALP). BICS is the communicative
capacity that all human beings use to function in daily interpersonal exchanges. CALP is a
specialized dimension of communication used to negotiate typical educational tasks and
activities, and often involves conscious focus on language forms. It is what learners use in
classroom exercises, reading assignments, written work and tests.
Cummins later (1981) modified the notion of BICS and CALP in the form of context-
embedded and context-reduced communication, where the former resembles BICS, with the
added dimension of considering the context in which language is used, and the latter is similar to
CALP. A good share of face-to-face communication with people, because of its social back-and-
forth, is context-embedded, while school-oriented language tends to be more context reduced.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Brown (2014, pp. 206-207)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
14. Which of the following approaches/methods does the following feature belong to?

Pronunciation is deemphasized in that perfection is viewed as unrealistic and
unattainable.
1) The Lexical Approach
2) The Direct Method
3) The Oral-Situational Approach
4) The Cognitive Approach
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The correct choice is choice (4). In the cognitive approach which was a reaction to the
behaviorist approach and influenced by the ideas of Chomsky, it was believed that learners
learn language through hypothesis formation, hypothesis testing and rule inferencing, not habit
formation. Thus, since it does not view language leaning as a kind of habit formation, it does
not hold that errors must be corrected at any cost. It follows that it does not emphasize
pronunciation.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
455
15. All of the following are criticisms of process approaches to writing EXCEPT ---------.
1) they give insufficient importance to the kind of texts writers produce and why such texts
are produced
2) they offer learners insufficient input, particularly in terms of linguistic knowledge
3) they undervalue knowledge and skills that learners bring to the classroom
4) they often regard all writing as being produced by the same set of processes
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The disadvantages of process approaches are that they often regard all writing as being
produced by the same set of processes; that they give insufficient importance to the kind of
texts writers produce and why such texts are produced; and that they offer learners insufficient
input, particularly in terms of linguistic knowledge, to write successfully.
The main advantages are that they understand the importance of the skills involved in
writing and recognize that what learners bring to the writing classroom contributes to the
development of writing ability.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Miller and Thompson (2006, p. 31); Badger and White (2000, p. 157)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
16. Which of the following is concerned with Kumaravadivelu's macrostrategies?

1) Leaner autonomy
2) The learner's built-in syllabus
3) Individual differences in learning
4) The significance of formulaic expressions
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Kumaravadivelu (1994, 2006) suggests 10 macrostrategies as broad guidelines, based on which

teachers can generate their own situation-specific, need-based microstrategies or classroom
techniques.
1. Maximize learning opportunities

2. Facilitate negotiated interaction
3. Minimize perceptual mismatches
4. Activate intuitive heuristics
5. Foster language awareness
6. Contextualize linguistic input
7. Integrate language skills
8. Promote learner autonomy
9. Raise cultural consciousness
10. Ensure social relevance
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456
17. Which of the following scholars has argued that most of the grammatical structures
of the target language and hundreds of vocabulary items can be learned from the
skillful use of the imperative by the teacher?
1) Georgy Lozanov 2) Tracy D. Terrell
3) Charles Curran 4) James Asher
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Theory of language: Asher does not directly discuss the nature of language or how languages
are organized. However, the labeling and ordering of TPR classroom drills seem to be built on
assumptions that owe much to structuralist or grammar- based views of language. Asher states
that "most of the grammatical structures of the target language and hundreds of vocabular y
items can be learned from the skillful use of the imperative by the instructor" (1977: 4). He
views the verb in the imperative as the central linguistic motif around which language use and
learning are organized.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
18. The processes involved in the acquisition of implicit knowledge are ------------.
1) structuring, discovering, integrating
2) noticing, comparing, integrating
3) noticing, comparing, experimenting
4) structuring, integrating, experimenting
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The acquisition of implicit knowledge involves three processes:
1. Noticing (the learner becomes conscious of the presence of a linguistic feature in the input,
whereas previously she had ignored it)

2. Comparing (the learner compares the linguistic feature noticed in the input with her own
mental grammar, registering to what extent there is a ‘gap’ between the input and her
grammar)
3. Integrating (the learner integrates a representation of the new linguistic feature into her
mental grammar)
The first two processes involve conscious attention to language; the third process takes place at
a very ‘deep’ level, of which the learner is generally not aware.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Richards and Renandya (2002, p. 171)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
19. Which of the following is an example of a bottom-up listening activity?
1) Identify the referents of pronouns in an utterance.
2) Listen to part of a conversation and infer the topic of the conversation.
3) Look at the pictures and then listen to the conversations about the pictures and match
them with the pictures.
4) Read a list of key points to be covered in a talk and then number them in sequence while
listening to the talk.
457
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The kinds of exercises and listening activities used in teaching listening comprehension should
reflect the different processes and purposes involved in listening: bottom-up, top-down,
interactional, and transactional.
Exercises that involve bottom-up listening

Exercises that require bottom-up processes develop the learner's ability to do the following:
- retain input while it is being processed
- recognize word divisions
- recognize key words in utterances
- recognize key transitions in a discourse
- use knowledge of word-order patterns to identify constituents in utterances
- recognize the function of word stress in sentences
Such exercises might require the learner to do the following tasks:

- identify the referents of pronouns used in a conversation
- recognize if a sentence is active or passive
- distinguish between sentences containing causative and non-causative verbs
- recognize the use of word stress to mark the information focus of a sentence
- identify major constituents in a sentence, such as subject and object, verb and adverb
- distinguish between sentences with and without auxiliary verbs
- distinguish between sentences containing similar-sounding tenses
- recognize the time reference of a sentence
- distinguish between positive and negative statements
- identify prepositions in rapid speech
- recognize sequence markers
- distinguish between Yes/No and Wh-questions
(Gore 1979; McLean 1981; Richards, Gordon, & Harper 1987)

These kinds of activities are often more appropriate for learners at a basic level of language
proficiency, although the ability to use bottom-up listening strategies is required at all levels of
listening. For example, a simple exercise that promotes bottom-up listening might require
students to listen to positive and negative statements and choose an appropriate form of
agreement.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Richards (1990, p. 59)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
20. Which of the following is NOT one of Nation's four strands in second or foreign
language teaching?
1) Fluency development
2) Meaning-focused output
3) Awareness raising
4) Meaning-focused input
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
458
Explanation:
A course should include a roughly even balance of the four strands of meaning-focused
input, language-focused learning, meaning-focused output, and fluency activities.
This principle is concerned with the relative amount of time given to the four main strands of a
language course – meaning-focused input, language-focused learning, meaning-focused output
and fluency development.
The rough rule of thumb is that on average roughly equal time should be given to each of
these four strands in the total language experience of the learner. That means that time in class
and out of class can be considered if, during these times, the learner is gaining appropriate
language activity that can be classified as fitting into these strands. For example, if a learner is
doing a lot of graded reading outside class time and is gaining truly comprehensible input
outside of class time, this would mean that the time allocation for meaning-focused input could
be met outside class and so the time in class could be given to language-focused learning,
meaning-focused output and fluency development.
At different stages of a language course the proportions of the strands may change, but not
by a large amount. In the early stages of a language course about 30 per cent of the time may
be given to meaning-focused input, about 30 per cent to language-focused learning, about 20
per cent to meaning-focused output and about 20 per cent to fluency development.
At an advanced stage it may become too difficult to separate meaning-focused input from
meaning-focused output (“One person’s output is another person’s input”) and about 50 per
cent of time may be given to them. Language-focused learning may get around 20 per cent,
while fluency development may get 30 per cent.
It is worth checking the relative proportions of these four strands to make sure that one
strand is not dominating the course. Language-focused learning dominates classroom activity
in some countries. In others every effort is made to exclude it. A balance is preferable.

Meaning-Based Meaning-Based
Input Output
Fluency Language-Focused
Development Learning
Thus, 25 percent of classroom activities should be allocated to each strand.
459
Some classroom activities or language contact outside the classroom may not fit into any
of these four strands, for example listening to foreign language television with minimal
comprehension. Such activities should not be included in the time allocation.
If a course does not contain a suitable balance of the four strands, it may be necessary to
change the nature of existing activities, convince teachers of the need to include neglected
activities, and inform teachers and learners of the defining characteristics of the strands. Some
teachers may think that an activity is meaning-focused when it is really a language-focused
activity.
Balancing the four strands is a very important part of curriculum design. The neglect or
over-emphasis of a strand is a major failing in many language courses.
Schematic representation of the Four strands
Meaning-Focused Input This strands deals with receptive language use: on

listening, reading, for comprehension, knowledge and
enjoyment.
Language-Focused Learning This strand states that language learners should also focus
on form when learning language. It refers to the
deliberate learning of language features like vocabulary,
grammar, etc.
Meaning-Focused Output This strand deals with productive language use. It focuses
on both speaking and writing for communicative
purposes.
Fluency Practice This strand deals both with receptive and productive use
of familiar language to convey meaning and increase
speed.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Nation and Macalister (2010, pp. 51-52)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
21. Which of the following are examples of compensatory strategies?

1) Circumlocution, approximation, repetition
2) Cooperation delayed production, repetition
3) Cooperation, delayed production, foreignizing
4) Circumlocution, approximation, foreignizing
Answer: 4
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460
Explanation:
Compensatory Strategies
Strategy Tactic
Avoidance Avoiding a topic, concept, grammatical construction, or
phonological element that poses difficulty
Circumlocution Describing an object or idea with a definition (e.g., You know,
that thing you open bottles with - for corkscrew)
Approximation Using an alternative term which expresses the meaning of the
target lexical item as closely as possible (e.g., ship for sailboat)
Word coinage Creating a nonexistent 12 word based on a supposed rule (e.g.,
vegetable-ist for vegetarian)
Nonverbal signals Mime, gesture, facial expression, or sound imitation
Prefabricated patterns Using memorized stock phrases, usually for "survival" purposes
(e.g. Where is ....? How much is…? (morphological components
are not known to the learner)
Code switching Using an L1 word with L1 pronunciation while speaking in L2
(e.g., Je serais à la rehearsal – for repetition)
Appeal to authority Asking for aid either directly (e.g. What do you call…? or
indirectly (e.g. rising intonation, pause, eye contact, puzzled
expression)
Keeping the floor Using fillers or hesitation devices to fill pauses and to gain time to
think (e.g., well, now let's see, uh, as a matter of fact)
For more explanation of other compensatory strategies including “foreignizing,” refer to Year
94, Item 3. You can see that there have been different categorizations (even at a macro-level
where a distinction is made between avoidance and compensatory strategies) in different
editions of Brown’s book, all of which have to be considered carefully.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------
22. The three Cs of negotiated interaction are ------------.

1) comprehension check, confirmation check, clarification request
2) collaboration building, clarification request, confirmation check
3) collaboration building, cooperation seeking, clarification request
4) comprehension check, confirmation check, cooperation seeking
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Feedback occurs during negotiation for meaning. Long (1996) defines negotiation as
the process in which, in an effort to communicate, learners and competent speakers
provide and interpret signals of their own and their interlocutor’s perceived
comprehension, thus provoking adjustments to linguistic form, conversational structure,
message content, or all three, until an acceptable level of understanding is achieved (p.
418).
461
Negotiation for meaning has traditionally been viewed and coded in terms of the “three Cs”:
confirmation checks, clarification requests, and comprehension checks.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: VanPatten and Williams (2015, p. 187).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
23. Tasks that require learners to use a specific grammatical structure while
communicating are ------------.
1) divergent
2) focused
3) input-providing
4) unfocused
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
1. Tasks can be 'unfocused' or 'focused'. Unfocused tasks are tasks that are designed to provide
learners with opportunities for communicating using language in general. Focused tasks are
tasks that have been designed to provide opportunities for communicating using some
specific linguistic feature (typically a grammatical structure). However, the target linguistic
feature of a focused task is "hidden' (i.e. learners are not told explicitly what the feature is).
Thus, a focused task can still be distinguished from a 'situational grammar exercise' as in the
latter learners are made aware of what feature they are supposed to be using, In other words,
learners are expected to orient differently to a focused task and a situational grammar
exercise.
2. Tasks can also be 'input-providing' or 'output-prompting. Input-providing tasks engage
learners in listening or reading, while output-prompting tasks engage them in speaking or
writing. Thus, a task can provide opportunities for communicating in any of the four
language skills. Many tasks are integrative; that is, they involve two or more skills.
3. Tasks also differ in terms of the type of "gap' they contain. Prabhu (1987) distinguished three
types of gap: (1) an information gap, (2) an opinion gap (where students all have access to

the same information which they use as a basis for discussing the solution to some problem),
and (3) a reasoning gap (where students are required to derive some new information from
given information through processes of deduction or practical reasoning).
A convergent task is an opinion-gap task that requires students to agree to a solution to
a problem, e.g., deciding what items to take on to a desert island. And a divergent task is an
opinion-gap task where students are assigned different viewpoints on an issue and have to
defend their position and refute their partners’, e.g. discussing the pros and cons of
television.
4. Another significant distinction concerns whether the task is 'closed' (i.e. there is just one or
a very limited number of possible outcomes) or 'open' (i.e. there are a number of different
outcomes that are possible). In general, information-reasoning-gap tasks are 'closed' while
opinion-gap tasks are ‘open’.
5. Tasks vary in complexity. A number of different factors influence the complexity of a task,
for example, whether the task language relates to the here-and-now (as when describing a
picture that can be seen) or the there-and-then (as when narrating a movie after watching it).
Another factor that can affect complexity is whether the task involves single activity (e.g.
listening to someone describe a route and drawing the route in on a map) or a dual activity
(e.g. listening to someone describe a route and drawing in both locations missing on the map
as well as the route taken).
462
This list is not exhaustive. Other design variables concern whether the task is monologic
or dialogic, the nature of the input provided by the task (e.g. how structured it is and how
familiar the topic is to the students), and the nature of the output (i.e. whether it is oral or written
and how complex it is).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis (2014, p. 200); Ellis (2003, p. 90); Marashi and Tahan-Shizari (Jan., 2015)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
24. Which of the following positions argues that explicit knowledge primes a number of
acquisitional processes such as noticing?
1) The non-interface position
2) The weak interface position
3) The strong interface position
4) The moderate interface position
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The Interface Issue
The interface issue concerns the relationship between explicit and implicit L2 knowledge.
The Non-Interface Position
This is the position promulgated by Krashen (1981), who views explicit and implicit knowledge
as entirely distinct and thus dismisses the possibility of the former transforming into the latter.
‘Learning,’ a conscious, intentional process, results in explicit knowledge; ‘acquisition’, an
unconscious, incidental process results in implicit knowledge. Krashen acknowledges only a
limited role for explicit instruction - to help learners “earn” a few simple grammatical rules that
they can then use to monitor their production when they are focused on form and have time to
do so. In effect, the non-interface position rejects any major role for explicit grammar
instruction in L2 acquisition.

The Strong Interface Position
This claims that acquisition (especially by adult learners) commences with explicit, declarative
knowledge which is then transformed into implicit knowledge through practice (Dekeyser,
1998). This position draws on skill-acquisition theory. It constitutes the primary theoretical
justification for PPP as it claims that explicit instruction can “bridge” the gap between explicit
and implicit knowledge. It should be noted, however, that DeKeyser sees little merit in
controlled practice activities. He argued that learners need to use their explicit knowledge as a
'crutch' while struggling to use the target structure in communication.
The Weak Interface Position

This makes two claims. The first is that explicit knowledge evolves into implicit knowledge but
only if the learner is ready to acquire the targeted feature. The second is that even if this does
not occur immediately, explicit knowledge can facilitate cognitive processes such as noticing
and noticing-the-gap (Schmidt, 1990) and so facilitate the long-term development of implicit
knowledge.
Ellis (1993) has drawn on the weak interface position to argue that explicit instruction
should be restricted to helping learners form explicit knowledge and left it to the learner to use
this knowledge to assist subsequent development of implicit knowledge. According to the weak
interface position, then, PPP will only be effective if it is timed to coincide with the learners'
463
readiness to acquire the target structure, which is impractical in most teaching contexts. It
supports the use of consciousness-raising and interpretation tasks, deployed without any
supporting practice activities, to assist learners to develop explicit knowledge of target features
and notice them in the input.
These different positions support radically different views about explicit language
instruction. The non-interface position proposes that explicit instruction is of little value. The
strong interface position supports the view dominant in language pedagogy, namely that a
grammatical structure should be first presented explicitly and then practiced until it can be
used accurately in free production. The underlying assumption of a grammatical syllabus aimed
at implicit knowledge is that a strong interface is possible. The weak interface position
supports an approach based on teaching explicit knowledge to assist learners to attend to
grammatical input and thus facilitate the acquisition of implicit knowledge over time.
In brief, with regard to whether learning will lead to or help acquisition or not, there are three
positions:
1. The non-interface hypothesis: It states that learning cannot contribute to acquisition.
2. The strong interface hypothesis: This hypothesis is based on the idea that explicit
knowledge becomes implicit through proceduralization. Hence, he believes that all learned
knowledge becomes acquired knowledge after enough staying with the knowledge or
practice.
3. The weak hypothesis: Explicit knowledge “might” promote the development of implicit
knowledge since it plays the role of a facilitator of intake by providing the ability to notice
details in the input.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis and Shintani (2014, pp. 94-95); Ellis et al. (2009, pp. 20-23); Ellis (2008,
pp. 420-427)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
25. Why is it important to engage learners in collaborative dialogue?

1) It contributes to language learning by having a delayed effect.
2) It not only promotes awareness in learners but also pushes them toward meaningful
production.

3) It provides an opportunity for them to scaffold each other's learning by discussing the
use of language.
4) It results in discovery learning by giving learners information about a construction
without giving them the full picture.
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Swain (2006) defines languaging as “the process of making meaning and shaping knowledge
and experience through language.” In particular, languaging about language is an integral part
of the language learning process itself:
Languaging about language is one of the ways we learn language. This means that the
language (the dialogue or private speech) about language that learners engage in takes
on new significance. In it, we can observe learners operating on linguistic data and
coming to an understanding of previously less well understood material. In languaging,
we see learning taking place (Swain, 2006, p. 98).
464
In another article, Swain and Lapkin (2011) define languaging “as that practice when language
is used in order to work at solving a problem or clarifying an issue.” Swain (2006) also
identifies two types of languaging: private speech and collaborative dialogue.
Collaborative dialogues. Donato (1994) has shown that students' participation in
collaborative dialogue, through which learners can provide support for each other or scaffold
each other's learning by discussing the use of language, has spurred their language development.
Other research (Swain & Lapkin, 1998) corroborates the value of language-related episodes
that arise during a dialogue where students explicitly discuss grammatical points. Such
dialogues serve both as a cognitive tool and as a means of communication that can promote
grammatical development.
Private speech. Private speech is the kind of languaging in which the L2 learner talks to
himself/herself so as to solve a problem or clarify an issue for himself/herself. Some L2 learners
who go through a silent period engage in private conversations with themselves, thus, perhaps,
preparing themselves for social speech later.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Celce-Murcia et al. (2014, p. 266); Ellis (2008, pp. 538-543)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
26. Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of engaged readers?

1) They are not necessarily motivated.
2) They read widely with different purposes.
3) They are metacognitively aware as they use a variety of reading strategies.
4) They read fluently and use their cognitive capacity to focus on the meaning of what they
read.
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Neil Anderson (2014) identifies five characteristics of engaged readers:
(1) Engaged readers have a purpose for reading.

(2) Engaged readers read fluently and use their cognitive capacity to focus on the meaning
of what they read.
(3) Engaged readers read for comprehension and are able to do something with what they
read.
(4) Engaged readers are metacognitively ware of reading strategies.
(5) Engaged readers are motivated.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
27. The aspects of vocabulary knowledge best learned incidentally include -----------.
1) aspects of meaning, word class, word grammar
2) aspects of meaning, collocation, register
3) form, collocation, register
4) form, collocation, word class
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
465
Explanation:
Intentional and incidental learning: Word learning involves both intentional learning (the
focused study of words, also referred to as explicit learning) and incidental learning (as when
words are picked up while one's attention is focused on no language use). Current teaching
methods favor meaning-based approaches, believing that language features are acquired
through use rather than only through direct instruction. Nevertheless, research suggests that
some features are best acquired incidentally, while others benefit from explicit treatment. L. S.
P. Nation (2001) suggests that form, collocation, and word class are best picked up
incidentally, while aspects of meaning, register, and other constraints on use are best learned
through explicit instruction. Schmitt (2008) sees a broader role for intentional learning,
suggesting that many features of vocabulary require explicit attention because learners often do
not notice the features of use when their attention is focused on the message.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
28. The dimensions most necessary to take into consideration in designing oral interaction
courses include ---------------.
1) interactional routines and negotiation of meaning
2) information routines and negotiation of meaning
3) information and interactional routines
4) expository and interactional routines
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Types of Oral Interactions
Oral interactions take place in various ways in a language speaker's life. One of the most well-
coordinated classifications about the types of oral interactions is demonstrated in Bygate's
(1987) model of oral interactions. Bygate (1987) divides oral interactions into two categories
according to their functions as information routines and interaction routines, which suggests

that oral production is centered around acquiring and sharing information, and interacting with
people around on a daily basis. Bygate’s model is presented as follows:
Oral Interactions
Information Routines Interaction Routines
Expository Evaluative Oral Interactions Social

 Description  Explanation  Job interview  Dinner party
 Instruction  Justification  Making  Coffee break
 Comparison  Prediction reservations  Standing in line
 Decision  Enrolling in  Chatting over
school the Internet
Figure 1. Bygate’s Oral Interaction Types
Information routines are conventional ways of presenting information and as Nunan (1999,
p. 228) states, information routines equal transactional language. These routines are produced
in order to get something, or to get something done. Interactional routines refer to conventional
466
ways of socializing. Nunan (1999, p. 228) equates interactional routines with interactional/
social category of his own dichotomy.
These two dimensions of interaction are very useful in designing courses for speaking and
oral interaction. As Nunan (1999) indicates:
Bygate’s routines facilitate communication for first language speakers because they make
the interactions more predictable…. For second language speakers, routines can be
crucial in facilitating comprehension. In addition, by learning prefabricated, set
conversational patterns, learners can outperform their competence. In fact, there is
evidence that such prefabricated formulae are important precursors to acquisition. (pp.
229-230)

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Bygate (1987, pp. 23-27); Nunan (1999, pp. 228-230)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
29. Which approach to teaching conversation explicitly calls students’ attention to

conversational rules, conventions, and strategies?
1) The indirect approach
2) The direct approach
3) The task-based approach
4) The topic-based approach
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Teaching Conversation
Research on teaching conversational skills (Tarone, 2005; McCarthy & O’Keeffe, 2010;
Lazaraton, 2014) historically describes two major approaches for teaching conversation. The
first is an indirect approach in which learners are more or less set loose to engage in interaction.
The second is a direct approach that "involves planning a conversation program around the
specific microskills, strategies, and processes that are involved in fluent conversation”

(Richards, 1990, pp. 76-77).
The indirect approach implies that one does not actually teach conversation, but rather that
students acquire conversational competence, peripherally, by engaging in meaningful tasks. A
direct approach explicitly calls students' attention to conversational rules, conventions, and
strategies.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Brown and Lee (2015, pp. 358-359)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
30. Which of the following is a feature of intensive reading?

1) Students read for the sake of pleasure.
2) Students read large amounts of material.
3) Students usually choose what they want to read.
4) Students read materials which are typically above their linguistic level.
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
467
Explanation:
The following characteristics are generally thought to be among the most important for
extensive reading:
1. Students read large amounts of material.
2. Students usually choose what they want to read.
3. Reading materials vary in terms of topic and genre.
4. The material students read is within their level of comprehension.
5. Students usually take part in post-reading activities.
6. Teachers read with their students, thus modeling enthusiasm for reading.
7. Teachers and students keep track of student progress.
But in intensive reading the material students read is typically above their linguistic level.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Richards and Renandya (2002, pp. 295-298); Schorkhuber (2009, p. 3)
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468

‫سال ‪1396‬‬
1. Which of the following sentences is ambiguous?

1) The police saw a man using binoculars.
2) The police saw a man while using a pair of binoculars.
3) That Mary went to the store quickly was said by Jane to Chris.
4) That Mary went to the store was said by Jane to Chris quickly.
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Linguistics
Explanation
In choice (1) in the question item, the sentence The police saw a man using binoculars has two
structures, one is The police saw a man who was using binoculars, and the other is Using
binoculars, the police saw a man.
For explanation and similar items, refer to Year 94, Item 26; Year 95, Item 4; and Year 97, Item 6.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 78-79, 105-106); Hudson (2000, pp. 313-314)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
2. Which sentence does NOT match the following tree diagram?
1) Old men swam in a pool.

2) My students are in the class.
3) The driver turned off the radio.
4) Native speakers acquire their mother tongue.
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The tree diagram for the sentence The driver turned off the radio is:
S
NP VP
The VP NP
driver
turned the radio

off
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-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
3. Which of the following is WRONG?

1) Information and entertainment becoming infotainment is a case of blending.
2) Conversation becoming converse is a case of conversion.
3) Metamorphosis becoming morph is a case of clipping.
4) Active becoming activist is a case of derivation.
Linguistics
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The most common word formation processes are:
1. Coinage: The invention and general use of totally new terms, or coinage, is not very common
in English. Typical sources are trade names for commercial products that become general terms
(usually without capital letters) for any version of that product. Older examples are aspirin,
nylon, vaseline and zipper; more recent examples are granola, kleenex, teflon and xerox.
2. Borrowing: the taking over of words from other languages. Throughout its history, the
English language has adopted a vast number of words from other languages, including these
examples:
dope (Dutch) piano (Italian) tattoo (Tahitian)
jewel (French) pretzel (German) tycoon (Japanese)
glitzy (Yiddish) ski (Norwegian) yogurt (Turkish)
lilac (Persian) sofa (Arabic) zebra (Bantu)
3. Loan-translation: A special type of borrowing is described as loan-translation or calque
(/kælk/). In this process, there is a direct translation of the elements of a word into the borrowing
language. Interesting examples are the French term gratte-ciel, which literally translates as
“scrape-sky,” the Dutch wolkenkrabber (“cloud scratcher”) or the German Wolkenkratzer
(“cloud scraper”), all of which were calques for the English skyscraper.
4. Compounding: joining of two separate words to produce a single form. Common English
compounds are bookcase, doorknob, fingerprint, sunburn, textbook, wallpaper, wastebasket
and waterbed.
5. Blending: The combination of two separate forms to produce a single new term is also
present in the process called blending. However, in blending, we typically take only the
beginning of one word and join it to the end of the other word. To talk about the combined
effects of smoke and fog, we can use the word smog.
6. Clipping: This occurs when a word of more than one syllable (facsimile) is reduced to a
shorter form (fax), usually beginning in casual speech. The term gasoline is still used, but most
people talk about gas, using the clipped form.
7. Hypocorism: In this process, a longer word is reduced to a single syllable, then -y or -ie is
added to the end. This is the process that results in movie (“moving pictures”) and telly
(“television”).
8. Backformation: A very specialized type of reduction process is known as backformation.
Typically, a word of one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form a word of another type (usually
471
a verb). A good example of backformation is the process whereby the noun television first came
into use and then the verb televise was created from it.
9. Conversion: Change in the function of a word, as for example when a noun comes to be used
as a verb (without any reduction), is generally known as conversion. Other labels for this very
common process are “category change” and “functional shift.”
10. Acronyms: Acronyms are new words formed from the initial letters of a set of other words.
These can be forms such as CD (“compact disk”) or SPCA (“Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals”) where the pronunciation consists of saying each separate letter. More
typically, acronyms are pronounced as new single words, as in NATO, NASA or UNESCO.
Linguistics
11. Derivation: It is the process of adding affixes to words to generate new forms. Common
affixes are ‘prefixes’, ‘suffixes’, ‘infixes’, and ‘circumfixes’.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Yule (2014, pp. 50-58)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
4. Which of the given sets of words matches the following trees?
1) sunglasses, sundried, wide lens, anger-management

2) sweet tooth, best man, dry clean, underrepresent
3) matchbox, tree trunk, potato peel, overboard
4) alley sign, talk easy, sun roof, bittersweet
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
(1)
The N (i.e. noun) ‘sunglasses’ is composed of an N + N.
The A (i.e. Adjective) ‘sundried’ is composed of an N + A.
The N ‘wide lens’ is composed of an A + N.
The N ‘anger-management’ is composed of an N + N.
(2)
The N ‘sweet tooth’ is composed of an A + N.
The N ‘best man’ is composed of an A + N.
The V ‘dry clean’ is composed of an A + V.
The V ‘underrepresent’ is composed of a P + V.
(3)
The N ‘matchbox’ is composed of an N + N.
The N ‘tree trunk’ is composed of an N + N.
The N ‘potato peel’ is composed of an N + N.
The N ‘overboard’ is composed of a P + N.
472
(4)
The N ‘alley sign’ is composed of an N + N.
The A ‘talk easy n’ is composed of a V + A.
The N ‘sun roof’ is composed of an N + N.
The A ‘bittersweet’ is composed of an A + A.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Linguistics
5. Which sentence has the features: direct, commissive, declarative?
1) My pen isn't working.
2) Listen carefully, please.
3) Clear your desk by the end of the day.
4) I'm going to finish reading this book tonight.
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts
The philosopher John Searle (1976), one of Austin's former students, pointed out that there is a
seemingly endless number of illocutionary acts. There are statements, assertions, denials,
requests, commands, warnings, promises, vows, offers, apologies, thanks, condolences,
appointments, namings, resignations, and so forth. At the same time, he observed that some
illocutionary acts are more closely related than others. For example, promises and vows seem
to be more alike than, say, promises and requests. Thus Searle attempted to classify
illocutionary acts into the following types.
1. Representative. A representative is an utterance used to describe some state of affairs
- for example, Javier plays golf. This class includes acts of stating, asserting, denying,
confessing, admitting, notifying, concluding, predicting, and so on.
2. Directive. A directive is an utterance used to try to get the hearer to do something - for
example, Shut the door. This class includes acts of requesting, ordering, forbidding,
warning, advising, suggesting, insisting, recommending, and so on.
3. Question. A question is an utterance used to get the hearer to provide information - for
example, Who won the 2008 presidential election? This class includes acts of asking,
inquiring, and so on (Note: Searle treated questions as a subcategory of directives; for
different purposes, however, it is more useful to treat them as a separate category).
4. Commissive. A commissive is an utterance used to commit the speaker to do something
- for example, I'll be back by 10:00 PM. This class includes acts of promising, vowing,
volunteering, offering, guaranteeing, pledging, betting, and so on.
5. Expressive. An expressive is an utterance used to express the speaker’s emotional state
- for example, I'm sorry for calling you a dweeb. This class includes acts of apologizing,
thanking, congratulating, condoling, welcoming, deploring, objecting, and so on.
6. Declaration. A declaration is an utterance used to change the status of some entity - for
example, You're out, uttered by an umpire at a baseball game. This class includes acts
of appointing, naming, resigning, baptizing, surrendering, excommunicating, arresting,
and so on.
473
Direct Versus Indirect Illocutionary Acts

Particular sentence types are associated with particular illocutionary acts. For example,
imperative sentences (Bring me my coat) are uniquely designed for issuing directives. Thus, a
directive delivered by means of an imperative sentence is said to constitute a direct
illocutionary act. However, if another sentence type such as an interrogative is used to issue a
directive (Would you bring me my coat?), then that utterance is said to constitute an indirect
illocutionary act.
Direct Illocutionary Acts. The following table gives an example of each type of illocutionary
act and its associated syntactic form (i.e., sentence type).
Linguistics
Utterance Illocutionary Act Syntactic Form
(1) Keep quiet. Directive Imperative
(2) Do you know Mary? Yes-No question Yes-No interrogative
(3) What time is it? Wh-question Wh-interrogative
(4) How nice you are! Expressive Exclamatory
(5) It's raining. Representative Declarative
(6) I'll help you with the dishes. Commissive Declarative
(7) You're fired. Declaration Declarative
Thus, any time a directive is issued with an imperative sentence, it constitutes a direct
illocutionary act; anytime a yes-no question is issued with a yes-no interrogative, it constitutes
a direct illocutionary act, and so on (The boxed material in the preceding table identifies those
sentence types that are uniquely associated with a particular illocutionary act.).
Indirect Illocutionary Acts. In general, an illocutionary act is issued indirectly when the
syntactic form of the utterance does not match the illocutionary force of the utterance. Consider
the following examples (For purposes of comparison, the direct phrasing is given in parentheses
below each utterance).
Utterance Illocutionary Act Syntactic Form
(8) You might give me a hand with this. Directive Declarative
(Give me a hand with this.)
(9) And you are … Wh-question Declarative
(Who are you?)
(10) Could you keep quiet? Directive Yes-No interrogative
(Keep quiet.)
(11) Do you have the time? Wh-question Yes-No interrogative
(What time is it?)
(12) Can I give you a hand with that? Commissive Yes-No interrogative
(I can give you a hand with that.)
(13) I’m sorry to hear about your loss. Expressive Declarative
(How sorry I am to hear about your
loss!)
(14) Why don’t you be quiet? Directive Wh-interrogative
(Be quiet.)
474
Let's summarize this section on illocutionary acts. The illocutionary part of a speech act is what
the utterance does (rather than what it says). Illocutionary acts can be grouped into six types:
representatives, directives, questions, commissives, expressives, and declarations. Illocutionary
acts are valid only if their felicity conditions are met. Illocutionary acts can be achieved through
either an explicit or a non-explicit performative. A non-explicit performative is, in turn, either
direct or indirect. The various means of performing illocutionary acts are illustrated in the
following diagram.
Illocutionary act (e.g. Directive)
Linguistics
Explicit (e.g., I insist that Non-explicit
you clean up this mess.)
Direct (e.g., Clean up Indirect (e.g., Would you

this mess.) clean up this mess?)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Parker and Riley (2012, pp. 7-19); Yule (1996)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
6. Which of the following is true?

1) Allophones of the same phoneme are not in complementary distribution.
2) The words “water” and “teacher” have a common morpheme
3) Roots fall into two categories: free and bound.
4) “Daffodil” “rose” and “violet” are all included in the concept of “flower”; therefore, they
are superordinates of “flower”.
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Complementary distribution: It refers to the situation in which phones never occur in the
same phonetic environment: e.g., [p] and [pʰ] in English. In other words, we have
complementary distribution for non-contrastive sounds (i.e. sounds that do not contrast
meaning, that is, if we replace one with the other, no change in meaning occurs). Therefore,
allophones of the same phoneme are in complementary distribution because they are non-
contrastive sounds. Hence, choice (1) is false (Fromkin et al., 2014, pp. 233-235).
The word ‘water’ is a monomorphemic word (i.e. it is composed of only one morpheme),
but the word ‘teacher’ is composed of the two morphemes of ‘teach’ + ‘-er’. Thus, they have
no morpheme in common (Fromkin et al., 2014, pp. 38-39).
Choice (3) is the correct option because in English we have free roots as in ‘paint’ and
bound roots as in ‘-ceive’ in the word ‘receive’ (Fromkin et al., 2014, pp. 42-43).
Superordinates and hyponyms: We can say that “horse is a hyponym of animal” or “ant
is a hyponym of insect.” In these two examples, animal and insect are called the superordinate
(= higher level) terms. We can also say that two or more words that share the same superordinate
term are co-hyponyms. So, dog and horse are co-hyponyms and the superordinate term is
475
animal (Yule, 2014, p. 115). Thus, “flower” is the superordinate of “Daffodil” “rose” and
“violet.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 38-39, 42-43, 233-235); Yule (2014, p. 115)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
7. Fillmore's name is associated with ----------.

1) Case Grammar
2) Phrase Structure Grammar
3) Systemic-Functional Grammar
Linguistics
4) Transformational Generative Grammar
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Charles J. Fillmore (1929)
Fillmore’s work is characterized by its focus on the interface between syntax and
semantics. His early work on the Case Grammar theory had an important role in bringing the
notion of semantic roles to modern linguistics. In his 1968 paper ‘The case for case’, Fillmore
proposed that verbs were associated with deep-structure cases, such as Agentive, Instrumental
or Objective (which later came to be called ‘Patient’). How these deep cases were mapped onto
surface syntax was then determined by a subject hierarchy, which stated that “if there is an
Agentive, it becomes the subject; otherwise, if there is an Instrumental, it becomes the subject;
otherwise, the subject is the Objective” (Fillmore, 1968, p. 33). The significance of this
approach lies in the description it provides of the relationship between syntactic valency and
the argument structure of a verb.
Phrase Structure Grammar and Transformational Generative Grammar were introduced by
Noam Chomsky. And Systemic-Functional Grammar was introduced by Michael Halliday.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Murphy and Koskela (2010, pp. 26, 188-189).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
8. Diglossic language is a language ----------.

1) with no native speakers
2) with no native speakers at the moment
3) which is not related to any other language
4) with a distinction between High and Low varieties
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Diglossia
A rather special situation involving two distinct varieties of a language, called diglossia,
exists in some countries. In diglossia, there is a “low” variety, acquired locally and used for
everyday affairs, and a “high” or special variety, learned in school and used for important
matters. A type of diglossia exists in Arabic-speaking countries where the high variety
(Classical Arabic) is used in formal lectures, serious political events and especially in religious
discussions. The low variety is the local version of the language, such as Egyptian Arabic or
Lebanese Arabic. Through a long period in European history, a diglossic situation existed with
476
Latin as the high variety and one of the local languages of Europe (early versions of modern
Italian, French and Spanish) as the low variety or “vernacular.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Yule (2014, pp. 248-249)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
9. Which of the following sounds have the features [-anterior, -coronal]?

1) Bilabials
2) Velars
3) Post-alveolars
Linguistics
4) Alveolars
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Coronals [θ] [ð] [t] [d] [n] [s] [z] [ʃ] [ӡ] [ʧ] [ʤ] [l] [r] Coronal sounds are articulated by
raising the tongue blade. Coronals include the interdentals [θ] and [ð], the alveolars [t], [d], [n],
[s], and [z], the palatals [ʃ] and [ӡ], the affricates [ʧ] and [ʤ], and the liquids [l] and [r].
Anteriors [p] [b] [m] [f] [v] [θ] [ð] [t] [d] [n] [s] [z] Anterior sounds are consonants
produced in the front part of the mouth, that is, from the alveolar area forward. They include
the labials, the interdentals, and the alveolars.
Thus, velars are [- anterior, - coronal]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
10. Which of the following represents embeddedness?

1) The picture that fooled the world is the image of a soldier caged behind barbed wires.
2) John washed the car in the garage and Jack did so in the car wash.
3) It was to the presidential office that all the ministers reported.
4) What Bob claimed was that Jack was a storyteller.
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Sentence (1) represents embeddedness. The sentence ‘The picture is the image of a soldier
caged behind barbed wires’ contains the sentence ‘The picture fooled the world’.
Sentence (2) represents conjunction. The sentence ‘John washed the car in the garage’ is
conjoined or joined by the conjunction “and” with the sentence ‘Jack did so in the car wash’.
Sentence (3) represents clefting. The original sentence “All the ministered reported to the
presidential office” is converted into a cleft structure by putting “It was” at the beginning and
rearranging the sentence.
Sentence (4) represents pseudo-clefting. The original sentence “Bob claimed that Jack was
a storyteller” is converted to a pseudo-cleft structure by adding “What … was …” and
rearranging the sentence.
A cleft sentence is a sentence which has been divided into two parts, each with its own
verb, to emphasize a particular piece of information. Cleft sentences usually begin with It plus
a form of the verb be, followed by the element which is being emphasized. For example, the
sentence Mrs Smith gave Mary a dress can be turned into the following cleft sentences:
477
It was Mrs Smith who gave Mary a dress.

It was Mary that Mrs Smith gave the dress to.
It was a dress that Mrs Smith gave to Mary.
In English a sentence with a wh-clause (e.g. what I want) as subject or complement is known
as a pseudo-cleft sentence. For example:
A good holiday is what I need.
What I need is a good holiday.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Akmajian et al. (2010, pp. 150, 175-178); Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 79, 131, );
Richards and Schmidt (2010, p. 82)
Linguistics
-----------------------------------------------------------------
11. Which of the following refers to Linguistic Determinism?

1) Cognitive categories a language learner develops determine the linguistic categories that
s/he will acquire.
2) Learning a language does not change the way a person thinks.
3) Linguistic structure determines cognitive structure.
4) Cognitive development comes earlier in the life of children.
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Language and Thought
Many people are fascinated by the question of how language relates to thought. Over the years
there have been many claims made regarding the relationship between language and thought.
The claim that the structure of a language determines or influences how its speakers perceive
the world around them is most closely associated with the linguist Edward Sapir and his student
Benjamin Whorf, and is therefore referred to as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. In 1929 Sapir
wrote:
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor in the world of social activity
as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language
which has become the medium of expression for their society . . . we see and hear and
otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our
community predispose certain choices of interpretation.
Whorf made even stronger claims:
The background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not
merely the reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of
ideas, the program and guide for the individual’s mental activity, for his analysis of
impressions, for his synthesis of his mental stock in trade . . . We dissect nature along
lines laid down by our native languages.
The strongest form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is called linguistic determinism
because it holds that the language we speak determines how we perceive and think about the
world. According to this view language acts like a filter on reality. One of Whorf’s best-known
claims in support of linguistic determinism was that the Hopi Indians do not perceive time in
the same way as speakers of European languages because the Hopi language does not make the
grammatical distinctions of tense that, for example, English does with words and word endings
such as did, will, shall, -s, -ed, and -ing.
A weaker form of the hypothesis is linguistic relativism because it holds that the language
we speak influences how we perceive and think about the world. Linguistic relativism says
478
that different languages encode different categories and that speakers of different languages
therefore think about the world in different ways. For example, languages break up the color
spectrum at different points. In Navaho, blue and green are one word. Russian has different
words for dark blue (siniy) and light blue (goluboy), while in English we need to use the
additional words dark and light to express the difference. The American Indian language Zuni
does not distinguish between the colors yellow and orange.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Linguistics
12. Metathesis refers to ----------.
1) assimilation of segments
2) loss of segments
3) reduplication of segments
4) interchange of segments
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Metathesis refers to the phonological process that reorders segments, often by transposing two
sequential sounds, e.g., the pronunciation of ask /æsk/ in some English dialects as [æks].
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 571); Yule (2014, p. 233)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
13. Which statement is about cohesion?

1) The paragraph has no conjunctions.
2) The paragraph only contains three short sentences.
3) The paragraph has a lot of words from the same lexical set.
4) The paragraph has sentences which are related to the same topic.
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Cohesion
Cohesion is the grammatical and/or lexical relationships between the different elements of a
text. This may be the relationship between different sentences or between different parts of a
sentence.
We know, for example, that texts must have a certain structure that depends on factors quite
different from those required in the structure of a single sentence. Some of those factors are
described in terms of cohesion, or the ties and connections that exist within texts. These ties
are called cohesive ties or cohesive devices and are five types: (the mnemonic word for it is
RELCS or CLERS):
1. R: Reference
2. E: Ellipsis
3. L: Lexical Cohesion/Chains
4. C: Conjunction
5. S: Substitution
479
A number of those types of cohesive ties can be identified in the following paragraph.
My father once bought a Lincoln convertible. He did it by saving every penny he could.
That car would be worth a fortune nowadays. However, he sold it to help pay for my
college education. Sometimes I think I’d rather have the convertible.
1. Reference
In the example above, there are connections in the use of words to maintain reference to the
same people and things throughout: father – he – he – he; my – my – I; Lincoln – it.
2. Ellipsis
Linguistics
It refers to a situation when, after a more specific mention, words are omitted when the phrase
must be repeated. A simple conversational example:
(A) Where are you going?
(B) To dance.
The full form of B's reply would be: "I am going to dance". A simple written example: The
younger child was very outgoing, the older much more reserved. The omitted words from the
second clause are "child" and "was".
3. Lexical Cohesion/Chains
There are general connections created by terms that share a common element of meaning, such
as “money” (bought – saving – penny – worth a fortune – sold – pay) and “time” (once –
nowadays – sometimes). This type of cohesion which was first introduced by Halliday and
Hasan (1976) is one instantiation of cohesion referred to in Choice 3.
4. Conjunction
There is also a connector (However) that marks the relationship of what follows to what went
before.
5. Substitution
There are connections between phrases such as: a Lincoln convertible – that car – the
convertible.
However, by itself, cohesion would not be sufficient to enable us to make sense of what
we read. It is quite easy to create a highly cohesive text that has a lot of connections between
the sentences, but is very difficult to interpret. Note that the following text has a series of
connections in Lincoln – the car, red – that color, her – she, and letters – a letter.
My father bought a Lincoln convertible. The car driven by the police was red. That color
doesn’t suit her. She consists of three letters. However, a letter isn’t as fast as a
telephone call.
It becomes clear from this type of example that the “connectedness” we experience in our
interpretation of normal texts is not simply based on connections between words. There must
be another factor that helps us distinguish connected texts that make sense from those that do
not. This factor is usually described as “coherence”, which refers to the connections that readers
and listeners create in their minds to arrive at a meaningful interpretation of texts.
Therefore, we have “cohesion in form” and “coherence in thought” (Oxford, 1990, p.7).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Richards and Schmidt (2010, pp. 93-94); Yule (2014, pp. 141-142)
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480
14. Marked sounds are ----------.

1) rare
2) basic
3) common
4) predictable
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Markedness Universals
Linguistics
An important type of absolute non-implicational universal of phonology and morphology
concerns markedness between contrastive phones or features of phones. The phone or phonetic
feature which is more common and has other characteristics expected of the more common
and presumably more basic category is said to be unmarked. The phone or feature which
contrasts with the unmarked phone or feature is said to be marked. Some unmarked and marked
phonological categories are:
Unmarked Marked
a. [-aspirated] stops [+aspirated] stops
b. [-voiced] obstruents [+voiced] obstruents
c. [+voiced] sonorants [-voiced] sonorants
d. labiodental fricatives bilabial fricatives
e. [-nasal] vowels [+nasal] vowels
f. [+round] back vowels [-round] back vowels
Unmarked categories have some or all of the following characteristics, which explain their
relative commonality:
a) Greater frequency (likelihood of occurrence) across languages
b) Greater frequency within a language
c) Less restricted context of occurrence
d) Presence in contexts where marked categories are absent (e.g., voiceless obstruents appear
word-finally where voiced stops and fricatives are absent in many languages, including
Russian, German, Turkish, etc.)
e) Greater number of variants; thus there are more coronal consonants phonemes than
consonants phonemes at the other places of articulations. (English, for example, has
coronal (alveolar) stops and fricatives, a nasal /n/, and alveolar /l/; the labials, dorsals
(velars), and glottals are considerably fewer)
f) Simpler or lesser form
The term ‘unmarked’ is most appropriate for a category with lesser form, which may be
said to be lesser in form by lacking the mark of a marked category. The correlation of greater
frequency and lesser form is itself a universal tendency, known as Zipf’s Law. Often unmarked
categories are found to fulfill the additional characteristics of being earlier learned by children.
English learning children, for example, often have voiceless obstruents for adult word-final
voiced obstruents.
In brief, unmarked sounds are those sounds/phones that frequently occur in most languages
of the world, and marked sounds/phones are those that rarely occur in the world’s languages.
For example, most languages have the sounds [p] and [s], but [θ] is a rare sound (i.e. a marked
sound/phone).
481
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 157, 324-325, 404); Hudson (2000, pp. 332-333)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
15. Which of the following is WRONG?

1) Redundancy occurs when more information than necessary under ideal conditions is
present.
2) Broad transcription exemplifies the sounds that a person utters in as much detail as
possible.
3) Diacritic codes are added to the main phonetic symbol to provide details of pronunciation.
Linguistics
4) Recursion makes a linguistic unit longer by embedding another unit in it.
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Redundancy occurs when more information than necessary under ideal conditions is present.
For instance, when a vowel is nasalized in English, it indicates that it precedes a nasal
consonant. If a person doesn’t hear the nasal consonant clearly, he or she might be able to
predict its presence from hearing the nasalization of the vowel (Rowe & Levine, 2015, p. 79).
A narrow transcription (phonetic transcription) represents the actual sounds that a
person utters in as much detail as possible. In this transcription, as many symbols (such as
diacritics and special letters) will be used as needed to transcribe the linguist’s perceptions of
the language. The narrow transcription will show both distinctive and nondistinctive features.
A broad transcription (phonemic transcription) represents the idealized sounds, called
phonemes, which are actually classes of sounds (the class being made up of allophones) rather
than physically real speech sounds. A broad transcription or a phonemic transcription does
not include nondistinctive features. Many details of pronunciation are left out of a broad
transcription. For instance, the word pit would be written as /pɪt/ in broad transcription and
[phɪt] in the narrow transcription. The narrow transcription of pit indicates the nondistinctive
feature (in English) of aspiration (Rowe & Levine, 2015, p. 67).
Diacritics or diacritic marks are notations added to the main phonetic symbol to clarify
details of pronunciation. For example, Aspiration is phonetically indicated by a raised
superscript [h] and the lack of release by a [ ̚ ]. So [p], [t], and [k] represent unaspirated but
released stops; [ph], [th], and [kh] represent aspirated stops, and [p ̚ ], [t ̚ ], and [k ̚ ] represent
unreleased stops. Voiced stops in English are not aspirated. The [ ̚ ] and the superscript [h] are
two of many diacritics or diacritic marks added to the main phonetic symbol for a sound to
clarify details of pronunciation (Rowe & Levine, 2015, p. 36).
Recursion is the process whereby any linguistic unit can be made longer by embedding
another unit in it). I can say, “I am going to the store.” Or I can say, “My wife and I are going
to the store.” Or I could say, “My wife, children, and I are going to the store.” In fact, I can add
to the first sentence endlessly. Notice that I can also add to the end of the sentence: “My wife,
children, and I are going to the store and then we are going to a movie.” The recursiveness of
language allows people to compare, analyze, and combine thoughts in a limitless way (Rowe
& Levine, 2015, p. 3.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Rowe and Levine (2015, p. 3, 36, 67, 79)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
482
16. Which of the following is NOT a case of presupposition?

1) My dog was attacked last night. I have a dog.
2) Mary broke the window. The window broke.
3) The king of France might be bald. There is a king of France.
4) If the king of France is bald, he should wear a hat in the winter. There is a king of France.
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Presupposition
Linguistics
When we use a referring expression like this, he or Jennifer, we usually assume that our listeners
can recognize which referent is intended. In a more general way, we design our linguistic
messages on the basis of large-scale assumptions about what our listeners already know. Some
of these assumptions may be mistaken, of course, but mostly they’re appropriate. What a
speaker (or writer) assumes is true or known by a listener (or reader) can be described as a
presupposition.
If someone tells you Your brother is waiting outside, there is an obvious presupposition
that you have a brother. If you are asked Why did you arrive late?, there is a presupposition that
you did arrive late. And if you are asked the question When did you stop smoking?, there are at
least two presuppositions involved. In asking this question, the speaker presupposes that you
used to smoke and that you no longer do so. Questions like this, with built-in presuppositions,
are very useful devices for interrogators or trial lawyers. If the defendant is asked by the
prosecutor, Okay, Mr. Buckingham, how fast were you going when you went through the red
light?, there is a presupposition that Mr. Buckingham did in fact go through the red light. If he
simply answers the How fast part of the question, by giving a speed, he is behaving as if the
presupposition is correct.
One of the tests used to check for the presuppositions underlying sentences involves
negating a sentence with a particular presupposition and checking if the presupposition remains
true. Whether you say My car is a wreck or the negative version My car is not a wreck, the
underlying presupposition (I have a car) remains true despite the fact that the two sentences
have opposite meanings. This is called the “constancy under negation” test for identifying a
presupposition. If someone says, I used to regret marrying him, but I don’t regret marrying him
now, the presupposition (I married him) remains constant even though the verb regret changes
from affirmative to negative.
In the case of choice (2), if it were written as “Mary broke the window. There is a window.”,
it would be a case of presupposition.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 174); Yule (2014, pp. 130-131); Yule (1996)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
17. Which of the following is a synthetic statement?

1) Frozen water is ice.
2) All squares are four-sided.
3) Two halves make up a whole.
4) The cheetah is the fastest animal in the world.
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
483
Explanation:
For explanation and similar items, refer to Year 94, Item 17; and Year 95, Item 8.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
18. Men, Women and Politeness is most likely the title of a book in the field of ----------.
1) sociolinguistics
2) applied linguistics
3) historical linguistics
Linguistics
4) theoretical linguistics
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Sociolinguistics is the study of how language and social factors, such as ethnicity, social
class, age, gender, and educational level, are related. Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 298) state that in
work on women and language a number of features were identified that occurred more
frequently in women’s speech than in men’s. For example, women “hedge” their speech more
often than men do, with expressions like I suppose, I would imagine, This is probably wrong,
sort of, but . . . , and so on. Women also use tag questions more frequently to qualify their
statements (He’s not a very good actor, is he?), as well as words of politeness (e.g., please,
thank you) and intensifying adjectives such as really and so (It’s a really good film, It’s so nice
of you). It was claimed that the use of these devices was due to uncertainty and a lack of
confidence on the part of women.
In general, theoretical linguistics is concerned with the form and structure of language.
Thus, theoretical linguistics is mainly concerned with the study of morphology, phonetics and
phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
Historical linguistics (or diachronic linguistics) is concerned with what happened in the
history of individual languages or of groupings of languages as “families”, e.g. Germanic or
Romance. It is also concerned, at a higher level of analysis, with the nature of linguistic change
itself: how and why languages change?
Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 338) state that the branch of linguistics that deals with how
languages change, what kinds of changes occur, and why they occurred is called historical and
comparative linguistics. It is “historical” because it deals with the history of particular
languages; it is “comparative” because it deals with relations among languages.
Applied linguistics has been defined from different perspectives and wordings. For
example, Cook (2003) makes a similar link: applied linguistics is defined as “the academic
discipline concerned with the relation of knowledge about language to decision making in the
real world” (p.5).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 298, 338,); Hudson (2000, p. 495)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
19. Generative syntacticians ----------.

1) believe that generative semantics is part of the standard theory
2) try to find a semantically thorough level of underlying structure
3) assert that structures are generated in the base component of the model
4) claim that meaning should play a more central role in models of language
484
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The constituent/phrase structure rules and the lexicon constitute the base component by means
of which deep structures are generated. The syntactic component of the grammar contains the
transformations that gradually convert deep structures to surface structures.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Aitchison (2003); Falk (1978, p. 248)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Linguistics
20. Which of the following versions of Chomsky's model assumes transformations never
change meaning?
1) Standard Theory
2) Extended Standard Theory
3) Revised Extended Standard Theory
4) Extended Standard Theory and Revised Extended Standard Theory
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Accordingly, Noam Chomsky proposed three models which were developed one after another
to elaborate on the semantic interpretation of structures:
1. Standard Theory (also called Aspects Model) which states that meaning resides in deep
structure. That is, transformations would not change the meaning.
2. Extended Standard Theory states that meaning resides in both deep and surface
structures. So, transformations would change the meaning. Its advocates were known
from the beginning as "interpretivists" (short for "interpretive semanticists") due to the
importance they attributed to rules of semantic interpretation. Interpretive semantics
holds that semantic interpretation depends on syntactic structure. That is, by changing the
arrangement of the words in a sentence, the meaning of the sentence changes.
3. Revised Extended Standard Theory (also called Trace Theory) states that meaning
resides at the level of surface structure. According to the last version, deletion and
movement transformations leave traces of constituents, thereby permitting all semantic
interpretation to occur at the surface structure.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Aitchison (2003, pp. 200, 208-210, 212-213); Falk (1978, pp. 354-256)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
485
21. Which of the following is a feature of criterion-referenced tests?

1) They measure general language abilities or proficiencies.
2) Test takers know exactly what content to expect in test items.
3) There are a few relatively long subtests with a variety of question contents.
4) Test takers have little or perhaps no idea what content to expect in questions.
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Differences between Norm-Referenced and Criterion-Referenced Tests
Characteristic Nom-Referenced Criterion-Referenced
Type of Relative (A student’s Absolute (A student’s
Interpretation performance is compared to that performance is compared only to
of all other students in percentile the amount, or percentage, of
terms.) material learned.)
Type of To measure general language To measure specific objectives-
Testing
Measurement abilities or proficiencies based language points
Purpose of Testing To spread students out along a To assess the amount of material
continuum of general abilities or known, or learned, by each
proficiencies student
Distribution of Normal distribution of scores Varies, usually non-normal
Scores around a mean (students who know all of the
material should all score 100%)
Test Structure A few relatively long subtests A series of short, well-defined
with a variety of question subtests with similar question
contents contents
Knowledge of Students have little or no idea Students know exactly what
Questions what content to expect in content to expect in test questions
questions
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
22. A task in which a prospective salesperson is asked to participate in a role play to sell
a product is described as one with ----------.
1) a low degree of both authenticity and interactiveness
2) a high degree of both authenticity and interactiveness
3) a low degree of authenticity and a high degree of interactiveness
4) a high degree of authenticity and a low degree of interactiveness
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
486
Explanation:
Bachman and Palmer (1996, p. 23) define authenticity as the degree of correspondence of
the characteristics of a given language test task to the features of a target language use (TLU)
task. They also define interactiveness as the extent and type of involvement of the test taker’s
individual characteristics in accomplishing a test task. The individual characteristics that are
most relevant for language testing are the test taker’s language ability, topical knowledge, and
affective schemata (p. 25).
Bachman and Palmer (1996, pp. 27-28) maintain that the best situation is one in which
there is a high degree of both authenticity and interactiveness. They provide the example of a
role play in which a prospective salesperson was required to attempt to sell a product. The role
play might involve a face-to-face oral conversation with an interlocutor who plays the role of a
potential customer. The test taker might be required to engage the hypothetical customer in a
conversation, decide upon what kind of approach to use in the selling task, and carry out the
task. How authentic and interactive is this test task? It would be rated as relatively high in
both authenticity and interactiveness. It is high in authenticity because of the
correspondence between characteristics of the TLU domain and characteristics of the test task.
It is high in interactiveness because of the involvement of assessment, goal-setting, and
planning strategies, as well as the high level of involvement of all of the areas of language
Testing
knowledge and the test taker's topical knowledge.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Bachman and Palmer (1996, pp. 23-28)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
23. The relationship between input and response in a test of speaking in which the
candidate gives his or her opinion of a recent event is ----------.
1) narrow and indirect
2) narrow and direct
3) broad and direct
4) broad and indirect
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Relationship between input and response
In addition to describing the characteristics of the input and response separately, we can
describe how they are related to each other, in terms of the reactivity, scope, and directness of
the relationship.
Reactivity
Reactivity refers to the extent to which the input or the response directly affects subsequent
input and responses.
Reciprocal tasks are those in which the test taker or language user engages in language use with
another interlocutor. In reciprocal tasks, the test taker or language user receives feedback on
the relevance and correctness of the response, and the response in turn affects the input that is
subsequently provided by the interlocutor. The feedback may be either explicit or implicit in
the reactions (verbal, physical) of the interlocutor. Reciprocal language use and test tasks thus
have two distinguishing features: (1) the presence of feedback, and (2) interaction between the
two interlocutors, so that the language used by the participants at any given point in the
487
communicative exchange affects subsequent language use. A typical example of a reciprocal

test task would be the give-and-take that occurs in a face-to-face oral interview.
Non-reciprocal: In non-reciprocal language use there is neither feedback nor interaction

between language users. Reading is an example of non-reciprocal language use since the
language user's internal or external response to what is read does not change the form of
subsequent material in the text. Typical examples of non-reciprocal test tasks are taking a
dictation and writing a composition.
Adaptive: A recent development in measurement is the use of adaptive tests, in which the
particular tasks presented to the test taker are determined by the responses to previous tasks.
The first task presented in an adaptively administered test is typically of medium difficulty. If
this task is performed correctly, the next task presented will be slightly more difficult. If that
task is missed, the next one will be slightly easier, and so on. In most adaptive tests, test takers
do not receive feedback on the correctness of their responses, and may not know that their
responses determine which tasks will be presented subsequently. Adaptive test tasks thus do
not involve the feedback that characterizes reciprocal language use, but they do involve an
aspect of interaction, in the sense that their responses affect subsequent input. Some language
Testing
use tasks may be adaptive as well, as for example in situations in which one simplifies, uses
paraphrase, or slows down in order to accommodate and repair breakdowns in communication.
The person to whom one is talking may not be aware that what is said is being tailored so as to
make the input more understandable and hence, facilitate the response. (See Snow and Ferguson
1977 for discussions of this.)
Scope of relationship
Scope of relationship refers to the amount or range of input that must be processed in order for
the test taker or language user to respond as expected.
Broad scope: Tasks that require the test taker or language user to process a lot of input can be
characterized as broad scope. An example of a broad scope test task is a 'main idea' reading
comprehension question that deals with the content of an entire passage. A broad scope
language use task might be listening to a conversation in a foreign language with the idea of
getting the gist, without paying attention to specific details.
Narrow scope: Tasks that require the processing of only a limited amount of input can be
characterized as narrow scope. An example of a narrow Scope test task is a short stand-alone
multiple-choice grammar item since the response is to be made on the basis of a relatively
limited amount of input. Another example would be a reading comprehension question that
focuses on a specific detail or a limited part of the reading passage. An example of a narrow
scope language use task might be scanning the sale ads in the newspaper for a particular piece
of furniture.
Directness of relationship
Directness of relationship refers to the degree to which the expected response can be based
primarily on information in the input, or whether the test taker or language user must also rely
on information in the context or in his own topical knowledge.
488
Direct: the response includes primary information supplied in the input. An example of a
relatively direct test task would be a speaking test in which the test taker describes the content
of a picture.
Indirect: the response includes information not supplied in the input. An example of a relatively
indirect test task would be a speaking test in which the test taker gives his opinion of a recent
event.
It is fairly common for certain types of test tasks to include a direct relationship between
input and response. A task that requires the test taker to read a piece of discourse and then
answer comprehension questions that request information explicitly stated in the passage, for
example, involves such a direct relationship. Many, if not most, language use tasks, on the other
hand, involve an indirect relationship between input and response. In conversation, for example,
the language users expect each other to respond with new, rather than given information, the
new information being supplied by the language users.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Testing
24. The assessment component of strategic competence enables us to do all the following
EXCEPT ----------.
1) ascertaining the knowledge shared by our interlocutor
2) determining the language competencies available to us
3) retrieving relevant items from our linguistic competence
4) identifying the information needed to realize a particular communicative goal
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Assessment component
The assessment component enables us to (1) identify the information – including the language
variety, or dialect – that is needed for realizing a particular communicative goal in a given
context; (2) determine what language competencies (native language, second or foreign
language) are at our disposal for most effectively bringing that information to bear in achieving
the communicative goal; (3) ascertain the abilities and knowledge that are shared by our
interlocutor; and (4) following the communication attempt, evaluate the extent to which the
communicative goal has been achieved.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
25. The approaches to estimating reliability within the classical true score model are -----
---------.
1) systematic, unsystematic, and equivalence estimates
2) unsystematic, stability, and nonequivalence estimates
3) internal consistency, stability, and systematic estimates
4) internal consistency, stability, and equivalence estimates
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
489
Explanation:
Within the CTS model, there are three approaches to estimating reliability, each of which
addresses different sources of error. Internal consistency estimates are concerned primarily
with sources of error from within the test and scoring procedures, stability estimates indicate
how consistent test scores are over time, and equivalence estimates provide an indication of the
extent to which scores on alternate forms of a test are equivalent. The estimates of reliability
that these approaches yield are called reliability coefficients.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
26. All of the following are true about the Guttman split-half estimate of reliability
EXCEPT that it ----------.
1) assumes that both halves heavily depend on each other
2) provides a direct estimate of reliability of the whole test
3) does not require an additional correlation of length
4) does not assume equivalence of the halves
Testing
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
The Guttman split-half estimate
An approach to estimating reliability from split-halves is that developed by Guttman (1945),
which does not assume equivalence of the halves, and which does not require computing a
correlation between them. This split-half reliability coefficient is based on the ratio of the sum
of the variances of the two halves to the variance of the whole test.
Since this formula is based on the variance of the total test, it provides a direct estimate of the
reliability of the whole test. Therefore, unlike the correlation between the halves that is the
basis for the Spearman-Brown reliability coefficient, the Guttman split-half estimate does not
require an additional correction for length.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
27. Which of the following statements is true about the Kuder-Richardson formulae?
1) They overestimate reliability when the items are both equivalent and independent of each
other.
2) They underestimate reliability when the items are both equivalent and independent of
each other.
3) They underestimate reliability when the items are not equivalent and overestimate it when
the items are not independent of each other.
4) They overestimate reliability when the items are not equivalent and underestimate it when
the items are not independent of each other.
490
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
As with the split-half estimates, the Kuder-Richardson formulae underestimate reliability when
the items are not equivalent and overestimate it when the items are not independent of each
other.
The following table illustrates what happens when assumptions of internal consistency are
violated.
Assumption Effect if assumption is violated

Estimate Equivalence Independence Equivalence Independence
Spearman-Brown Yes Yes Underestimate Overestimate
Guttman No Yes ------- Overestimate
Kuder-Richardson Yes Yes Underestimate Overestimate
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Testing
-----------------------------------------------------------------
28. Which of the following statements is true about generalizability theory?

1) It treats error variance as homogenous in source.
2) It does not distinguish between systematic and random error.
3) It is a special case of classical true score theory with only two sources of error.
4) It treats a given measure as a sample from a hypothetical universe of possible measures.
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
G-theory treats a given measure or score as a sample from a hypothetical universe of possible
measures. When we interpret a test score we generalize from a single measure to a universe of
measures. In other words, on the basis of an individual’s performance on a test we generalize
to her performance in other contexts. The more reliable the sample of performance, or test score,
is, the more generalizable it is. Reliability, then, is a matter of generalizability, and the extent
to which we can generalize from a given score is a function of how we define the universe of
measures.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
29. Validity is often described as agreement between ----------.

1) different measures of different traits
2) different measures of the same trait
3) similar measures of different traits
4) similar measures of the same trait
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
491
Explanation:
Campbell and Fiske (1959, p. 83, cited in Bachman, 1990, p. 240) state that validity is
represented in the agreement between two attempts to measure the same trait through
maximally different methods. Thus, validity is defined as the agreement between different
measures of the same trait - for example, correlation between scores on a multiple choice test
of grammar and ratings of grammar on an oral interview.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
30. The facets of validity arising from interaction between test interpretation and
consequential basis are ----------.
1) construct validity and value implications
2) concurrent validity and value implications
3) construct validity and social consequences
4) concurrent validity and social consequences
Answer: 1
Testing
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Messick proposed a unified theory of validity which he set out in the form of a matrix
(Figure 1).

Construct Validity +
Evidential Basis Construct Validity
Relevance/ Utility
Sources of
Construct Validity + Construct Validity +
Justification Consequential
Value Implications Relevance/ Utility +
Basis
Social Consequences
Figure 1: Facets of Validity (from Messick 1989)
Year 96, Items 30, 31, and 60; and Year 97, Item 37.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
------------------------------------
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31. The metaphor of a barker outside a circus tent describing two bowing aerialists and a
waving clown inside represents ----------.
1) response validity
2) construct validity
3) content validity
4) predictive validity
492
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
The score of an individual on a given test is not likely to be equally valid for different uses. For
example, although a rating from an oral interview may be a valid indicator of speaking ability,
it may not be valid as a measure of teaching ability. The primary limitation of content validity,
then, is that it focuses on tests, rather than test scores. This limitation has been characterized by
Messick in an extended simile:
Content validity is like the barker outside a circus tent touting two bowing aerialists, a
waving clown, and a poster of a lady riding a unicorn as a sample of the show you will
see inside. It is not just that the sample is not representative of the variety of individuals
and animals inside or even an accurate portrayal of them, it is that you do not see any
performances.
(Messick, 1975, p. 961)
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Testing
32. All of the following are criticisms of the real-life approach to authenticity EXCEPT
that it ----------.
1) treats the behavioral manifestations of an ability as the trait itself
2) rebuts the value of indirect measures of language ability
3) fails to distinguish between ability and performance
4) offers an inadequate basis for validation
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
The two main criticisms of the real-life approach to authenticity
Language testing researchers have pointed out several problems with the use of non-test
language performance as a criterion for defining proficiency and authenticity.
1. Failure to distinguish ability from behavior

The distinction between language ability and the actual performance of that ability has been
at the same time a central axiom and a dilemma for language testing. Carroll (1968), for
example, states that “the single most important problem confronted by the language tester is
that he cannot test competence in any direct sense; he can measure it only through
manifestations of it in performance” (p. 51). One problem is that the failure to distinguish
between the trait or ability measured and the observation of behavior limits the interpretation
and use of test results. In other words, one problem with the real-life (RL) approach to
authenticity, then, is that it treats the behavioral manifestation of an ability as the trait itself.
Language tests, however, like all mental measures, are indirect indicators of the abilities in
which we are interested. That is, we are not generally interested so much in how an individual
performs on a particular test task in a specified setting on a given day, as in what that
performance indicates about that individual’s ability. The identification of trait with
performance, however, does not permit us to make inferences beyond the testing context, and
thus severely limits both the interpretation and use of test results and the type of evidence that
can be brought forth in support of that interpretation or use.
493
2. Inadequate basis for validation

A second problem is that the RL approach provides an inadequate basis for examining validity.
As pointed out in Chapter 7 of Bachman’s (1990) book, arguments supporting test appearance
(i.e. face validity), content relevance, and predictive utility do not by themselves provide
sufficient evidence to justify test use. With respect to content relevance, several researchers (for
example, Weir, 1981; Alderson, 1981; Shohamy & Reves, 1985; Stevenson, 1985) have argued
that the RL approach provides no basis for defining the domain of non-test performance so as
to distinguish it from test performance, and that the replication of non-test performance in
language tests is unattainable.
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33. Which of the following is a feature of the explicit mode of assessment?

1) It is cyclical.
2) It is continuous.
3) It is instantaneous.
4) It is used to make summative decisions.
Testing
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
The following table summarizes the role of assessment in teaching and learning:
Mode Characteristics Purpose

Implicit  Continuous Formative decisions, e.g.:
 Instantaneous  Correct or not correct student’s
 Cyclical response
 Implicit: both teacher and  Change form of questioning
students may be unaware that  Call on another student
assessment is taking place  Produce a model utterance
 Request a group response
Explicit  Clearly distinct from teaching Summative decisions, e.g.:

 Explicit: both teacher and  Decide who passes the course
learners are aware that  Certify level of ability
assessment is taking place
Formative decisions, e.g.:
 Teacher: Move on to next lesson or
review current lesson
 Teacher: focus more on a specific
area of content
 Student: spend more time on a
particular area of language ability
 Student: use a different learning
strategy
494
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34. Which of the following terms show crucial characteristics of dynamic assessment?
1) Activity, intentionality, and feedback
2) Activity, modifiability, and mediation
3) Intentionality, feedback, and washback
4) Modifiability, mediation, and washback
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Lidz (1987) defined dynamic assessment (DA) as “an interaction between an examiner-as-
intervener and a learner-as-active participant, which seeks to estimate the degree of
modifiability of the learner and the means by which positive changes in cognitive functioning
can be induced and maintained” (p. 4). The goal of DA is to measure, intervene, and modify
Testing
behaviors by concentrating on the process of learning. Activity on the part of examiner and
learner, and modifiability of behavior through mediation are crucial characteristics of DA
(Lidz, 1991). Mediation in DA refers to the intervention of the assessor in order to select,
amplify, and interpret objects and processes to the learner during the assessment. Thus, DA is
above all social, interactive, and qualitative (Lidz & Elliott, 2000).
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 See also: Fulcher and Davidson (2012, p. 107)
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35. All of the following are key characteristics of spec-driven test development EXCEPT
that it is ----------.
1) intuitive
2) generative
3) iterative
4) consensus-based
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Test specifications
A test specification is a generative blueprint from which many equivalent test items or tasks
can be produced. Perhaps the earliest mention of test specifications (or “specs”) dates to Ruch
(1924, pp. 95-99; 1929, pp. 150). Well prior to Glaser’s paper that coined the term “criterion
referenced,” test developers realized that standardized testing needed to control test tasks, so
that new and equivalent versions of tests could be developed, trialed, and normed. Early
conceptions of test specifications reflected then-prevalent normative views of test development,
and the goal of these early specs was to generate tasks of varying difficulty levels. These specs
also provided information about the particular skills in a test: how many test items are needed
495
for each skill. Often, this information was set forth in tabular form: a table of specifications.
For example, the table may tell the test developer that ten multiple-choice comprehension
questions are needed for a test of reading: five texts, two per text, one each to test a main idea
and to test a specific textual inference.
A table of specifications is a very valuable tool, and it is still widely used in many test
development settings. However, it has a drawback: it does not provide adequate detail to
generate test questions that say much about mastery. It is not a tool for operationalizing an
ability. What is a “main idea”? What is “textual inference”? Criterion referenced test
specifications originated in the 1970s and provide that level of detail (Popham, 1978; Davidson
& Lynch, 2002; Fulcher & Davidson, 2007: Chapters A4 and C4). Modern test score reports
obtain their richness, in part, from their bank of detailed test specs, and if the test still serves a
normative function (and many do), then it is no longer accurate to say that detailed test specs
are the sole province of criterion referencing. They have become part of all good testing
practice. Detailed test specs can come in many formats and design. All formats share two
common elements: sample test tasks and “guiding language” about how to produce such
samples (Fulcher & Davidson, 2007: Chapter A4).
A spec really does not stabilize until it has been exposed to extensive and reflective
Testing
criticism among test developers: feedback makes specs better. Furthermore, the team should be
able to look at the spec, to reflect on its accumulated expertise and opinions, to critique it,
and to improve it—all without trialing the test item. It is costly to try out test items, and in some
test settings, trialing is not typical. For example, a group of teachers at a language institute may
regularly gather to discuss their students and classes and exams. In such a setting, it is doubtful
that the institute can invest much time in trying out test items to improve the tests. However,
the institute can invest part of its coordination and planning meetings to the planning and
refinement of the test—and such discussions can focus on test specs. The institute’s tests—its
specs, actually—can grow and evolve and improve from feedback obtained at regularly
scheduled discussions.
This process is spec-driven test development. Its key characteristics are:

 It is generative: the spec is intended to produce many equivalent test items or tasks;
 It is iterative: the spec evolves over time and proceeds through versions;
 It is consensus-based: the spec is co-authored by a team.
Spec-driven test development is probably standard practice in most large commercial and
government testing operations.
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36. Which of the following approaches to test design and item construction focuses on test
misuse?
1) The authentic approach
2) The critical approach
3) The systematic approach
4) The psychometric approach
Answer: 2
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496
Explanation:
There are four different approaches to item writing: (1) psychometric, (2) authentic, (3)
systematic, and (4) critical. It should be noted, however, that all four approaches are not
mutually exclusive. Also, more recent perspectives have not necessarily made older ones
obsolete. For instance, authentic test items are pervasive now, but the psychometric tradition
remains strong. The systematic approach has made some advances in professionalizing the item
writing process, but not much research has confirmed its meaningfulness or usefulness yet. The
critical approach to testing has been deeply rooted in education, but micro-level issues in item
design have received little coverage in the literature when compared to macro-level arguments.
The main principles of these perspective are as follows:

(1) The psychometric approach: “Reproduce similar items in multiple-choice format. Do it
objectively.”
(2) The authentic approach: “Search for authentic items. Avoid the multiple-choice format.”
(3) The systematic approach: “See the whole picture of test development. Do it systematically.”
(3) The critical approach: “Create items to help test takers. Think socio-politically.”
Testing
The Critical Approach
Item writing was once judged to be “an immature science” (Cronbach, 1970), and researchers
reacted and finally placed the item writing process into a tightly organized set of guidelines or
validity arguments. Some scholars (e.g., Lynch, 2001; Pennycook, 2001; Spolsky, 1995),
however, tried to see the testing practice in a much bigger, and socio-political, picture. By
articulating “critical language testing,” for example, Shohamy (2001, pp. 131–32) saw tests as
political tools within a context of power struggles. This approach challenges the dominant
traditions of test uses and encourages an active, critical response from test takers. McNamara
(2008), who has echoed critical perspectives on the misuse of language tests, subscribed to the
views of many scholars who made major contributions to socio-political dimensions of
language testing. Hamp-Lyons (1997, 2000), acknowledging political aspects embedded in the
process of test design and use, called for ethical awareness in language testing and referred to
“ethical language testing” with reference to the notion of “responsibility.”
From the perspective of critical language testing, objective test formats, such as multiple-
choice or true–false, are the features that grant language tests power. The assumption behind
multiple-choice formatted test items is that they imply “one correct answer, i.e., one ‘truth’, one
interpretation” (Shohamy, 2001, p. 24); thus, different approaches to item design are needed to
allow for different meanings and interpretations for different test takers (see Shohamy, 2001,
p. 27, 111 for more explanation). This criticism is different from the way other approaches to
item writing have recognized multiple-choice items as meaningful or not meaningful: the
psychometric approach sees them as scientific entities, the authentic approach distances itself
from multiple-choice items in preference of acquiring real-world authentic tasks, and the
systematic approach focuses on how items support inferences from the response evidence to
the claims testers make about the test construct.
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37. Going back and forth between a passage and a given item in order to obtain more
information about what to be looking for is an example of a(n) ----------.
1) compensatory strategy
2) test-wiseness strategy
3 intervention strategy
4) test-management strategy
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Test-management strategies
Test-management strategies are strategies for responding meaningfully to test items and tasks.
These are the processes consciously selected to assist in producing a correct answer responsibly.
They include logistical issues such as weighing the importance of responding to different items
or tasks, keeping track of the time, and determining where to look for answers.
Test-management strategies on a reading test could deal with:
 going back and forth between a passage and a given question in order to obtain more
information about just what to be looking for
Testing
 dealing with multiple-choice options systematically so as to give careful consideration
to all the alternative choices and to craft a rationale for why one choice is better than the
others
 time-management strategies that ensure sufficient attention to items and tasks,
especially those with the highest point values on the test.
As an example, on an essay-writing task, a test-management strategy would be to outline the
essay before writing it in order to ensure that it responds effectively to the writing prompt.
Assume that the task is to write an essay requesting that the respondent take a stand, pro or con,
on an issue such as the following from sample essay topics for the former Test of Written
English published by Educational Testing Service:
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Sometimes it is better not to tell
the truth. Use specific reasons and details to support your answer.
Test-management strategies would include lining up arguments in outline form in advance –
e.g., taking a position (in favor of white lies) listing instances where lying makes sense along
with a rationale. Perhaps the essay would start with a justification for telling the truth as a
preamble. In any case, good test-management strategies would ensure that the writing of the
essay would be smooth, with a minimum of hesitation, since it had been adequately planned
out in advance.
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38. What are the three main categories of strategies used for consistency estimation of
criterion-referenced tests?
1) Threshold loss agreement, squared-error loss agreement, and domain score dependability
2) Threshold loss agreement, squared-error loss agreement, and agreement coefficient
3) Squared-error loss agreement, domain score dependability, and agreement coefficient
4) Kappa coefficient, domain score dependability, and squared-error loss agreement
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
There are three main approaches used for consistency estimation of criterion-referenced tests:
1. Threshold loss agreement indices: these approaches consider all classification errors as
equally serious
2. Squared-error loss agreement indices: these approaches consider classification errors to vary
depending on how far the misclassified domain score is from the cut-off score.
3. Domain score dependability indices: these approaches do not depend on a cut-off score.
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39. Domain-referenced tests are defined as a type of ----------.

1) norm-referenced tests whose items are extracted from individual course objectives
2) criterion-referenced tests whose items are extracted from individual course objectives
Testing
3) criterion-referenced tests whose items are sampled from a general, yet well-defined
domain of behaviors
4) norm-referenced tests whose items are sampled from a general, yet well-defined domain
of behaviors
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Domain Score Dependability
All the threshold loss and squared-error loss agreement coefficients have been criticized
because they are dependent in one way or another on the cut-score. Alternative approaches,
called the domain score estimates of dependability, have the advantage of being independent of
the cut-score. However, they apply to domain-referenced interpretations rather than to all
criterion-referenced interpretations. Domain- referenced tests (DRTs) are defined here as a type
of CRT that is distinguished primarily by the way in which items are sampled. For DRTs, the
items are sampled from a general, but well-defined, domain of behaviors rather than from
individual course objectives as is often the case in what might be called objectives-referenced
tests (ORTs). The results on a DRT can therefore be used to describe a student’s status with
regard to that domain in a manner similar to the way in which ORT results are used to describe
the student’s status on small subtests for each course objective. Thus, the terms domain-
referenced and objectives-referenced describe variant sampling techniques within the overall
concept of criterion-referenced testing. Since objectives-referenced tests define a domain of
their own, but within the scope of the course objectives, that analyses appropriate for DRTs are
also appropriate for ORTs. One way of analyzing the consistency of domain-referenced tests
(and by extension, objectives-referenced tests) is the phi coefficient.
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 See also: J. D. Brown (2005, p. 207)
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499
40. What does the difference index indicate?

1) The degree to which a norm-referenced item discriminates the students who perform well
from those who do not
2) The degree to which a criterion-referenced item measures the content that it was supposed
to measure
3) The degree to which a norm-referenced test item reflects improvement in knowledge or
skill
4) The degree to which a criterion-referenced test item reflects gain in knowledge or skill
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Difference Index
The difference index (DI, not to be confused with ID – item discrimination) indicates the degree
to which an item is reflecting gain in knowledge or skill. In contrast to item discrimination,
which shows the degree to which an NRT item separates the upper third from the lower third
of the students on a given test administration, the difference index indicates the degree to which
a CRT item is distinguishing between the students who know the material or have the skill
Testing
being taught and those who do not.
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 See also: J.D. Brown (2005, p. 80)
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500
41. Which of the following situations provides an example of the Hawthorne effect?
1) Students paid more attention than usual to the teacher during an experiment.
2) Several teachers refused to cooperate with the researcher during a study.
3) A teacher provided an enthusiastic report of his school in an interview.
4) Most of the participants did not respond to the survey they were sent.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
One of the internal validity threats is the subject effects: Participants’ attitudes developed in
response to the research situation called subject effects can be a threat to internal validity.
Participants may try to impress the experimenter or respond as they think they are supposed to
respond. Having been chosen for an experiment and treated in a special way may influence
participants’ behavior.
Subject effects are of two general types:

I. The Subject Effect Unique to the Experimental Group
(1) The Hawthorne Effect
II. The Subject Effects Unique to the Control Group
(1) Compensatory Rivalry (also called The John Henry Effect)
(2) Compensatory Demoralization
Research
The Hawthorne Effect
For instance, in a classic study of the effects of various levels of lighting on worker productivity
at the Hawthorne, Illinois, plant of the Western Electric Company, researchers observed that
both increases and decreases in light intensity resulted in increased productivity. The
researchers concluded that the attention given to the employees and the employees’ knowledge
that they were participating in an experiment—rather than any changes in lighting—were the
major factors leading to the production gains. This tendency for subjects to change their
behavior just because of the attention gained from participating in an experiment has
subsequently been referred to as the Hawthorne effect. This effect can be a problem in
educational research that compares exciting new teaching methods with conventional methods.
Sometimes subjects may react to what they perceive to be the special demands of an
experimental situation. That is, subjects react not as they normally might but as they think the
more “important” researcher wants them to act. Research has shown, for instance, that subjects
who know they are in an experiment tolerate more stress or administer more stress to others
than they normally would.
One possible solution: Investigators are human beings, and their presence as observers in
a situation may change the behavior of their human subjects. The use of hidden video cameras
and audio cassettes may help minimize this interaction in some cases, but much social science
research includes the responses of human subjects to human observers.
Compensatory Rivalry (also called The John Henry Effect)

The opposite of the Hawthorne effect is the John Henry effect. This effect, also called
compensatory rivalry, refers to the tendency of control group subjects who know they are in
an experiment to exert extra effort and hence to perform above their typical or expected average.
They may perceive that they are in competition with the experimental group and they want to
do just as well or better. Thus, the difference (or lack of difference) between the groups may be
501
caused by the control subjects’ increased motivation rather than by the experimental treatment.
This effect is likely to occur in classroom research in which a new teaching technique is being
compared to a conventional method that may be replaced by the new method. The students in
the conventional classroom may want to show that they can do just as well as the students being
taught by the new method. Furthermore, the teacher in the control classroom may want to show
that the old method is just as good and he or she is motivated to make a special effort. For
example, early research on televised classroom instruction showed that the teachers in the
regular classroom (control group) made a special effort so that their students’ performance
matched or exceeded the performance of students receiving televised instruction (experimental
group). Teachers in the conventional classroom probably felt threatened by this innovation and
wanted to show that they could teach better than television.
Compensatory Demoralization
Another subject effect, called compensatory demoralization, occurs when subjects believe
they are receiving less desirable treatment or are being neglected. Consequently, they may
become resentful or demoralized and put forth less effort than the members of the other group.
please refer to Year 91, Item 55; Year 92, Item 36; Year 96, Items 42, and 43; and Year 97,
Items 41, 42, and 55.
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Research
42. Some subjects leave as a study designed by a researcher progresses. This loss is known
as ----------.
1) subject attitude
2) history threat
3) maturation threat
4) mortality threat
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Eleven threats to internal validity are discussed in Ary et al.’s (2014) book. For a brief
explanation on these threats, please refer to Year 91, Item 55.
Items 41, 42, and 55.
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43. Which of the following is related to the internal validity of an experimental study?
1) The sample is representative of the population.
2) Maturation has affected the dependent variable.
3) The results of the experiment can be widely generalized.
4) Replication in another location will result in the same results.
Answer: 2
502
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Explanation:
Representativeness: One of the key features of a research is its representativeness. When a
sample is representative of the target population, it can be generalized to the population.
Because the purpose of drawing a sample from a population is to obtain information concerning
that population, it is extremely important that the individuals included in a sample constitute a
representative cross section of individuals in the population. Samples must be representative if
you are to be able to generalize with reasonable confidence from the sample to the population
(Ary et al., 2014, pp. 162, 315-316).
Replication is a term referring to the repetition of a research study, generally with
different situations and different subjects, to determine if the basic findings of the original study
can be applied to other participants and circumstances.
Difficulties in Replication: The chemist can objectively observe the reaction between two
chemicals in a test tube. The findings can be reported and the observations can be easily
replicated by others. Replication is much more difficult to achieve in the social sciences. An
American educator cannot reproduce the conditions of a Russian educator’s experimental
teaching method with the same precision as that with which an American chemist can replicate
a Russian chemist’s experiment. Even within a single school building, one cannot reproduce a
given situation in its entirety and with precision. Social phenomena are singular events and
cannot be totally repeated for purposes of observations (Ary et al., 2014, p. 19).
Items 41, 42, and 55.
Research
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 19, 162, 315-316)
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44. A researcher wanted to test a new teaching method. He found 600 adults aged 25-30
and randomly assigned them to two groups. The first group received the new method,
while the second the traditional one. After one month of treatment, the percentage of
each group whose scores increased was recorded and compared. What is the treatment
in this experiment?
1) The percentage who had higher scores
2) The one month treatment time
3) The type of teaching method
4) The 600 adults
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Choice (1) “The percentage who had higher scores” is the focus of the study.
Choice (2) “The one month treatment time” is the duration of the study.
Choice (3) “The type of teaching method” is the treatment (or intervention or the independent
variable) involved in the study.
Choice (4) “The 600 adults” is the sample of the study.
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503
45. Which of the following best describes the shape of the distribution of data below?
1) bimodal
2) uniform Age Frequency
3) skewed left or low 40-42 70
4) skewed right or high 43-45 122
46-48 167
49-51 170
52-54 192
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
When we enter our data into a data processing software and request a frequency histogram, we
will get the following frequency histogram.
200
160
Frequency
120
192
167 170
80 122
40 70
Research
0
Age
We see that the peak of the histogram is to the right of the frequency distribution. This means
that our data are negatively skewed (i.e. the tail of our curve is to the left).
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 124-125); J. D. Brown (2005, p. 129)
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46. Which of the following is a discrete variable?

1) Time it takes to complete a race
2) Gender of participants in a study
3) Height of students in a class
4) Age of the adults in a class
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Types of Variables
There are several ways to classify variables. Variables can be categorical, or they can be
continuous. When researchers classify subjects by sorting them into mutually exclusive groups,
the attribute on which they base the classification is termed a categorical variable. Home
language, county of residence, father’s principal occupation, and school in which enrolled are
504
examples of categorical variables. The simplest type of categorical variable has only two
mutually exclusive classes and is called a dichotomous variable (also called discrete or
nominal). Male–female, citizen–alien, and pass–fail are dichotomous variables. Some
categorical variables have more than two classes; examples are educational level, religious
affiliation, and state of birth.
When an attribute has an infinite number of values within a range, it is a continuous
variable. As a child grows from 40 to 41 inches, he or she passes through an infinite number
of heights. Height, weight, age, and achievement test scores are examples of continuous
variables.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 41-42, 113-114); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, p. 62)
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47. Which one of the following is NOT appropriate for studying the relationship between
two quantitative variables?
1) Bar chart
2) Scatterplot
3) Correlation
4) Regression
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Bar Graph: A popular method used for displaying nominal scale data in graphical form is the
Research
bar graph. As an example, say that we have data on the eye color of a sample of 20 children.
Ten children are blue-eyed, six are brown-eyed, three are green-eyed, and one is black-eyed.
Note that this is a discrete variable rather than a continuous variable. Bar graphs are often used
to show frequencies. Note that discrete or nominal variables are qualitative in nature. That is,
gender is either male or female. Thus, names are used for the categories.
Scatterplot
A graphical method for depicting the relationship among two continuous variables (i.e.
quantitative variables) is to plot the pair of scores on X and Y for each individual on a two-
dimensional figure known as a scatterplot (or scattergram). Each individual has two scores in
a two-dimensional coordinate system, denoted by (X,Y). For example, individual 1 has the
scores of (10, 20). An example of scatterplot is shown in the above figure. The X axis (the
horizontal axis or abscissa) represents the values for variable X and the Y axis (the vertical axis
or ordinate) represents the values for variable Y. Each point on the scatterplot represents a pair
505
of scores (X,Y) for a particular individual. Thus one individual has a point at X = 10 and Y = 20
(the circled point). Points for other individuals are also shown.
Correlation: Correlation is one of the most common and most useful statistics. A
correlation is a single number that describes the degree of relationship between two continuous
variables.
Regression makes use of correlations, but regression goes beyond correlation by adding
prediction capabilities. Simple regression is used to examine the relationship between one
dependent and one independent variable. After performing an analysis, the regression statistics
can be used to predict the dependent variable when the independent variable is known.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 139-146); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, pp. 147-148, 427-
430, 467-488)
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48. Which of the following is false?

1) A survey refers to research where data is gathered from an entire population or a very
large sample in order to comprehend the opinions on a particular matter.
2) In a case study, the researcher records the entire history of the individual so that it enables
him to identify various patterns of behavior.
3) A correlation coefficient near 1 indicates strong correlation and a correlation coefficient
near – 1 indicates weak correlation.
4) The t-test assesses whether the means of two groups are statistically different from each
other.
Research
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Survey research (also called descriptive research) uses instruments such as questionnaires
and interviews to gather information from groups of individuals. Surveys permit the researcher
to summarize the characteristics of different groups or to measure their attitudes and opinions
toward some issue (Ary et al., 2014, p. 30). In other words, a survey refers to research where
data is gathered from an entire population or a very large sample in order to comprehend the
opinions on a particular matter. In the modern society, surveys are often used in politics and
marketing. For example, imagine a situation where an organization wishes to understand the
opinions of consumers on their latest product. Naturally the organization would conduct a
survey to comprehend the opinions of the consumer. One of the most powerful research
techniques used for surveys is the questionnaire. For this, the researcher creates a set of
questions on the topic for which he will gather information from the participants. Unlike case
studies, the data gathered from surveys are not very descriptive. Instead, they are statistically
significant.
A case study is a type of ethnographic research study that focuses on a single unit, such as
one individual, one group, one organization, or one program. The goal is to arrive at a detailed
description and understanding of the entity (the “case”). In addition, a case study can result in
data from which generalizations to theory are possible. Freud, for example, used the case study
extensively in building his theory of personality. Case studies use multiple methods, such as
interviews, observation, and archives, to gather data. Education and psychology researchers
have used the case study widely. For example, you might conduct a case study of an inner-city
school in which the students have achieved at a high level on standardized tests (Ary et al.,
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2014, p. 32). In other words, a case study refers to an in-depth study in which an individual,
group or a particular situation is studied. This is used in both in natural and social sciences. In
the natural sciences, a case study can be used to validate a theory or even a hypothesis. In the
social sciences, case studies are used extensively to study human behavior and comprehend
various social aspects. For example, in psychology, case studies are conducted to comprehend
the individual behavior. In such an instance, the researcher records the entire history of the
individual so that it enables him to identify various patterns of behavior.
A correlation coefficient is between +1 and – 1. A correlation coefficient of +1 indicates
a perfect positive correlation and a correlation coefficient of – 1 indicates a perfect negative
correlation (Ary et al., 2014, p. 142).
The t-test assesses whether the means of two groups are statistically different from each
other. This analysis is appropriate whenever you want to compare the means of two groups, and
especially appropriate as the analysis for the posttest-only two-group randomized experimental
design (see also Ary et al., 2014, pp. 185-192).
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 30, 32, 142, 185-192)
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49. The ----------states the means are ----------.
1) research hypothesis, equal
2) research hypothesis, not equal
3) null hypothesis, not equal
4) null hypothesis, equal
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Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Research hypotheses are the hypotheses developed from observation, the related literature,
and/or the theory described in the study. A research hypothesis states the relationship one
expects to find as a result of the research. It may be a statement about the expected relationship
or the expected difference between the variables in the study. A hypothesis about children’s IQs
and anxiety in the classroom could be stated as “There is a positive relationship between IQ and
anxiety in elementary schoolchildren” or “Children classified as having high IQs will exhibit
more anxiety in the classroom than children classified as having low IQs.” Research hypotheses
may be stated in a directional or nondirectional form. A directional hypothesis states the
direction of the predicted relationship or difference between the variables. The preceding two
hypotheses about IQ and anxiety are directional.
A directional hypothesis is stated when one has some basis for predicting a change in the
stated direction. A nondirectional hypothesis, in contrast, states that a relationship or difference
exists but without specifying the direction or nature of the expected finding—for example,
“There is a relationship between IQ and anxiety in children.” The literature review generally
provides the basis for stating a research hypothesis as directional or nondirectional.
The Null Hypothesis: It is impossible to test research hypotheses directly. You must first
state a null hypothesis (symbolized H0) and assess the probability that this null hypothesis is
true. The null hypothesis is a statistical hypothesis. It is called the null hypothesis because it
states that there is no relationship between the variables in the population. A null hypothesis
states a negation (not the reverse) of what the experimenter expects or predicts. A researcher
may hope to show that after an experimental treatment, two populations will have different
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means, but the null hypothesis would state that after the treatment the populations’ means will
not be different.
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50. A level of measurement that classifies data into mutually exclusive categories is known
as ----------.
1) interval
2) nominal
3) ratio
4) ordinal
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
The most widely quoted taxonomy of measurement procedures is Stevens’ scales of
measurement in which he classifies measurement as nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio.
Nominal Scale: The most primitive scale of measurement is the nominal scale. Nominal
measurement involves placing objects or individuals into mutually exclusive categories.
Numbers are arbitrarily assigned to the categories for identification purposes only. The numbers
do not indicate any value or amount; thus, one category does not represent “more or less” of a
characteristic. School District 231 is not more or less of anything than School District 103.
Examples of a nominal scale are using a “0” to represent males and a “1” to represent females
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or the religious preference described previously.
Because the numbers in a nominal scale do not represent quantity, they cannot be
arithmetically manipulated through addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. One can
only count the number of observations in each category or express the numbers in categories as
a percentage of the total number of observations.
Ordinal Scale: An ordinal scale ranks objects or individuals according to how much of
an attribute they possess. Thus, the numbers in an ordinal scale indicate only the order of the
categories. Neither the difference between the numbers nor their ratio has meaning. For
example, in an untimed footrace, we know who came in first, second, and third, but we do not
know how much faster one runner was than another. A ranking of students in a music contest
is an ordinal scale. We would know who got first place, second place, and so on, but we would
not know the extent of difference between them.
The essential requirement for measurement at this level is that the relationship must be
such that if object X is greater than object Y and object Y is greater than object Z, then object
X is greater than object Z and is written thus: If (X > Y) and (Y > Z), then (X > Z). When
appropriate, other wording may be substituted for “greater than,” such as “stronger than,”
“precedes,” and “has more of.”
The lack of equal intervals in ordinal scales limits the statistical procedures available for
analyzing ordinal data. We can use statistics that indicate the points below which certain
percentages of the cases fall in a distribution of scores.
Interval Scale: An interval scale not only places objects or events in order but also is
marked in equal intervals. Equal differences between the units of measurement represent equal
differences in the attribute being measured. Fahrenheit and Celsius thermometers are examples
of interval scales. We can say that the difference between 60° and 70° is the same as the distance
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between 30° and 40°, but we cannot say that 60° is twice as warm as 30° because there is no
true zero on an interval scale. Zero on an interval scale is an arbitrary point and does not indicate
an absence of the variable being measured. Zero on the Celsius scale is arbitrarily set at the
temperature water freezes at sea level.
Numbers on an interval scale may be manipulated by addition and subtraction, but because
the zero is arbitrary, multiplication and division of the numbers are not appropriate. Thus, ratios
between the numbers on an interval scale are meaningless. We may report differences between
positions on an interval scale or we may add the numbers to report an average.
Ratio Scale: A ratio scale, the highest level of measurement scale, has a true zero point as
well as equal intervals. Ratios can be reported between any two given values on the scale. A
yardstick used to measure length in units of inches or feet is a ratio scale because the origin on
the scale is an absolute zero corresponding to no length at all. Thus, it is possible to state that a
stick 6 feet long is twice as long as a stick 3 feet long. Other examples of ratio scales are weight,
money, and distance.
For more information on scales of measurement, refer to Year 92, Item 41; Year 97, Item 48.
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51. Researchers select ----------samples by dividing the population into groups according
to some characteristic that is important to the study, then sampling from each group.
1) random
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2) systematic
3) cluster
4) stratified
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Stratified Sampling
When the population consists of a number of subgroups, or strata, which may differ in the
characteristics being studied, it is often desirable to use a form of probability sampling called
stratified sampling. For example, if you were conducting a poll designed to assess opinions
on a certain political issue, it might be advisable to subdivide the population into subgroups on
the basis of age, neighborhood, and occupation because you would expect opinions to differ
systematically among various ages, neighborhoods, and occupational groups. In stratified
sampling, you first identify the strata of interest and then randomly draw a specified number of
subjects from each stratum. The basis for stratification may be geographic or may involve
characteristics of the population such as income, occupation, gender, age, year in college, or
teaching level. In studying adolescents, for example, you might be interested not merely in
surveying the attitudes of adolescents toward certain phenomena but also in comparing the
attitudes of adolescents who reside in small towns with those who live in medium-size and large
cities. In such a case, you would divide the adolescent population into three groups based on
the size of the towns or cities in which they reside and then randomly select independent
samples from each stratum.
An advantage of stratified sampling is that it enables the researcher to also study the
differences that might exist between various subgroups of a population. In this kind of sampling,
you may either take equal numbers from each stratum or select in proportion to the size of the
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stratum in the population. The latter procedure is known as proportional stratified sampling,
which is applied when the characteristics of the entire population are the main concern in the
study. Each stratum is represented in the sample in exact proportion to its frequency in the total
population. For example, if 10 percent of the voting population are college students, then 10
percent of a sample of voters to be polled would be taken from this stratum. If a superintendent
wants to survey the teachers in a school district regarding some policy and believes that teachers
at different levels may feel differently, he or she could stratify on teaching level and then select
a number from each level in proportion to its size in the total population of teachers. If 43
percent of the teachers are high school teachers, then 43 percent of the sample would be high
school teachers.
In brief, then, stratified sampling is a probability sampling technique that first divides a
population into subgroups by relevant variables such as age, social status, or education and then
randomly selects subjects from each subgroup.

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52. Which of the following best describes the type of association shown in the following
scatterplot?
1) Positive linear association
2) Negative linear association
3) Positive curvilinear association
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4) Negative curvilinear association
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Types of Relationships/ Correlations/Associations
I. Linear
1. Positive linear relationship
2. Negative (or inverse) linear relationship
II. Curvilinear
1. Positive curvilinear relationship
2. Negative (or inverse) curvilinear relationship
3. U-shaped curvilinear relationship
III. Zero relationship
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Positive linear relationship Negative (or inverse) linear relationship
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High positive linear relationship High negative linear relationship
Positive curvilinear relationship Negative curvilinear relationship
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U-shaped curvilinear relationship Zero relationship: A Uniform Curve
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Moderate positive relationship Zero relationship: A cloud relationship
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 145-146); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, 427-429, 437-438)
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53. “Changes in the independent variable will have no effect on the response variable” is
an example of a(n) ----------hypothesis.
1) directive
2) negative
3) null
4) alternative
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
The Null Hypothesis
It is impossible to test research hypotheses directly. You must first state a null hypothesis
(symbolized H0) and assess the probability that this null hypothesis is true. The null hypothesis
is a statistical hypothesis. It is called the null hypothesis because it states that there is no
relationship between the variables in the population. A null hypothesis states a negation (not
the reverse) of what the experimenter expects or predicts. A researcher may hope to show that
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after an experimental treatment, two populations will have different means, but the null
hypothesis would state that after the treatment the populations’ means will not be different.
What is the point of the null hypothesis? A null hypothesis lets researchers assess whether
apparent relationships are genuine or are likely to be a function of chance alone. It states, “The
results of this study could easily have happened by chance.” Statistical tests are used to
determine the probability that the null hypothesis is true. If the tests indicate that observed
relationships had only a slight probability of occurring by chance, the null hypothesis becomes
an unlikely explanation and the researcher rejects it. Researchers aim to reject the null
hypothesis as they try to show there is a relationship between the variables of the study.
Testing a null hypothesis is analogous to the prosecutor’s work in a criminal trial. To

establish guilt, the prosecutor (in the U.S. legal system) must provide sufficient evidence to
enable a jury to reject the presumption of innocence beyond reasonable doubt. It is not possible
for a prosecutor to prove guilt conclusively, nor can a researcher obtain unequivocal support
for a research hypothesis. The defendant is presumed innocent until sufficient evidence
indicates that he or she is not, and the null hypothesis is presumed true until sufficient evidence
indicates otherwise.
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54. In hypothesis testing, a Type II error occurs when the null hypothesis is ----------.
1) not rejected when the alternative hypothesis is true
2) rejected when the alternative hypothesis is true
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3) not rejected when the null hypothesis is true
4) rejected when the null hypothesis is true
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
For explanation and for similar items, please refer to Year 91, Item 52; Year 92, Item 37;
Year 94, Item 60; Year 96, Item 54; Year 97, Item 46.
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55. The significance level for a hypothesis test is a 0.05. If the p value is 0.001, the
conclusion is ----------.
1) refer to the table
2) reject the null hypothesis
3) accept the null hypothesis
4) develop another hypothesis
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
To put the issue graphically, consider the following curve:
P value of 0.001
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
Significance Level
/Critical Level of
0.05
In this curve, the area to the left of the Critical Value is the area of our null hypothesis. If our P
value were in the area to the left of the Critical Value (e.g. 0.06), our null hypothesis would be
retained. But in this example, the P value is in the area to the right of the Critical Value – the
area of our alternative hypothesis. Thus, the null hypothesis is rejected.
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 See also: Larson-Hall (2010, pp. 45-51); Turner (2014, pp.104, 113-114)
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56. Which of the following shows the correct format for the first use of Jeffrey M. Crow,
Dennard Q. Kroll, Susan N. Bush (1995) source in the following sentence: Within
theoretical linguistics, the most influential account of structural constraints on the
interpretation of reflexives and pronouns is binding theory?
1) … of reflexives and pronouns is binding theory (Crow, Kroll, and Bush, 1995).
2) … of reflexives and pronouns is binding theory (Crow, Kroll, & Bush, 1993).
3) … of reflexives and pronouns is binding theory. (Crow, Kroll, & Bush, 1995)
4) … of reflexives and pronouns is binding theory (Crow, Kroll, & Bush, 1995).
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Choice (1) is incorrect because in parenthetical material, in tables and captions, and in the
reference list, names must be joined by an ampersand (&).
Choice (2) is incorrect because the in-text citation date (1993) does not match that of the
reference (1995).
Choice (3) is incorrect because the period must be after the parentheses.
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 See also: American Psychological Association (2010, p. 175)
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57. If a data set has an even number of observations, the median ----------.
1) is the average value of the two middle items
2) must be equal to the mean
3) cannot be determined
4) is the same as the mode
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
The Median
The median is defined as that point in a distribution of measures below which 50 percent of the
cases lie (which means that the other 50 percent will lie above this point). Consider the
following distribution of scores, where the median is 18:
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
In the following 10 scores we seek the point below which 5 scores fall:
14 16 16 17 18 19 20 20 21 22
The point below which 5 scores, or 50 percent of the cases, fall is halfway between 18 and 19.
Thus, the median of this distribution is 18.5.
Consider the following scores:
18 20 22 25 25 30
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Any point from 22.5 to 24.5 fits the definition of the median. By convention in such cases the
median is defined as half way between these lowest and highest points, in this case 22.5 + 24.5/2
= 23.5.
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58. The descriptive measure of dispersion that is based on the concept of a deviation about
the mean is ----------.
1) the range
2) the central tendency
3) the standard deviation
4) the interquartile range
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Range: The range is the difference between the upper real limit of the highest score and
the lower real limit of the lowest score. To calculate the rang of the following set of numbers
2 10 11 12 13 14 16
Subtract the lower number from the higher and add 1 (16 − 2 + 1 = 15).
The range, however, has two general limitations. First, because it is based solely on the two
extreme scores in a distribution, which can vary widely from sample to sample, the stability of
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the range leaves much to be desired. The interquartile range provides a somewhat more stable
index by relying on two less extreme scores— the score points associated with the first and
third quartiles (Q1 and Q3, respectively).
Measures of central tendency: Measures of central tendency refers to the three averages
commonly used to summarize the data in a frequency distribution: mean, median, and mode.
Mean is a measure of central tendency for a distribution of interval data; the sum of the scores
divided by the number of scores in the distribution; the arithmetic average. Median is the point
in a distribution below which are 50 percent of the scores; used with ordinal or interval data.
Mode is the score that occurs most frequently in a distribution of scores; used with nominal,
ordinal, interval, or ratio data.
Standard deviation is a measure of the extent to which individual scores deviate from
the mean of the distribution.
Outliers and identifying them statistically

Outliers, potentially, put your analysis at risk of erroneous conclusions. This is because they
are scores which are so atypical of your data in general that they distort any trend in the data
because they are unusually large or small. In other words, outliers are a few cases which are out
of step with the rest of the data and can mislead the researcher. Outliers may be the result of a
wide range of different factors. One does not have to identify what is causing such big or small
values, but it is important to eliminate them because they can be so misleading. Routinely, good
researchers examine their data for possible outliers simply by inspecting tables of frequencies
or scatterplots, for example. This is normally sufficient but does involve an element of
judgement which you may not be comfortable with. There are more objective ways of
identifying outliers which reduce this subjective element. Essentially, what is done is to define
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precise limits beyond which a score is suspected of being an outlier. One simple way of doing
this is based on the interquartile range which is not affected by outliers since it is based on
the middle 50% of scores put in order of their size.
To calculate the interquartile range, essentially the scores on a variable are arranged from
smallest to largest and the 25% of smallest scores and the 25% of largest scores ignored. This
leaves the 50% of scores in the middle of the original distribution. The difference between the
largest and the smallest score in this middle 50% is the interquartile range. Outliers, which by
definition are unusually large or small scores, cannot affect the interquartile range since they
will be in the top or bottom 25% of scores and thus eliminated in calculating the interquartile
range.
Imagine that we had the following scores for the IQs (Intelligence Quotients) from a sample
of 12 individuals:
120, 115, 65, 140, 122, 142, 125, 135, 122, 136, 144, 118
Common sense would suggest that the score of 65 is uncharacteristic of the sample’s IQs in
general so we would probably identify it as a potential outlier anyway.
To calculate the interquartile range we would first rearrange the scores from smallest to
largest (or get a computer to do all of the work for us). This gives us:
65, 115, 118, 120, 122, 122, 125, 135, 136, 140, 142, 144
Since there are 12 scores, to calculate the interquartile range we delete the three (i.e. 25%)
lowest scores and also delete the three (i.e. 25%) highest scores. The three lowest scores are 65,
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115 and 118 and the three highest scores are 140, 142 and 144. With the extreme quarters
deleted, we have the following six scores which are the middle 50% of scores:
120, 122, 122, 125, 135, 136
The interquartile range is the largest of these scores minus the smallest. Thus the interquartile
range is 136 − 120 = 16 in this case.
This interquartile range is multiplied by 1.5 which gives us 1.5 × 16 = 24. Outliers among
the low scores are defined as any score which is smaller than the smallest score in the
interquartile range − 24 = 120 − 24 = 96. Outliers among the high scores are defined as any
score which is bigger than the largest score in the interquartile range + 24 = 136 + 24 = 160. In
other words, scores which are not between 96 and 160 are outliers in this example. The IQ of
65 is thus regarded as an outlier. On the assumption that the scores are normally distributed,
then less than 1% of scores would be defined as outliers. This method identifies the moderate
outliers.
Extreme outliers are identified in much the same way, but the interquartile range is
multiplied by 3 (rather than 1.5). This gives us 3 × 16 = 48. Extreme outliers among the low
scores are scores which are smaller than 120 − 48 = 72. Extreme outliers among the high scores
are scores larger than 136 + 48 = 184. Thus the participant who has an IQ of 65 would be
identified as an extreme outlier. In normally distributed scores, extreme outliers will occur only
about once in half a million scores.
It would be usual practice to delete outliers from your data. You might also wish to compare
the outcome of the analysis with the complete data and with outliers excluded. However, it is
important to mention what you have done in any report about your research.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, 120-130); Howitt and Cramer (2011, pp. 28-29)
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59. An achievement test is administered every year to 12th graders. The test has a mean
score of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. If Mary's z-score is 1.20, what was her
score on the test?
1) 118
2) 100
3) 88
4) 82
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
A z-score equals a unit of standard deviation. In this question item, thus, every unit of our z-
score equals the specified unit of standard deviation of 15. Thus, we can compute Mary's score
on the test using the following calculation:
Desired score = mean score + (z-score * standard deviation unit)
Thus,
Mary's score on the test = 100 + (1.20 * 15) = 118
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60. Which of the following refers to construct validity?

1) The extent to which the results of a test correspond to those of an established measurement
2) Theoretical foundations underlying a measurement
3) Can be either predictive or concurrent
4) Adequate coverage of a topic
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
A ‘construct’ is defined as the ‘mental ability’ we have. Since constructs cannot be measured
directly, they should be clearly and explicitly defined so as for us to distinguish them from other
related and unrelated constructs. To define constructs we need a theory or a theoretical
foundation because different theories may define constructs differently.
Ary et al. (2014, p. 313) define construct validity of a test as the extent to which a test is
measuring the psychological construct it is intended to measure. In other words, construct
validity refers to the theoretical foundations underlying a particular scale of measurement. It
looks at the underlying theories or constructs that explain phenomena.
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61. Which of the following grew as an extension of focus on form (FonF), not originally
proposed by Michael Long?
1) FonF is preemptive.
2) FonF induces form-function mapping.
3) FonF is an approach to teaching that contrasts with a traditional form-centered approach.
4) FonF allows for the slow and gradual process involved in the learning of L2 linguistic
features.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
‘Focus on form’ (FonF) is a central construct in task-based language teaching. The term
was first introduced by Michael Long (1988, 1991) to refer to an approach where learners’
attention is attracted to linguistic forms as they engage in the performance of tasks. It contrasts
with a structure-based approach – ‘focus on forms’ (FonFs) – where specific linguistic forms
are taught directly and explicitly (a traditional form-centered approach). Long (1997) also
sought to distinguish ‘FonF’ from ‘focus on meaning’ (FonM) – an approach to teaching that
emphasized incidental and implicit language learning through content-based instruction or
immersion programs where the learners’ focus was more or less entirely on meaning. Theorists
such as Schmidt and Long are insistent that focus on form refers to form-function mapping (i.e.,
the correlation between a particular form and the meaning or meanings it realizes in
communication).
Summary of Long’s views about three approaches to language teaching

FonFs FonM FonF
No needs analysis Usually no needs analysis A needs analysis of the
target tasks learners need to
perform provides the basis

of a task-based syllabus
No realistic models of Older learners cannot fully Attracts attention to forms
language acquire a second language that otherwise learners might
(L2) ‘naturally’ and thus not notice
FonM cannot succeed in
enabling such learners to
achieve high levels of L2
proficiency
Ignores the fact that learning Even prolonged exposure to Allows for the slow and
a new word or rule is a slow the L2 does not ensure that gradual process involved in
and gradual process learners will acquire non- the learning of L2 linguistic
salient linguistic features features
Fails to recognize that the Learners need negative Respects the learner’s
teachability of grammatical evidence because positive internal syllabus
forms is constrained by their evidence is insufficient to
learnability guarantee acquisition of
some grammatical features
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Tends to result in boring FonM is inefficient because Is under learner control

lessons it results in only slow because it only occurs in
progress response to the learner’s
communication problems
Results in more false Can result in confidence and Assists the development of
beginners than finishers fluency in the use of the L2 form–function mapping and
but limited accuracy in use so promotes both fluency
of the target language and accuracy
system
Long’s views about FonF can be characterized as entailing a focus on form that:
• arises in interaction involving the second language (L2) learner;
• is reactive (i.e. occurs in response to a communication problem);
• is incidental (i.e. it is not pre-planned);
• is brief (i.e. it does not interfere with the primary focus on meaning);
• is typically implicit (e.g. it does not involve any metalinguistic explanation);
• induces ‘noticing’ (i.e. conscious attention to target linguistic forms);
• induces form–function mapping;
• constitutes an ‘approach’ to teaching (i.e. FonF) that contrasts with a traditional form-
centered approach (i.e. FonFs).
Preemptive Focus-on-Form (attempts by the students or the teacher to make a particular form
the topic of the conversation even though no error (or perceived error) in the use of that form
has occurred) grew only as an extension of Focus on Form originally proposed by Long.
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 See also: Celce-Murcia et al. (2014, p. 35); Ellis (2016)
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62. What type of corrective feedback are didactic recasts?

1) Explicit, output-prompting

2) Implicit, output-prompting
3) Explicit, input-providing
4) Implicit, input-providing
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Different types of corrective feedback
Over the years, a number of taxonomies of oral feedback strategies have been proposed
(Allwright, 1975; Chaudron, 1977; Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Seedhouse, 1997; Ranta & Lyster,
2007; Sheen & Ellis, 2011). For example, Sheen and Ellis (2011) suggest nine feedback types
on the basis of six basic strategies originally identified by Lyster and Ranta (1997). These
feedback techniques are separated along two dimensions: 1) input-providing vs. output-
prompting and 2) implicit vs. explicit. The former distinguishes feedback types on the basis of
whether feedback provides or elicits (i.e. input-providing and output-prompting, respectively)
the correction, while the latter has to do with the explicitness of the corrective force.
There are four feedback moves that are input-providing: conversational recasts, didactic
recasts, explicit correction and explicit correction with metalinguistic explanation. These
strategies provide both positive and negative evidence and demonstrate to learners how their
incorrect utterances can be correctly reformulated. Recognizing that recasts are "elastic in
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nature" (Mackey and Goo, 2007), Sheen and Ellis (2011) distinguish between conversational
recasts (i.e. implicit) and didactic recasts (i.e. explicit). Conversational recasts (i.e. when the
error, or phrase containing an error, is repeated back to the learner in its corrected form) are
implicit in nature in that they occur when a learner's incorrect utterance causes a communication
problem and that they usually take the form of confirmation checks. In contrast, if recasts occur
when there is no communication breakdown, and the primary focus is on form, they are seen as
serving a didactic function. In addition to didactic recasts, corrections (e.g. It's "she walks to
school", not "walk” and corrections with metalinguistic explanations (e.g. It’s "she walks to
school", not "walk". You need -s on the verb because "she" is third-person singular) are also
clasified as explicit input-providing feedback strategies.
Output-prompting feedback strategies, on the other hand, provide negative evidence to
learners by signaling that their utterances are problematic. Learners are given an opportunity to
self-correct their errors and produce modified output. Five strategies fall into the category of
this sort of feedback: repettions, clarification requests, metalinguistic clues, elicitations and
paralinguistic signals. Repetitions (e.g. She walk to school?) and clarification requests (e.g.
What?, Huh?) prompt learners to respond without breaking the communication flow. These are
considered to be negotiation for meaning. On the other hand, the corrective force of
metalinguistic clues (e.g. You need past tense), elictations (e.g. Say that again?) and
paralinguistic signals (i.e. a gesture or facial expression to indicate that the learner has made
an error) is overt in that learners clearly recognise that their utterances are being corrected.
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 See also: Hall (2016, p. 503); Hinkel (2011, p. 593-4)
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63. All of the following are principles underlying sociocultural theory EXCEPT ----------.
1) human consciousness is fundamentally social, rather than merely biological in origin
2) human activity is mediated by material artifacts and psychological and symbolic tools
3) units of analysis for understanding human activity and development should be holistic in

nature
4) concepts can be all-embracing like temporality, or they can be subcategories of larger
concepts like futurity
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Wertsch (1985, p. 199) has suggested that Vygotsky’s developmental research was inspired by
three essential principles of Marxist theory: (1) the idea that human consciousness is
fundamentally social, rather than merely biological, in origin; (2) that human activity is mediated
by material artifacts (e.g., computers, the layout of built environments) and psychological and
symbolic tools/signs (e.g., language, literacy, numeracy, concepts); and (3) that units of analysis
for understanding human activity and development should be holistic in nature.
Choice (4) is related to “Tense and Modality in Cognitive Grammar” and has nothing to
do with the sociocultural theory of mind.
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 See also: VanPatten and Williams (2015)
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521
64. Which of the following is a principle of processing instruction?

1) Learners process lexical items for meaning before grammatical forms when both entail
the same semantic information.
2) The output of the processor is linear, although it may not be mapped onto the underlying
meaning in a linear way.
3) Grammatical processing has access to a temporary memory store that can hold
grammatical information.
4) Processing components operate largely automatically and are generally not consciously
controlled.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Just choice (1) is a principle of Input Processing or Processing Instruction proposed by
VanPatten (2007, 2015). Choice (2), (3) and (4) are premises of Pienemann’s Processability
Theory.
Input Processing (IP) (VanPatten 1996, 2004, 2007) is concerned with explaining (a) under
what conditions learners make initial form-meaning connections (b) why learners make some
form-meaning connecpartialtions and not others, and (c) what internal strategies learners use to
comprehend sentences. To explain these three conditions, VanPatten has outlined several
principles that L2 learners use when processing input. The table below presents these principles
in their most recent form (VanPatten, 2007).
Principles of Input Processing (VanPatten, 2007)

The Primacy of Content Words Principle Learners process content words in the input
before anything else.
The Lexical Preference Principle Leaners will process lexical items for meaning
before grammatical forms when both encode the
same semantic information.
The Preference for Non-redundancy Principle Learners are more likely to process non-
redundant meaningful grammatical markers

before they process redundant meaningful
markers.
The Meaning before Non-meaning Principle Learners are more likely to process meaningful
grammatical markers before non-meaningful
grammatical markers.
The First Noun Principle Learners tend to process the first noun or
pronoun they encounter in a sentence as the
subject.
The L1 Transfer Principle Learners begin acquisition with L1 parsing
procedures.
The Event Probability Principle Learners may rely on event probabilities, where
possible, instead of the First Noun Principle to
interpret sentences.
The Lexical Semantics Principle Learners may rely on lexical semantics, where
possible, instead of the First Noun Principle (or
an L1 parsing procedure) to interpret sentences.
The Contextual Constraint Principle Learners may rely less on the First Noun
Principle (or L1 transfer) if preceding context
constrains the possible interpretation of a clause
or sentence.
522
The Sentence Location Principle Learners tend to process items in sentence initial
position before those in final position and those
in medial position.
Processability Theory: The Theory and Its Constructs

Processability Theory (PT) (e.g., Pienemann, 1998) is a theory of second language
development. The logic underlying PT is the following: At any stage of development the learner
can produce and comprehend only those second language (L2) linguistic forms which the
current state of the language processor can handle. It is therefore crucial to understand the
architecture of the language processor and the way in which it handles an L2. This enables one
to predict the course of development of L2 linguistic forms in language production and
comprehension across languages.
The architecture of the language processor accounts for language processing in real time
and within human psychological constraints such as word access and working memory. The
incorporation of the language processor in the study of L2 acquisition therefore brings to bear
a set of human psychological constraints that are crucial for the processing of languages. The
view on language production followed in PT is largely that described by Levelt (1989), which
overlaps to some extent with the computational model of Kempen and Hoenkamp (1987) and
Merrill Garrett’s work (e.g., Garrett, 1976, 1980, 1982). The basic premises of that view are the
following:
 Processing components operate largely automatically and are generally not consciously
controlled (i.e., the speaker does not need to be aware of the grammatical structures he/she
produces).
 Processing is incremental (i.e., the speaker can start producing an utterance without
having planned all of it).
 The output of the processor is linear, although it may not be mapped onto the underlying
meaning in a linear way (for instance, the idea produced first does not need to occur first
in natural events, e.g., ‘Before I drove off, I started the engine’).
 Grammatical processing has access to a temporary memory store that can hold
grammatical information (e.g., in the sentence ‘The little kid loves ice cream’, the

grammatical information “singular, third person” present in ‘the little kid’ is retained in
grammatical memory and it is used when the verb ‘loves’ is produced, which is marked
for third person) (see Pienemann, 1998, for details).
For similar items on “input processing”, refer to Year 92, Items 72 and 85; Year 93, Items 61
and 89; and Year 94, Item 74.
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 See also: VanPatten and Williams (2015, pp. 113-134, 159-160)
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65. The “Dogme” model of language teaching suggests that -------------.

1) teachers adopt a forward design approach to course design
2) teachers adopt a backward design approach to course design
3) instruction be based on a pre-planned syllabus along with a set of objectives and published
materials
4) instruction be built around interaction between the teacher and students and among
students themselves
Answer: 4
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523
Explanation:
Richards and Rodgers (2014, pp. 363-379) discuss three different processes of curriculum
development:
(1) Forward Design: It is a strategy that first makes decisions about what to teach (input),
then determines how to teach it (process), and finally assesses what was learned
(output).
(2) Central Design: It is a strategy that starts with teaching processes or methodology and
lets these determine input and output.
(3) Backward Design: It is a strategy that starts with learning outcomes or output and works
backward to determine issues of process and content.
Richards and Rodgers (2014, p. 371) state that a more recent example of the use of central
design in language teaching has been labeled “Dogme” by Scott Thornbury – who introduced
the approach to language teaching (Meddings & Thornbury, 2009). The Dogme approach is
based on the idea that instead of basing teaching on a pre-planned syllabus, a set of objectives
and published materials, teaching is built around conversational interaction between teacher
and students and among students themselves. As Meddings and Thornbury (2009) state:
“Teaching should be done using only the resources that the teachers and students bring to the
classroom – i.e. themselves and what happens to be in the classroom.”
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66. What is explicit knowledge of language as analyzed knowledge?

1) The ability to discriminate between consciously and subconsciously learned rules
2) Conscious awareness of how a structural feature works
3) The ability to understand explanation of rules
4) Knowledge of grammatical metalanguage
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Rod Ellis (2014) makes a distinction between implicit knowledge and explicit knowledge.
Implicit knowledge is procedural, is held unconsciously, and can be verbalized only if it is
made explicit. It is accessed rapidly and easily, and thus is available for use in rapid fluent
communication. In the view of most researchers, competence in an L2 is primarily a matter of
implicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge “is the declarative and often anomalous knowledge of
the phonological, lexical, grammatical, pragmatic and socio-critical features of an L2 together
with the metalanguage for labelling this knowledge" (R. Ellis, 2004, p. 24). It is held
consciously, is learnable and verbalizable, and is typically accessed through controlled
processing when learners experience some kind of linguist difficulty in the use of the L2.
A distinction can be made between
(1) explicit knowledge as analyzed knowledge, which entails a conscious awareness of
how a structural feature works, and
(2) explicit knowledge as metalingual explanation, which consists of knowledge of
grammatical metalanguage and the ability to understand explanations of rules.
Thus a person can possess explicit knowledge even though he or she lacks the language needed
to express it. Neurolinguistic research (e.g., Ullman, 2001) indicates that different neural
structures are involved in acquiring and storing these two types of knowledge.
524
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67. What will the acquisitional process of noticing the gap allow learners to do?
1) It will provide them with an opportunity to organize their linguistic knowledge around
full descriptions of the rules to be learned.
2) It will help them verbalize the concept-based explanation of the rules to facilitate their
understanding and internalization.
3) It will help them perform the cognitive comparison between what they see in the input
and their own output.
4) It will assist them to develop their interlanguage by facilitating the growth of their explicit
knowledge.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Interface positions vs. non-interface position in SLA
This distinction concerns the role that conscious learning about an L2 plays in the development
of subconscious, acquired, automatic L2 knowledge. This involves a consideration of what has
become known as the interface hypothesis, which addresses whether explicit knowledge plays
a role in L2 acquisition. That is, it is concerned with whether conscious learning about an L2
plays a role in the development of subconscious, acquired, automatic L2 knowledge.
Three positions can be identified. Some researchers (e.g. Krashen, 1985: 39-42) maintain
a strong non-interface position: only ‘comprehensible input’ and not consciously learned
knowledge can lead to acquisition. That is, according to the non-interface position (Krashen,
1981), explicit and implicit knowledge are entirely distinct with the result that explicit
knowledge cannot be converted into implicit knowledge. This position is supported by research
that suggests that explicit and implicit memories are neurologically separate (Paradis, 1994).
The (strong) interface position argues the exact opposite. Drawing on skill-learning

theory (DeKeyser, 1998), it argues that explicit knowledge becomes implicit knowledge if
learners have the opportunity for plentiful communicative practice. The weak interface
position (Ellis, 1993) claims that explicit knowledge primes a number of key acquisitional
processes, in particular ‘noticing’ and ‘noticing the gap’ (Schmidt, 1994). That is, explicit
knowledge of a grammatical structure makes it more likely that learners will attend to the
structure in the input and carry out the cognitive comparison between what they observe in the
input and their own output. These positions continue to be argued at a theoretical level. The
three positions support very different approaches to language teaching. The non-interface
position leads to a ‘zero grammar’ approach, i.e. one that prioritizes meaning-centered
approaches such as task-based teaching. The (strong) interface position supports PPP – the idea
that a grammatical structure should be first presented explicitly and then practiced until it is
fully proceduralized. The weak interface position has been used to provide a basis for
consciousness-raising tasks (Ellis, 1991) that require learners to derive their own explicit
grammar rules from the data they are provided with.
In other words, there are three basic positions in the interface position: the non-interface
position, the strong-interface position, and various weak-interface positions. The non-interface
position states that there is no relationship between these two types of knowledge; in other
words, knowledge that has been learned explicitly can never become fast, automatic language
knowledge. The strong-interface position states that explicit language knowledge can always
525
become implicit language knowledge, and that such knowledge becomes implicit through
repeated practice. This position is most often associated with skill-building theories of second
language acquisition. The weak-interface positions state that explicit language knowledge can
become implicit to some extent, but that these are limited by various developmental factors.
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68. Which of the following is true about the enactment view of curriculum development?
1) It is viewed as the educational experiences jointly created by the teacher and learners.
2) It puts the learners whom the curriculum is developed for at the end of the chain of
decisions.
3) It takes shape in sequential stages, each carried out by different specialists in a hierarchical
manner.
4) The plan of the curriculum is the key to its success and teachers are expected to remain
faithful to it.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Two views of curriculum
The notion that negotiation is vital to effective classroom processes is congruent with an
enactment view of curriculum, in which the curriculum is seen as the educational experiences
jointly created by teacher and learners in the classroom (Eisner, 1985; Snyder, Bolin, &
Zumwalt, 1992). In this view, enactment - learning and teaching in the classroom - is the key
to a successful curriculum. Decisions about curriculum center on the teacher and learners who
enact it. Teachers are well informed about the plan, value the plan, and have the skills to use it.
The enactment view contrasts with an implementation view, in which a curriculum is designed

by curriculum specialists and is implemented by the teachers and learners. That is, the
processes of planning and implementing are seen as sequential stages, each carried out by
different specialists in a hierarchical manner (R. K. Johnson, 1989). The implementation view
of curriculum puts the learners whom the curriculum is meant to serve, and the teachers who
teach them, at the end of the chain of decisions. If there are problems in implementation, the
fault is often seen as the teacher's for not following the curriculum plan faithfully or for being
resistant to change. In this view, the curriculum plan is the key to a successful curriculum, and
teachers are expected to faithfully implement it.
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69 .What is the difference between a curriculum and a syllabus?

1) Syllabus is a more comprehensive term, including courses, units and lessons.
2) Curriculum includes not only planning but also implementation and evaluating.
3) The term curriculum refers to the instructional content of a course in British influenced
English language teaching.
4) The term syllabus refers to the content of a program, as in the “program syllabus”,
particularly in American-influenced English language teaching.
526
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Kathleen Graves (2014) holds that a syllabus provides information about a course, while a
curriculum is a dynamic system of interconnected, interrelated, and overlapping processes. She
states that the three main curricular processes are planning, enacting, and evaluating. (The
second process is also called “implementing.”). These processes are in play at every curricular
level, whether it is a lesson, unit, course, or program. They are carried out by people and may
result in an array of curriculum products such as syllabuses, lesson plans, and assessment
instruments. Between the micro level of a lesson and the macro level of a program are in-
between levels such as units and courses. Typically, a teacher (or group of teachers) makes a
plan for a course, teacher and students enact the course, and teachers and others evaluate the
effectiveness of the course to improve it. The process of planning a course results in a written
plan called a syllabus. At its most basic, then, a syllabus describes what will be taught in a
course. Curriculum is a broader concept than syllabus in two ways: it applies to the program
level, which subsumes courses, units, and lessons; and it is more comprehensive than a syllabus
because it includes not only planning but also enacting and evaluating. Curriculum and syllabus
are similar because both involve similar planning processes, although at different levels of
scale. That said, the term syllabus is also used to refer to the content of a program, as in "the
program syllabus," especially in British-influenced English language teaching. The term
curriculum is also used to refer to the instructional content of a course, as in "the curriculum for
my course," especially in American-influenced English language teaching.
For more explanation and similar items, refer to Year 92, Items 4 and 12; Year 94, Item 3; and
Year 96, Item 82.
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 See also: Celce-Murcia et al.(2014, pp. 47-50)
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70. Which of the following is an advantage of the inductive approach to the teaching of

grammar?
1) It assists the teacher to deal with language points as they come up, rather than having to
anticipate and prepare for them in advance.
2) The mental effort involved guarantees a greater degree of cognitive depth, which ensures
greater memorability.
3) It respects many students' expectations about classroom learning, in particular, those with
an analytical learning style.
4) It gets straight to the point, and can therefore be time-saving.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Two main approaches to teaching grammar have been proposed:
(1) The deductive approach
(2) The inductive approach
The advantages of the inductive approach (or the approach of encouraging learners to work
rules out for themselves) are as follows:
527
 Rules learners discover for themselves are more likely to fit their existing mental
structures than rules they have been presented with. This in turn will make the rules
more meaningful, memorable, and serviceable.
 The mental effort involved ensures a greater degree of cognitive depth which, again,
ensures greater memorability.
 Students are more actively involved in the learning process, rather than being simply
passive recipients: they are therefore likely to be more attentive and more motivated.
 It is an approach which favors pattern-recognition and problem-solving abilities which
suggests that it is particularly suitable for learners who like this kind of challenge.
 If the problem-solving is done collaboratively and in the target language, learners get
the opportunity for extra language practice.
 Working things out for themselves prepares students for greater self-reliance and is
therefore conducive to learner autonomy.
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 See also: Celce-Murcia et al. (2014, p. 354); Thornbury (1999, p. 54)
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71. What are the requirements for restructuring?

1) Teaching language forms across all skills in a manner that moves from part to whole and
using student errors to inform instruction
2) Using tasks that can raise students' awareness of how texts can be reordered to create
different effects along with contextualized practice
3) Noticing features of language that the learner has not yet acquired and using tasks that
prompt the use of more complex grammar
4) Fostering grammatical ability through using forms as a communicative resource in spoken
and written discourse and shifting the focus of instruction from sentence to text
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
An important aspect of language learning is the complexity of the learner’s language – in the
case of grammar the range of grammatical resources the learner is able to use. Skehan (1998)
argues that ideally fluency, accuracy, and complexity develop in harmony, but this is not always
the case. In order for the learner’s language to complexify, new linguistic forms have to be
acquired and added to the learner’s productive linguistic repertoire. This is referred to as
restructuring. For restructuring to occur two things seem to be required: (1) noticing features
of language that the learner has not yet acquired (referred to as ‘noticing the gap’), and (2) the
use of tasks that require the learner to use new and more complex grammar, i.e. that require the
use of certain target-language forms and which ‘stretch’ the learner’s language knowledge,
requiring a ‘restructuring’ of that knowledge. Activities that involve ‘stretched output’ are those
that expand or ‘restructure’ the learner’s grammatical system through increased communicative
demands and attention to linguistic forms.
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 See also: Richards and Reppen (2014)
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528
72. All of the following are criticisms of task-based language teaching EXCEPT ----------.
1) it is only suited to beginner-level learners
2) it results in impoverished language use
3) the term “task” has no construct validity
4) it is merely legislated by hypothesis
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Nine criticisms of TBLT have been proposed:
1. There is no clear definition of ‘task’
2. ‘Task’ has no construct validity
3. Tasks result in impoverished language use
4. Task‐based teaching is not suited to beginner‐level learners
5. TBLT neglects grammatical accuracy
6. TBLT requires extensive use of group work
7. TBLT requires avoidance of L1 use
8. TBLT is not suited to foreign language instructional contexts
9. ‘Legislation by hypothesis’
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73. Which of the following is true about listening strategies?

1) They are actions that have been automatized through prolonged experience.
2) They are acquired abilities that enable a person to listen without much deliberate effort.
3) They emerge as a result of actions that have been widely practiced frequently in numerous
situations.
4) They are ways of listening that are planned and consciously adopted to improve
comprehension.

Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Listening skills and strategies: Language learners who are active listeners use a range of skills
and strategies to direct and manage their listening processes according to their communication
goals. Listening skills are acquired abilities that enable a person to listen without a great deal
of deliberate effort or conscious planning. They are the result of actions that have been practiced
frequently in varied situations, and, through prolonged experience, the actions have become
automatized. For example, decoding skills for perception and parsing can become automatized
as language learners become increasingly sensitized to the phonological patterns of English
through frequent exposure and develop greater awareness of its linguistic features through
noticing.
Listening strategies, on the other hand, are ways of listening that are planned and
consciously adopted to improve comprehension and communication as well as cope with
listening difficulties. Strategies that direct attention to the input and coordinate various
cognitive processes are often known as metacognitive strategies. They broadly consist of
strategies for planning, monitoring, and evaluation, and they can be used before, during, or after
listening. During face-to-face interactions, learners can use strategies to manage the
529
communication and discourse. Strategies can have a social dimension and are used to enhance
the interaction process through eliciting the speakers’ cooperation. Following the
conceptualization of reading skills and reading strategies by Afflerbach, Pearson, and Paris
(2008), listening strategies can also be expected to develop into automatized listening skills
with time. More critically, learners will also constantly move between skills and strategies while
listening to different kinds of discourse with different levels of challenge. This is something
that even competent listeners have to do at times.
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74. Which of the following are examples of consensus-building activities?

1) Dialogue journals and ranking
2) Problem solving and ranking
3) Problem solving and role play
4) Dialogue journals and role play
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Consensus-building activities: In consensus-building activities, participants work together to
come to an agreement on something. They may present points of view, argue, listen, consider,
weigh options, and compromise. Students involved in a consensus-building activity do not have
to share the same ideas or opinions, but they do need to try to agree on a solution. A key
indicator of success is that everyone is satisfied with the final outcome. In these activities, how
the students get to the outcome (and, of course, the language they use to do so) is more important
than the outcome itself. A task can have one answer (a closed task) or more than one answer
(an open task). If a task is open, the teacher may want to alert the students that more than one
answer is possible. It can be discouraging for students to ask the teacher for "the right answer"
only to be told there is more than one acceptable answer.

Problem solving. A problem-solving activity can be as simple as completing a word
puzzle. It may require no oral output. The kinds of problem-solving activities that are
communicative, discussion-based, group-oriented and open-ended, and are thus fluency-
oriented, are those like the classic "dinner party" activity. Here learners are presented with the
names, personalities, and other background information of various people who will be attending
a dinner party. The group must work out a seating plan that will assure an interesting and
successful dinner party for everyone involved. Since there is no one correct answer, the teacher
may wish to specify a time limit. When the group members find an acceptable solution, they
present and defend their choices to other groups.
Ranking. A ranking activity is a form of consensus-building whereby students rate
something according to its relative importance to something else. It involves three steps. First,
students work individually to choose from a list the most important characteristics of something,
for example, the qualities of a good roommate. Of the choices given, each person chooses the
eight most important. In the second step, each student joins a partner to form a pair. They
compare and discuss their ideas, agreeing on the six most important qualities. In the third and
final step, each pair joins another pair to form a group of four. They then agree on the four most
important qualities, ranking them from most important to least important.
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530
75. What is the difference between rereading and repeated reading?

1) The former is suited to EAP contexts, while the latter is used in both L1 and L2 settings.
2) The former promotes reading fluency, while the latter encourages engaged reading.
3) The former promotes the scanning skill, while the latter fosters skimming.
4) The former is both assisted and unassisted, while the latter is not.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
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76. Viewing writing from a cognitive perspective suggests that students ought to ----------.
1) learn the knowledge and skills needed in the process of writing
2) learn that texts that writers produce are shaped by other preexisting texts
3) realize that writing is directed at a specific audience with a clear purpose in mind
4) realize that writing is the process of becoming a member of a discourse community
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
To teach writing effectively, we first need to understand the nature of L2 writing ability. We
can look at this ability from two perspectives: as a cognitive ability (i.e., a set of skills and
knowledge that reside within an individual) and as a sociocultural phenomenon (i.e., as a means
of communication within a particular setting aimed at achieving specific goals). Both of these
perspectives are important in the teaching of writing.
From a cognitive perspective, second language writing can be seen as some combination

of writing ability (perhaps learned in one's first language [L1]) and L2 proficiency. Even in
one's native language, composing a text is a highly complex task that involves the consideration
of many factors at the same time. Writers have to keep in mind their overall message, the major
points and subpoints to be included, how these points will be organized, and a representation
of the likely readers: what they already know or believe about the topic, what sorts of
information they will find persuasive, and how they might react. Writers need to be able to plan
their writing, monitor and revise what they have already written, and keep focused on the
process until they are satisfied with the end product. When an L2 is added to the mix, the picture
becomes even more complex because writers need to focus some of their attention on finding
the appropriate language to express their ideas clearly and accurately as well. It seems
reasonable, and indeed research has shown it to be true, that students who have learned to write
in their L1 can transfer these skills to a second language; however, a certain level of language
proficiency is required before such transfer can occur. For students at every level of proficiency,
a writing course provides opportunities to learn and practice new language forms and structures
and thus contributes to language learning. For students with lower language proficiency, this
focus on language may need to be emphasized, while for advanced students, more emphasis
can be placed on the composition process. In short, both writing ability and language
proficiency are important factors in L2 writing ability, and both need to be included in a writing
curriculum.
531
From the sociocultural perspective, writing is seen as part of a socially and culturally
situated set of literacy practices shared by a particular community. From this perspective, the
process of learning to write is the process of becoming a member of a discourse community, a
group of people (e.g., biologists, politicians, or even fans of a particular musical genre) who
share values and assumptions about using language and also have certain ways of using
language (oral or written) for particular purposes. In academic writing, for example, there are
different conventions for publishing articles in different disciplines, and certain linguistic or
stylistic choices, such as the use of the passive voice, may be considered good writing in one
discourse community or discipline but not in another.
Learning to write means learning to participate in one or more discourse communities,
whether this means participating in an online social network, writing medical laboratory reports,
or writing academic papers. From this perspective, focusing simply on improving language
proficiency or studying strategies for composing and revising does not necessarily lead to good
writing unless considerations of the broader context in which writing will be used are also taken
into account. In addition, a crucial insight from the sociocultural perspective is that written texts
do not exist in isolation; rather, the texts that writers produce are shaped by and responsive to
other preexisting texts. This notion is important when we consider the role of reading in the
writing classroom.
These two perspectives together provide a useful framework for the consideration of
writing instruction. The cognitive perspective helps us remember that individual students need
to acquire knowledge and skills – about language and about the process of writing – while the
sociocultural perspective reminds us that writing is always done for a purpose, is directed at a
specific audience, and is part of a broader set of literacy practices that is shaped by a particular
culture and setting.
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77. Which of the following is a feature of vocabulary instruction in the Reading

Approach?
1) Focus on simple, practical, and even dull words at the sentence level
2) Viewing vocabulary as objects for illustration of grammatical points
3) Introduction of the vocabulary control movement
4) Promotion of phonetic training
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Reading approach. This approach was in part a response to the 1929 Coleman report (A.
Coleman, 1929), which showed declining reading scores in U.S. schools. It challenged the past
by focusing on reading and on a scientific and quantifiable approach to the selection of target-
language content. It suggested that reading skill could be improved by the development of
vocabulary, and it criticized stressing speech without selecting content in a principled way. One
result of this scientific and quantifiable focus was the Vocabulary Control Movement, which
was the beginning of word lists based on frequency. Vocabulary was considered primary in
language instruction, and words were chosen according to their usefulness and frequency. It
was during this period that A General Service List of English Words (GSL) was published by
532
Michael West (1953). This list of the 2,000 most frequent words in English is still widely used
today in research and course materials.
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 See also: Celce-Murcia et al. (2014, pp. 290)
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78. All of the following are components of motivational teaching practice EXCEPT -------
----------.
1) generating initial motivation
2) maintaining and protecting motivation
3) encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation
4) keeping the balance between different types of motivation
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Dörnyei (2001, cited in Celce-Murcia et al., 2014, p.p. 523-527) identifies four broad,
successive stages in his framework of motivational teaching practice in the L2 classroom:
1. Creating the basic motivational conditions. Motivational strategies cannot be employed
successfully in a motivational vacuum; certain preconditions must be in place before any
further attempts to generate motivation can be effective.
2. Generating initial motivation. Unless we are singularly fortunate with the composition of
our classes, student motivation will not be automatic for everybody, and we need to
actively generate positive student attitudes toward L2 learning.
3. Maintaining and protecting motivation. We can initially whet the students' appetites with
appropriate motivational techniques, but unless motivation is actively maintained and
protected, it is likely to decrease in strength over time and can even disappear altogether.
4. Encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation. A large body of research has shown
that the way learners feel about their past accomplishments significantly determines how
they approach subsequent learning tasks. Strangely enough, the students' appraisal of their

past performance does not depend only on the absolute, objective level of the success
they have achieved but also on how they subjectively interpret their achievement. Using
appropriate strategies, teachers can help learners to evaluate their past performance in a
more positive light, take more satisfaction in their successes and progress, and explain
their past failures in a constructive way.
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79. The constituents of L2 motivational self system are ----------.

1) ideal L2 self, ought-to L2 self, and peer L2 image
2) ideal L2 self, ought-to L2 self, and L2 learning experience
3) norm-based L2 self, native speaker L2 image, and peer L2 image
4) norm-based L2 self, native speaker L2 image, and L2 learning experience
Answer: 2
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533
Explanation:
Dörnyei’s L2 motivational self system consists of the following three main constituents:
1. Ideal L2 self, which concerns the L2 specific facet of the learner's ideal self. If the person
the learner would like to become speaker an L2 (e.g., the person is associated with
traveling or doing business internationally), the ideal L2 self is a powerful motivator for
the learner to succeed in learning the L2 because he or she would like to reduce the
discrepancy between the actual and ideal selves.
2. Ought-to L2 self, which concerns the attributes that the learner believes he or she ought
to possess to avoid possible negative outcomes and that, therefore, may bear little
resemblance to his or her own desires or wishes.
3. L2 learning experience, which concerns the learner's situation-specific motives related
to the immediate learning environment and experience (e.g. the positive impact of success
or the enjoyable quality of a language course).
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80. Which category of learning preferences do synthetic versus analytic styles of learning
represent?
1) Personality
2) Perceptual
3) Processing
4) Pragmatic
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Drawing on the taxonomies proposed by Ehrman and Leaver (2003), Oxford (993), and Reid
(1995), we can outline three categories of learner styles thought to represent natural orientations
of learners:

1. Perceptual preferences. This involves whether or when learners tend to learn by
listening (auditory style), seeing (visual style), or doing things (kinesthetic style). For
example, a learner with a visual style might prefer to learn vocabulary by reading new
words rather than by hearing them.
2. Personality preferences. This involves learners' degree of openness to new experiences
and their extroversion versus introversion. For example, learners might prefer to learn by
looking outward in social contexts (extroverted style) or looking inward (introverted
style). If asked to perform a role play in front of the class, learners with an introverted
style might feel embarrassed, causing their performance to suffer.
3. Processing preferences. This concerns whether or when learners prefer to process
information by seeing the big picture (global-oriented style) versus the specifics (detail-
oriented style), by figuring out rules from examples (inductive style) versus learning the
rules and applying them to examples (deductive style), or by bringing the parts together
to determine the whole (synthetic style) versus disassembling the whole into parts
(analytic style). For example, a learner with a global-oriented style might prefer to begin
a new lesson by looking over the entire unit to get the big picture before attending to
specifics.
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534
81. What are the two broad types of materials evaluation?

1) Predictive and retrospective
2) Predictive and impressionistic
3) Empirical and internal
4) Empirical and external
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Rod Ellis (1997b) distinguishes two types of materials evaluation: a predictive evaluation
designed to make a decision regarding what materials to use, and a retrospective evaluation
designed to examine materials that have actually been used. Retrospective evaluations can be
impressionistic or empirical. It is suggested that one way in which teachers can conduct
empirical evaluations is by investigating specific teaching tasks.
He further elaborates on these two broad types of material evaluation as follows: Teachers
are often faced with the task of choosing what teaching materials to use. In effect, they are
required to carry out a predictive evaluation of the materials available to them in order to
determine which are best suited to their purposes. Then, once they have used the materials, they
may feel the need to undertake a further evaluation to determine whether the materials have
'worked' for them. This constitutes a retrospective evaluation.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis (1997b)
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82. Which of the following is a feature of Type B syllabuses?

1) They are other-directed.
2) They are internal to the learner.
3) Objectives are defined in advance.
4) They focus on what is to be learned.

Answer: 2
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Explanation:
For more explanation and similar items, refer to Year 92, Items 4 and 12; Year 94, Item 3; and
Year 96, Items 69 and 82.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: White (1988, p. 44)
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83. The main difference between extending and expanding as materials adaptation
techniques is that the former ----------.
1) involves rewriting, while the latter involves restructuring
2) involves restructuring, while the latter involves rewriting
3) is qualitative, while the latter is mostly quantitative in nature
4) is quantitative, while the latter is mostly qualitative in nature
Answer: 4
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535
Explanation:
Adding
The notion of addition is, on the face of it, straightforward, implying that materials are
supplemented by putting more into them, while taking into account the practical effect on time
allocation. We can add in this simple, quantitative way by the technique of extending, and
might wish to do this in situations such as the following:
 The materials contain practice in the pronunciation of minimal pairs (bit/bet, hat/hate,
ship/chip) but not enough examples of the difficulties for learners with a particular L1.
Japanese speakers may need more l/r practice, Arabic speakers more p/b, Spanish
speakers more b/v and so on.
 A second reading passage parallel to the one provided is helpful in reinforcing the key
linguistic features – tenses, sentence structure, vocabulary, cohesive devices – of the
first text.
 Our students find the explanation of a new grammar point rather difficult, so further
exercises are added before they begin the practice material.
The point to note here is that adding by extension is to supply more of the same. This
means that the techniques are being applied within the methodological framework of the
original materials: in other words, the model is not itself changed.
Another, more far-reaching perspective on addition of material can be termed expanding.
Consider these possibilities:
 The only pronunciation practice in the materials is on individual sounds and minimal
pairs. However, this may be necessary but not sufficient. Our students need to be
intelligible, and intelligibility entails more than articulating a vowel or a consonant
correctly. Therefore, we decide to add some work on sentence stress and rhythm and on
the related phenomenon of ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ forms in English. A further advantage
is that students will be better able to understand naturally spoken English.
 If there is insufficient coverage of the skill of listening, the reading passage provided
may also be paralleled by the provision of listening comprehension material, using the
same vocabulary and ideas but presented through a different medium, making sure that
it is authentic in terms of the spoken language.

 Although the new grammar material is important and relevant, the addition of a
discussion section at the end of the unit will help to reinforce and contextualize the
linguistic items covered, particularly if it is carefully structured so that the most useful
points occur ‘naturally’.
These kinds of additions are not just extensions of an existing aspect of content. They go
further than this by bringing about a qualitative as well as a quantitative change. Expanding,
then, as distinct from extending, adds to the methodology by moving outside it and developing
it in new directions, for instance, by putting in a different language skill or a new component.
This can be thought of as a change in the overall system. Note that there are some minor
terminological issues between writers on adaptation techniques (e.g. McGrath, 2002; Islam &
Mares, 2003; Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2004). For example, McGrath advocates that creative
addition involving qualitative changes should be called ‘exploitation’. What matters, however,
is not so much the art of categorization but that teachers can make creative use of the techniques
described in their own adaptations.
Finally in this section, it is worth pointing out that additions do not always have to be made
onto the end of something. A new facet of material or methodology can be introduced before it
appears in the framework of the coursebook. For example, a teacher may prepare the ground
for practice in an aspect of grammar or communicative function determined by the syllabus
536
through a ‘warm-up’ exercise involving learners talking about themselves and their everyday
lives.
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 See also: McDonough, Shaw, and Masuhara (2013, pp. 70-71)
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84. Encouraging teachers to do action research and urging them to realize the social needs
of the students as well as their linguistic needs are respectively related to the pedagogic
parameters of ----------.
1) practicality and possibility
2) practicality and particularity
3) particularity and possibility
4) particularity and perfectibility
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Postmethod pedagogy
Postmethod pedagogy can be visualized as a three-dimensional system consisting of three
pedagogic parameters: particularity, practicality, and possibility.
The Parameter of Particularity. The most important aspect of postmethod pedagogy is its
particularity. That is to say, any postmethod pedagogy “must be sensitive to a particular group
of teachers teaching a particular group of learners pursuing a particular set of goals within a
particular institutional context embedded in a particular sociocultural milieu”
(Kumaravadivelu, 2001, p. 538). The parameter of particularity then rejects the very idea
method-based pedagogies are founded upon, namely, there can be one set of teaching aims and
objectives realizable through one set of teaching principles and procedures. At its core, the idea
of pedagogic particularity is consistent with the hermeneutic perspective of situational
understanding, which claims that a meaningful pedagogy cannot be constructed without a
holistic interpretation of particular situations, and that it cannot be improved without a general

improvement of those particular situations (Elliott, 1993).
The Parameter of Practicality. The parameter of practicality relates broadly to the
relationship between theory and practice, and narrowly to the teacher’s skill in monitoring his
or her own teaching effectiveness. There is a harmful dichotomy between theory and practice,
between the theorist’s role and the teacher’s role in education. One of the ways by which general
educationists have addressed the dichotomy is by positing a distinction between professional
theories and personal theories. According to O’Hanlon (1993), professional theories are those
that are generated by experts, and are generally transmitted from centers of higher learning.
Personal theories, on the other hand, are those that are developed by teachers by interpreting
and applying professional theories in practical situations while they are on the job. It is this
distinction between theorists’ theory and teachers’ theory that has, in part, influenced the
emphasis on action research. “The fundamental aim of action research,” as Elliott (1991) makes
it crystal clear, “is to improve practice rather than to produce knowledge” (p. 49). The teacher
is advised to do action research in the classroom by testing, interpreting, and judging the
usefulness of professional theories proposed by experts. Such an interpretation of teacher
research is very narrow because it leaves very little room for self-conceptualization and self-
construction of pedagogic knowledge on the part of the teacher.
The Parameter of Possibility. The parameter of possibility owes much of its origin to the
educational philosophy of the Brazilian intellectual, Paulo Freire. He and his followers (e.g.,
537
Giroux, 1988; Simon, 1988) took the position that pedagogy, any pedagogy, is closely linked
to power and dominance, and is aimed at creating and sustaining social inequalities. They stress
the importance of acknowledging and highlighting students’ and teachers’ individual identity,
and they encourage them to question the status quo that keeps them subjugated. They also stress
the “the need to develop theories, forms of knowledge, and social practices that work with the
experiences that people bring to the pedagogical setting” (Giroux, 1988, p. 134, emphasis in
original).
What follows is that language teachers can ill afford to ignore the sociocultural reality that
influences identity formation in the classroom nor can they afford to separate the linguistic
needs of learners from their social needs. They will be able to reconcile these seemingly
competing forces if they “achieve a deepening awareness both of the sociocultural reality that
shapes their lives and of their capacity to transform that reality” (van Manen, 1977, p. 222).
Such a deepening awareness has a built-in quality to transform the life of the teachers
themselves.
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 See also: Kumaravadivelu (2006, pp. 171-173)
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85. The four interrelated dimensions of method as a construct of marginality are ---------.
1) social, cultural, political, and pragmatic
2) social, political, economic, and pragmatic
3) scholastic, linguistic, cultural, and economic
4) scholastic, linguistic, political, and economic
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Kumaravadivelu (2003b cited in Kumaravadivelu, 2006) states that method as a means of
marginality has four interrelated dimensions—scholastic, linguistic, cultural, and economic:
 The scholastic dimension relates to the ways in which Western scholars have treated

local knowledge, as discussed in Myth #3 (p. 165).
 The linguistic dimension relates to the ways in which methods prevent nonnative
learners and teachers of English from putting to use their excellent L1 linguistic resource
to serve the cause of their L2 education. It is a move that automatically privileges
teachers who are native speakers of English, most of whom do not share the language
of their learners. Phillipson (1992) has called it the monolingual tenet of L2 pedagogy.
 The cultural dimension treats second-language teaching as second culture teaching
directed at helping L2 learner “gain an understanding of the native speaker’s
perspective” (Stern, 1992, p. 216). The overall aim is to help them develop sociocultural
ability for the purpose of culturally empathizing, if not culturally assimilating, with
native speakers of English.
 The economic dimension relates to the ways in which the monolingual tenet and the
emphasis on culture teaching create and sustain global employment opportunities for
native speakers of English, sometimes at the expense of qualified local candidates.
These four dimensions of method as a means of marginality tend to extend and expand the
agenda for sustaining “an ideological dependence” (Phillipson, 1992, p. 199).
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538
86. Which source of mismatch refers to stated or unstated paths chosen by learners who
wish to achieve immediate goals?
1) Strategic 2) Procedural
3) Attitudinal 4) Communicative
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
There are at least ten potential sources of perceptual mismatch that we should be aware of
(Kumaravadivelu, 1991):
1. Cognitive: a source that refers to the knowledge of the world and mental processes through
which learners obtain conceptual understanding of physical and natural phenomena;
2. Communicative: a source that refers to skills through which learners exchange messages,
including the use of communication strategies;
3. Linguistic: a source that refers to linguistic repertoire—syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic
knowledge of the target language—that is minimally required to participate in classroom
activities;
4. Pedagogic: a source that refers to teacher/learner recognition of stated or unstated, short-
and/or long-term objective(s) of classroom activities;
5. Strategic: a source that refers to learning strategies, that is, operations, steps, plans, and
routines used by the learner to facilitate the obtaining, storage, retrieval, and use of
information;
6. Cultural: a source that refers to prior knowledge of the target cultural norms minimally
required for the learner to understand classroom activities;
7. Evaluative: a source that refers to articulated or unarticulated types and modes of ongoing
self-evaluation measures used by learners to monitor their classroom performance;
8. Procedural: a source that refers to stated or unstated paths chosen by the learner to achieve
an immediate goal. Procedural source pertains to locally specified, currently identified
bottom–up tactics, which seek a quick resolution to a specific problem on hand, whereas
strategic source, mentioned earlier, pertains to broad-based, higher-level, top–down strategy,
which seeks an overall solution to a general language-learning situation;

9. Instructional: a source that refers to instructional directions given by the teacher and/or
indicated by the textbook writer to help learners achieve their goal(s); and
10. Attitudinal: a source that refers to participants’ attitude toward the nature of L2 learning
and teaching, the nature of classroom culture, and the nature of participant role
relationships.
An awareness of these mismatches can help us effectively intervene whenever we notice
or whenever learners indicate problems in carrying out a specified classroom activity.
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87. Why are some scholars critical of the position that English as a lingua franca (ELF)
advocates adopt?
1) Most native speakers do not have tolerance for the ungrammatical forms made by ELF
users.
2) The pronunciation norms accepted by ELF researchers result in unintelligibility.
3) They do not believe in anything known as the expanding circle.
4) The ELF movement marginalizes native speakers.
539
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
There are critics of the positions that Jenkins and Seidlhofer have taken with regard to
describing and encouraging pedagogical adaptation to expanding-circle ELF norms (e.g.,
Berns, 2008; Dauer, 2005). Dauer, based on her training as a phonetician and also her classroom
teaching, challenges some of the content of Jenkins's lingua franca core. Dauer argues that
several features that Jenkins has not included in the core should be included (e.g., word stress
because it is often critical for comprehension), that several should be changed (e.g., substitute
/t/ and /d/ but not /f/ and /v/ for /θ/ and /ð/ because they are easier to teach), or that several items
should be omitted (the vowel /Ʊ / in put because of its low frequency). Dauer concludes that
substantial further research is needed to refine and validate Jenkins's ELF core.
Berns (2008) argues that the ELF movement, which focuses on non-native to non-native
communication, marginalizes native speakers, who are in fact an integral part of World
Englishes (i.e., part of both the inner circle and outer circle). All possible combinations of native
and non-native English speakers of different varieties are part of World Englishes-and learners
should be exposed to them for comprehension (not necessarily for production). Berns believes
that the variability and dynamics of international communication make it questionable to try to
isolate the linguistic features of any variety of English without also taking into account the
user's strategic, sociocultural, and discourse competence. Facilitating the comprehension and
tolerance of varieties of English that differ from one's own is more important for Berns than
teaching a simplified core of linguistic features.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------
88. Who has argued that “The better learners acculturate, the more successful their L2
learning will be”?
1) Manfred Pienemann
2) Robert DeKeyser
3) John Schumann
4) Bill Van Patten

Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Schumann's pidginization or acculturation model
Schumann first proposed his pidginization or acculturation model in the late 1970s (Schumann,
1978a, 1978b, 1978c). On the basis of naturalistic studies of untutored learners, he noticed that
early interlanguage resembled pidgin languages (i.e. simplified trading languages which lack
native speakers; Sebba, 1997), with characteristic features such as fixed word order and lack of
inflections. Second language acquisition was compared to the complexification of pidgins, and
this process was linked to degree of acculturation of the learners. The closer they feel to the
target language speech community, the better learners will 'acculturate', and the more successful
their SLL will be. The more alienated from that community they perceive themselves to be, the
more pidgin-like their second language will remain.
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 See also: Mitchell, Myles and Marsden (2013, p. 46); Ellis (2008, pp. 326-329)
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540
89. Which of the following shows a pragmatic mode of expression?

1) Tight subordination
2) Fast rate of delivery
3) Topic-comment structure
4) Elaborate use of grammatical morphology
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Pragmatic vs. syntactic modes of expression
Givon (1979) makes a distinction between pragmatic and syntactic 'modes of expression'. Givon
has argued that both informal speech and learner speech (whether first or second language)
convey meaning through a relatively heavy reliance on context, whereas more formal styles of
language rely on more explicit language coding, with reduced dependence on contextual
meaning. For Givon, these pragmatic and syntactic 'modes' are the ends of a continuum, rather
than discrete categories; he interprets language acquisition, language change and language
variation in terms of movement along this continuum. The table below shows the main features
of the pragmatic and syntactic modes proposed by Givon.
Pragmatic mode Syntactic mode

• Subject-predicate structure
• Topic-comment structure
• Tight subordination
• Loose conjunction
• Fast rate of delivery (under a single
• Slow rate of delivery (under several
intonation contour)
intonation contours)
• Word order is used to signal semantic
• Word order is governed mostly by one
case functions (though it may also be
pragmatic principle: old information goes
used to indicate pragmatic-topicality
first, new information follows
relations)
• A larger ratio of nouns over verbs in
• Roughly one-to-one ratio of verbs to
discourse, with the verbs being
nouns in discourse, with the verbs being

semantically complex
semantically simple
• Elaborate use of grammatical
• No use of grammatical morphology
morphology
• Very much the same, but perhaps not
• Prominent intonation-stress marks the
exhibiting as high a functional load, and,
focus of new information; topic intonation
at least in some languages, totally absent
is less prominent
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 See also: Mitchell, Myles and Marsden (2013, pp. 189-190)
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90. Which of the following is a criterion for defining explicit knowledge?

1) Time pressure
2) Consistent responses
3) Favoring early learning
4) Low degree of certainty in responses
Answer: 4
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541
Explanation:
Rod Ellis (2005) lays out some criteria for defining implicit and explicit knowledge,
summarized in the table below:
Criterion Implicit knowledge Explicit knowledge

Degree of awareness Response according to feel Response using rules
Time available Time pressure No time pressure
Focus on attention Primary focus on meaning Primary focus on form
Systematicity Consistent responses Variable responses
Certainty High degree of certainty in Low degree of certainty in
responses responses
Metalinguistic knowledge Metalinguistic knowledge Metalinguistic knowledge
not required encouraged
Learnability Early learning favored Late form-focused
instruction favored
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 See also: Mitchell, Myles and Marsden (2013, p. 137)
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542

‫سال ‪1397‬‬
97 ‫سواالت و پاسخ تشریحی آزمون دکتری آموزش زبان انگلیسی – سال‬
1. Which of the following is a case of epenthesis?

1) beet --- peet
2) shoe --- chew
3) thumb --- sum
4) please --- puhlease
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Linguistics
Explanation:
Devoicing
As for choice (1), the process of “devoicing” is functioning and the voiced sound [b] is devoiced
to [p]. In fact, the phonological process of devoicing occurs when a voiced consonant like [b]
or [d] is substituted with a voiceless consonant like [p] or [t].
Affrication
With regard to choice (2), the word “shoe” is pronounced as “chew” because of the process of
“Affrication”. Affrication is the phonological process in which a non-affricate is replaced with
an affricate (i.e. the use of [ʧ] or [ʤ] instead of any phone). Other examples include: “joor”
for “door”, “joggie” for “doggie”, and “jookie” instead of “cookie”.
The phonological process of affrication occurs in adult speech, as well. Consider the
following examples:
(1) Tuesday [tju:zdi]  becomes affricated to  [ʧu:zdi]

(2) … finished yet [fɪnɪʃt jet]  becomes affricated to  [fɪnɪʃ ʧet]
(3) Did you [dɪd jʊ] like it?  becomes affricated to  [dɪʤʊ]
(4) Treat [tri:t]  becomes affricated to  [ʧri:t]
Alveolarization
Regarding choice (3), the word “thumb” is pronounced as “sum” by children learning their first
language. This phonological process is called “Alveolarization”. In alveolarization, a non-
alveolar sound is substituted with an alveolar sound. In other words, alveolarization is replacing
a non-alveolar sound with an alveolar ([t, d, s]). For example, when “cheese” is pronounced
“deese”, it is called alveolarization. Another example includes pronouncing “shoe” as “tu”.
Epenthesis
Another type of sound change, known as epenthesis, involves the addition of a sound to the
middle of a word. The addition of a [p] sound after the nasal [m] can also be heard in some
speakers’ pronunciation of “something” as “sumpthing.” Anyone who pronounces the word
film as if it were “filum,” or arithmetic as “arithametic,” is producing examples of epenthesis
in Modern English. Therefore, only choice (4) is a case of epenthesis.
This test was developed based on the content available from either of the following links:
1. https://quizlet.com/190267833/phonological-processes-flash-cards
2. https://quizlet.com/20243020/phonetics-allophonic-variation-connected-speech-flash-cards
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 See also: Hudson (2000, p. 124); Yule (2014, pp. 45-46, 233)
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544
2. Which of the following is not a case of assimilation?

1) dog --- gog
2) bunny --- nunny
3) yellow --- lellow
4) swing --- fwing
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
When acquiring a language, children make use of too many phonological processes. Some of
Linguistics
these processes are discussed below:
Assimilation
Assimilation is a phonological process in which a sound in a word changes to become more
like another sound in the word. It can affect place, manner, or voicing.
Velar assimilation
With respect to choice (1), many children who are learning English as their first language tend
to use this phonological process in which a non-velar phone becomes velar because of the
influence of the other phones present in the word. Therefore, the non-velar phone [d] is
velarized as a result of being influenced by the velar phone [g]. Other examples include:
cup  cug
cup  cuk
tack  kack
keep  keek
goat  goag
Nasal assimilation
As for choice (2), the word “bunny” is pronounced “nunny” because the phoneme /b/ is replaced
by the phone [n] because of the presentence of a nasal phoneme within the same word. In fact,
in this type of assimilation a non-nasal sound is produced as a nasal sound due to the presence
of a nasal phoneme within the same word (or due to the presence of a neighboring nasal sound).
Other examples include:
candy  nanny
funny  munny
mat  man
long  nong
mop  mom
mop  mon
nose  non /nǝʊn/
In sum, nasal Assimilation occurs when a non-nasal sound is changed to a nasal (m, n, ng)
because of the influence of another nasal sound in the word.
Liquid assimilation
Regarding choice (3), liquid assimilation occurs when a non-liquid sound becomes a liquid due
to the presence of a neighboring liquid sound. Hence, in the word “yellow” /y/ is pronounced
[l] because of the presence of /l/ within the same word.
545
An example from language change (not from first language acquisition) is the liquid
assimilation of the prefix in- before the words which begin with /l/.
in- + legal  illegal
in- + legitimate  illegitimate
Labial assimilation
Labial assimilation occurs when a non-labial sound becomes a labial (i.e. b, p, m, w, f, v) due
to the presence of a labial sound in the same word. Examples include:
pen  peb
Linguistics
moss  mob
man  mam
cup  pup
wax  wap
bug  bub
pit  pip
In the following links, the phonological process in which the initial sound of the word “swing”
is changed to [f] is called “labial assimilation”.
1. https://quizlet.com/121913788/phonological-processes-natural-phonology-flash-cards/
2. https://quizlet.com/160216040/articulation-test-2-flash-cards/
3. https://www.freezingblue.com/flashcards/print_preview.cgi?cardsetID=136237
4. https://www.flashcardmachine.com/articulatory-phonologicaldisorders.html
Concluding remarks
It follows that the word “swing” is pronounced “fwing” in the presence of the labial sound /w/.
Unlike other labials, since the labial sound /w/ is a glide or a semi-vowel and is, hence,
pronounced with no obstruction to the airflow while it passes through the oral cavity, the test
developer has decided to consider it as a non-labial sound – and this sounds reasonable when
one tries to pronounce the word because pronouncing the word “fwing” is more difficult for
adults. Therefore, the test developer might have believed that the word “swing” is pronounced
“fwing” in the absence of a labial sound in the same word, and in fact, he or she might have
considered the place of articulation of none of the sounds in the word “swing” as labial.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 243-245); Yule (2014, 45)
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3. Which statement is true about the following list of words: piano, tycoon, liaise, babysit?
1) The two first words are instances of borrowing and the two last of backformation.
2) The two first words are instances of conversion and the two last of compounding.
3) The two first words are instances of blending and the two last of conversion.
4) The two first words are instances of borrowing and the two last of acronyms.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Borrowing
One of the most common sources of new words in English is the process simply labeled
borrowing, that is, the taking over of words from other languages. (Technically, it’s more than
546
just borrowing, because English doesn’t give them back.) Throughout its history, the English
language has adopted a vast number of words from other languages, including these examples:
dope (Dutch) piano (Italian) tattoo (Tahitian)
jewel (French) pretzel (German) tycoon (Japanese)
glitzy (Yiddish) ski (Norwegian) yogurt (Turkish)
lilac (Persian) sofa (Arabic) zebra (Bantu)
Other languages, of course, borrow terms from English, as in the Japanese use of suupaa or
suupaamaaketto (“supermarket”) and taipuraitaa (“typewriter”). We can also hear of people in
Finland using a sˇekki (“check”) to pay their bills, Hungarians talking about sport, klub and
Linguistics
futbal, or the French discussing problems of le stress, over a glass of le whisky, during le
weekend. In Brazilian Portuguese, the English words up and nerd have been borrowed and
turned into verbs for the new activities upar (“to upload”) and nerdear (“to surf the internet”).
In some cases, the borrowed words may be used with quite novel meanings, as in the
contemporary German use of the English words partner and look in the phrase im Partnerlook
to describe two people who are together and wearing similar clothing. There is no equivalent
use of this expression in English (so far).
Backformation
A very specialized type of the reduction process is known as backformation. Typically, a word
of one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form a word of another type (usually a verb). A good
example of backformation is the process whereby the noun television first came into use and
then the verb televise was created from it. Other examples of words created by this process are:
donate (from “donation”), emote (from “emotion”), enthuse (from “enthusiasm”), liaise (from
“liaison”) and babysit (from “babysitter”). Indeed, when we use the verb backform (Did you
know that “opt” was backformed from “option”?), we are using a backformation. One very
regular source of backformed verbs in English is based on the common pattern worker – work.
The assumption seems to have been that if there is a noun ending in -er (or something close in
sound), then we can create a verb for what that noun-er does. Hence, an editor will edit, a
sculptor will sculpt and burglars, peddlers and swindlers will burgle, peddle and swindle.
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 See also: Yule (2014, pp. 52, 54)
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4. Which maxim is violated in the following context?

A has betrayed a top-secret of his friend B to a business rival. B said to his audience who
knows what A has done to B: A is a fine friend.
1) Maxim of Quantity
2) Maxim of Quality
3) Maxim of Manner
4) Maxim of Relevance
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Grice (1975) points out that our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of
disconnected remarks; they are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts.
Participants observe a rule, namely: 'Make conversational contribution such as is required, at
the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which
you are engaged'. This is called the cooperative principle.
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There are four categories with same specific and submaxims governed under the
Cooperative Principle. The four categories are Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner.
1. The category of quantity relates to the quantity of information to be provided, with the
following maxims: (i) Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current
purposes of the exchange). (ii) Do not make your contribution more informative than is
required.
2. Under the category of quality falls a supermaxim - Try to make your contribution one that
is true - and, two more specific maxims: (a) Do not say what you believe to be false, (b)
Do not say a thing for which you lack adequate evidence.
3. Under the category of Relation, there is a single maxim: Be relevant.
Linguistics
4. Under the category of Manner – the supermaxim “Be perspicuous” operates. Others are
1) Avoid obscurity of expression.
2) Avoid ambiguity.
3) Be brief (avoid unnecessary proclivity).
4) Be orderly.
Normal conversation between individuals is carried out in this fashion. Implicated meanings
(i.e. extra meanings) are created in discourses by flouting or violating the cooperative principle
in conversations in several ways. To work out that a particular conversational implicature is
present, the hearer will rely on the following data:
1) The conversational meaning of the words used, together with the identity of any
references that may be involved;
2) The cooperative principle and its maxims;
3) The context, linguistic or otherwise, of the utterance;
4) Other items of background knowledge; and
5) The fact (or supposed fact) that all relevant items falling under the previous headings
are available to both participants, and both participants know or assume this to be the
case.
Grice takes the above as the basis of conversational interaction between individuals and
implicitly proposes that the implicated meanings (or implicatures) are caused by some
"violation" or other to these basic principles underlying conversational structure. Thus, the
implicated meanings are found under four categories, namely,
(a) Flouting of Quantity,
(b) Flouting of Quality.
(c) Flouting of Relation, and
(d) Flouting of Manner.
(a) Flouting of Quantity:

A is writing a testimonial about a pupil who is a candidate for a philosophy job, and his letter
reads as follows: Dear sir, Mr. X's command of English is excellent, and his attendance at
tutorials has been regular.
(b) Flouting of Quality:

1) Irony: X, with whom A has been on close terms until now, has betrayed a secret of
A's to a business rival. A and his audience both know this. A says "X is a fine friend".
2) Metaphor: “You are my cream in my coffee.” The speaker is attributing to his
audience some feature of features in respect of which the audience resembles (more or
less fancifully) the mentioned substance.
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3) It is possible to combine metaphor and irony by imposing on the hearer two stages of
interpretation. “You are the cream in my coffee” (You are my pride and joy), and then
the irony interpretation, “You are my bane.”
4) Melosis: Of a man known to have broken up all the furniture, one says “He was a little
intoxicated.”
5) Hyperbole: “Every nice girl loves a sailor.”
(c) Flouting of Relation:

At a genteel tea party A says Mrs. X is an old bag. There is a moment of appalled silence, and
the B says The weather has bee quite delightful this summer, hasn't it? B has blatantly refused
Linguistics
to make what HE says relevant to A's preceding remark. He thereby implicates that A's remarks
should not be discussed and, perhaps more specifically, the A has committed a social gaffe.
(d) Flouting of Manner:

1) Ambiguity (deliberate and intended to be recognized as such).
2) Obscurity
3) Failure to be brief or succinct: Miss X produced a series of sounds that corresponded
closely with the score of Home sweet home.
This test was developed based on the content available from the following link:
http://www.ciil-ebooks.net/html/silent/ch4.htm
For similar items, refer to Year 94, Items 20 and 96.

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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 171-173); Yule (1996, pp. 35-46); Yule (2014, pp. 144-
147)
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5. Which of the following is FALSE?

1) In recursion, each noun phrase has the potential to generate a prepositional phrase, which
may generate another noun phrase, which may generate another prepositional phrase.
2) A form of communication that arises when people come into contact sharing no common
language is known as pidgin.
3) Chomsky's linguistic competence refers to a language user's grammatical knowledge of
syntax, morphology and phonology, as well as social knowledge about how and when to
use utterances appropriately.
4) The theory that language determines other aspects of culture since language provides the
categories through which social reality is defined and constructed is called the Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
The Infinity of Language: Recursive Rules
Recursion is a property of grammars whereby a finite set of rules with the ability to apply
repeatedly can generate an infinite set of structures. In other words, recursion refers to the
repeated application of a rule in generating structures.
The number of sentences in a language is without bound and languages have various means
of creating longer and longer sentences, such as adding an adjective or a prepositional phrase.
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For example, an NP may contain any number of adjectives as in the kindhearted, intelligent,
handsome boy.
Choice (1) is taken from the content available in the following link:
https://quizlet.com/158430609/comd-2050-chapter-8-syntax-flash-cards/
Lingua Francas, Pidgins, and Creoles

Akmajian et al. (2010, pp. 294-297) make a distinction between Lingua Francas, Pidgins, and
Creoles. For various reasons, groups of people speaking diverse languages are often thrown
into social contact. When this occurs, a common language must be found to serve as a medium
Linguistics
of communication. Sometimes, by common agreement, a given language (not necessarily a
native language of anyone present) known to all the participants is used; a language used in this
fashion is known as a lingua franca. The term lingua franca derives from a trade language of
this name used in Mediterranean ports in medieval times, consisting of Italian with elements
from French, Spanish, Greek, and Arabic. Until about the eighteenth century, European scholars
used Latin as a lingua franca—a common language for treatises on science and other scholarly
subjects. In the contemporary world, English serves as a lingua franca in numerous social and
political situations where people require a common language. For example, English has become
a lingua franca for international scientific journals and international scientific meetings—it is,
by common agreement, the language in which scientific results are presented.
Historically, another kind of situation has often arisen in which people come into contact,
sharing no common language: namely, when one group is or becomes politically and
economically dominant over another. This has been typical of colonial situations, in which the
dominant group desires trade with, or colonization of, the subordinate group. In such situations,
pidgin languages (or pidgins) have developed, having the following important properties:
1. The pidgin has no native speakers but is used as a medium of communication between
people who are native speakers of other languages.
2. The pidgin is based on linguistic features of one or more other languages and is a
simplified language with reduced vocabulary and grammatical structure.
There have been pidgins based on English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic,
and Swahili, among others. Pidgin languages are sometimes called contact languages
(reflecting the fact that such languages often arise when social groups come into contact) or
marginal languages (reflecting the reduced grammar and vocabulary of the pidgin). The word
pidgin itself is said to derive from the English word business as pronounced in Chinese Pidgin
English. Pidgin languages have limited vocabulary (most often drawn from the ‘‘dominant’’
language), and in terms of grammatical features they typically lack inflectional morphemes
(nouns have no affixes to indicate plurality, and verbs have no affixes to indicate tense or subject
agreement). In addition, forms of the verb to be are often entirely lacking in pidgins, and
prepositions are often limited to a reduced set that serves multiple functions.
Pidgins are generally used by native speakers of other languages as a medium of
communication. Under certain circumstances, however, children may learn a pidgin as their
first language. When a pidgin begins to acquire native speakers who use it as their primary
language, it greatly expands in vocabulary and grammatical complexity. When this happens,
the language is referred to as a creole language. Creole languages are said to develop in
situations where the adults in a community speak mutually unintelligible native languages and
must rely on a pidgin to communicate with each other. As children acquire the pidgin, they
use it with playmates and other children in their peer group. Such situations often arose on slave
plantations in the Americas, where Africans from linguistically diverse backgrounds could only
communicate in a pidgin. Their descendants began to use the pidgin as a first language, and
from this sort of development came such creoles as Haitian Creole (based on French), certain
550
forms of Jamaican English, and Gullah (or Sea Island Creole, spoken by descendants of African
slaves living on the Sea Islands of the coast of Georgia and South Carolina). Some scholars
believe that certain current forms of Inner-City English may have had their origins as a creole
language (see Dillard 1972 for discussion), but this is by no means a firmly established
conclusion. When a pidgin becomes creolized—that is, when it comes to be used as a primary
language of a group of speakers—it undergoes considerable expansion of its vocabulary and
grammar and begins to acquire rules comparable in nature and complexity with the rules of
any other human language.
Linguistics
Linguistic Competence
Chomsky's linguistic competence refers to a language user's grammatical knowledge of syntax,
morphology and phonology. It does not include social knowledge about how and when to use
utterances appropriately. In other words, linguistic competence refers to one’s knowledge of
the language itself, and includes knowledge of vocabulary, morphology, syntax and
phonology (the ‘nuts and bolts’ of language) as well as knowledge about how the different
parts of a text fit together and are generally organized. It is important to remember that linguistic
competence is indeed a component of communicative competence.
Communicative Competence
The term commutative competence (CC was coined by Dell Hymes (1972, 1967), a
sociolinguist who was convinced that Chomsky's (1965) notion of competence was too limited.
In the 1970s, research on CC distinguished between linguistic and communicative competence
(Paulston, 1974; Hymes, 1967) to highlight the difference between knowledge "about"
language forms and knowledge that enables a person to communicate functionally and
interactively.
Canale and Swain and later in Canale's (1983) defined four different components for
communicative competence. The first two subcategories reflected the use of the linguistic
system itself; the last two defined the functional aspects of communication.
1. Grammatical competence is that aspect of CC that encompasses "knowledge of lexical
items and of rules of morphology, syntax, sentence-grammar semantics, and
phonology" (Canale & Swain, 1980, p. 29). It is the competence that we associate with
mastering the linguistic code of a language, the "linguistic" competence of Hymes and
Paulston, referred to above.
2. The second subcategory is discourse competence, the complement of grammatical
competence in many ways. It is the ability we have to connect sentences in stretches of
discourse and to form a meaningful whole out of a series of utterances. Discourse means
everything from simple spoken conversation to lengthy written texts (articles, books, and
the like). While grammatical competence focuses on sentence-level grammar, discourse
competence is concerned with intersentential relationships.
3. Sociolinguistic competence is the knowledge of the sociocultural rules of language and
of discourse. This type of competence "requires an understanding of the social context in
which language is used: the roles of the participants, [the information they share, and the
function of the interaction. Only in a full context of this kind can judgments be made on
the appropriateness of a particular utterance" (Savignon, 1983, p. 37).
4. The fourth subcategory is strategic competence, a construct that is exceedingly complex.
Canale and Swain (1980, p, 30) described strategic competence as "the verbal and
nonverbal communication strategies that may be called into action to compensate for
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breakdowns in communication due to performance variables or due to insufficient

competence." Savignon (1983, p. 40) paraphrased this as "the strategies that one uses to
compensate for imperfect knowledge of rules—or limiting factors in their application
such as fatigue, distraction, and inattention." In short, it is the competence underlying our
ability to make repairs, to cope with imperfect knowledge, and to sustain communication
through "paraphrase, circumlocution, repetition, hesitation, avoidance, and guessing, as
well as shifts in register and style" (pp. 40-41).
https://quizlet.com/161873114/anthro-105-test1-flash-cards/
Linguistics
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
For explanation refer to Year 96, Item 11.
https://quizlet.com/82608291/cu4112-flash-cards/
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 See also: Akmajian et al. (2010, p. 198, 294-297); Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 21-22, 100-
105); Yule (2014, pp. 105-106, 273);
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6. Which of the following expressions is NOT structurally ambiguous?

1) Flying planes can be dangerous.
2) We met an English history teacher.
3) These are designed for small boys and girls.
4) The parents of the bride and groom were waiting outside.
Answer: No Answer
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Hudson (2000, pp. 313-314) remarks that structural ambiguity exists when a phrase or
sentence has two or more meanings because of structure, either of grouping or function (i.e.
grammatical relations).
Grouping ambiguity: A case of grouping ambiguity is The police searched for the car
with broken headlights. This sentence has two structures, one in which the prepositional phrase
with broken headlights is about the car, and is grouped with car in a noun phrase, and another
in which it is about the searching, and is grouped apart from the noun phrase but still with
searched in the verb phrase.
Function ambiguity: Function ambiguity exists when a word or phrase potentially fulfills
two or more grammatical relations, and morphemes and groupings are the same for both
meanings. An example is visiting professors can be boring. This sentence concerns either
professors who visit, or professors who get visited.
Yule (2014, pp. 96, 103) explicates structural ambiguity as follows:

Let’s say we have two distinct deep structures. One expresses the idea that “Annie had an
umbrella and she bumped into a man with it.” The other expresses the idea that “Annie bumped
into a man and the man happened to be carrying an umbrella.” Now, these two different
versions of events can actually be expressed in the same surface structure form: Annie
bumped into a man with an umbrella. This sentence provides an example of structural
ambiguity. It has two distinct underlying interpretations that have to be represented differently
in deep structure.
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Note that this is not the type of ambiguity that we experience in hearing Their child has
grown another foot, which illustrates lexical ambiguity mainly because the word foot has more
than one meaning.
The comedian Groucho Marx knew how to have fun with structural ambiguity. In the film
Animal Crackers, he first says I once shot an elephant in my pajamas, then follows it with How
he got into my pajamas I’ll never know. In the non-funny interpretation, part of the underlying
structure of the first sentence could be something like: “I shot an elephant (while I was) in my
pajamas.” In the other (ho, ho) interpretation, part of the underlying structure would be
something like: “I shot an elephant (which was) in my pajamas.” There are two different
underlying structures with the same surface structure.
Linguistics
Concluding Remarks
Choice (1) is an example for “function ambiguity”. The sentence "Flying planes can be
dangerous" can be interpreted in two ways: (1) ‘Flying’ can be an adjective that applies to
planes that are up in the air as opposed to being on the ground, and (2) ‘Flying’ is a gerund and
refers to the pilot’s occupation of flying a plane.
Choice (2) “We met an English history teacher” is structurally ambiguous in the sense that it
can mean either “a teacher of English history” OR “a person from England who teaches
history”. Hence, as stated by Yule (2014), this sentence has two distinct deep structures, as
shown below:
The two Deep/Underlying Structures
S[N(We)V(met)Art(a/an)N(teacher)Prep(of)PN(English)N(history)]
S[N(We)V(met)Art(a/an)N(person)Prep(from)PN(England)Adv(who)V(teaches)N(history)]
Choice (3) is an example for “grouping ambiguity”. The NP “small boys and girls” can be
grouped either as [small [boys and girls]] or as [[small boys] and [girls]]. Thus, this NP can
mean "for small boys and (all) girls" or "for small boys and small girls."
Choice (4) is an example for “grouping ambiguity”. The NP “The parents of the bride and
groom” can be grouped either as [The [parents of [the bride and groom]]] or as [The [parents
of [the [bride] and [groom]]]. Thus, This NP can mean either “The parents of the bride and (the
parents of the) groom” OR “The parents of the bride and (the) groom (without his parents).”
Consequently, all choices have structural ambiguity.

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 See also: Hudson (2000, pp. 313-314); Yule (2014, pp. 96, 103)
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1) Entailment is not a pragmatic concept.
2) Speakers not sentences have presuppositions.
3) Words that add meaning to the sentence are known as function words.
4) Grammar is broader than syntax. It involves syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Presupposition
If someone tells you Your brother is waiting outside, there is an obvious presupposition that
you have a brother. If you are asked Why did you arrive late?, there is a presupposition that you
did arrive late. And if you are asked the question When did you stop smoking?, there are at least
two presuppositions involved. In asking this question, the speaker presupposes that you used to
smoke and that you no longer do so.
A presupposition is something that the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an
utterance. Speakers, not sentences, have presuppositions. Since speakers have presuppositions,
presupposition is a pragmatic concept and is dealt with in pragmatics. Therefore, Choice (1) is
Linguistics
correct and not the option to be chosen.
Entailment
Yule (1996, p. 25) states that an entailment is something that logically follows from what is
asserted in the utterance. Sentences, not speakers, have entailments. Since sentences have
entailment (and not speakers), entailment is not a pragmatic concept. Yule (1996, p. 33) also
adds that “Generally speaking, entailment is not a pragmatic concept (i.e. having to do with
speaker meaning), but instead is considered a purely logical concept”.
Akmajian et al. (2010, p. 241) remarks that “The most central truth relation for semantics
is entailment.” Therefore, they consider entailment as a semantic concept.
Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 141) remark that if you know that the sentence Jack swims
beautifully is true, then you also know that the sentence Jack swims is true. This meaning
relation is called entailment. We say that Jack swims beautifully entails Jack swims. More
generally, one sentence entails another if whenever the first sentence is true the second one is
also true in all conceivable circumstances.
Akmajian et al. (2010, p. 241) add that one sentence S is said to entail another sentence S'
when the truth of the first guarantees the truth of the second, and the falsity of the second
guarantees the falsity of the first, as in (1):
(1) a. The car is red entails The car has a color.
b. The needle is too short entails The needle is not long enough.
We can see that the first sentence in each example, if true, guarantees the truth of the second;
and the falsity of the second sentence in each example guarantees the falsity of the first.
Therefore, Choice (2) is correct and not the option to be chosen.
Content Words vs. Function Words

Linguists make a distinction between “content words” and “function words”. Content words
refer to the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that constitute the major part of the
vocabulary. Content words carry information. That is, the distinguishing feature of content
words is that they are the major meaning-contributors of the sentence, while function words
add comparatively little meaning to the sentence. A noun tells us which object, a verb tells us
about the action happening, or the state. Adjectives give us details about objects and people and
adverbs tell us how, when or where something is done. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs
give us important information required for understanding.
Other Content Words

While nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are the most important content words, there are a
few other words that are also key to understanding. These include negatives like no, not and
never; demonstrative pronouns including this, that, these and those; and question words like
what, where, when, how and why.
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Table 1: Content words vs. Function words (Adopted from Celce-Murcia, Brinton, &
Goodwin, 2010, p. 212)
Content/information words Function words

(often stressed) (often unstressed)
nouns articles
main verbs auxiliary verbs
adjectives personal pronouns
possessive pronouns possessive adjectives
Linguistics
demonstrative pronouns demonstrative adjectives
interrogatives prepositions
not/negative contractions conjunctions
adverbs
adverbial particles
Note: remember that demonstrative pronouns do not modify a head noun. They substitute for
an entire noun phrase: Whose books are these?, That’s a bad idea.
Function Word Types

Function words are words that signify grammatical relationships. Function words help us
connect important information. Function words are important for understanding, but they add
little meaning beyond defining the relationship between two words.
Function words include auxiliary verbs, prepositions, articles, conjunctions, and pronouns.
Auxiliary verbs are used to establish the tense, prepositions show relationships in time and
space, articles show us something that is specific or one of many, and pronouns refer to other
nouns.
Therefore, Choice (3) “Words that add meaning to the sentence are known as function
words.” is FALSE and the option to be chosen.
Grammar vs. Syntax

Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 9) remark that the way linguists are using the word grammar differs
from most common usages. In our sense, the grammar is the knowledge speakers have about
the units and rules of their language—rules for combining sounds into words (called
phonology), rules of word formation (called morphology), rules for combining words into
phrases and phrases into sentences (called syntax), as well as the rules for assigning meaning
(called semantics). The grammar, together with a mental dictionary (called a lexicon) that lists
the words of the language, represents our linguistic competence. To understand the nature of
language we must understand the nature of grammar.
Therefore, Choice (4), which reads “Grammar is broader than syntax. It involves syntax,
semantics, and pragmatics”, is correct and not the option to be chosen.
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 See also: Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin (2010, p. 212); Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 9);
Yule (1996, p. 25-34)
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8. Which of the following is a case of entailment?

1) It isn’t funny that he came late. He came late.
2) Are you still such a bad motorist? You were a bad motorist.
3) We imagined that we were in the village. We weren’t in the village.
4) The president of this country is a bachelor. The president of this country is unmarried.
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Choice (1) is a case of presupposition called “factive presupposition”.
Linguistics
Choice (2) is a case of presupposition called “lexical presupposition”.
Choice (3) is a case of presupposition called “non-factive presupposition”.
Choice (4) is a case of entailment.
Below, a concise explication is provided.
Presupposition vs. Entailment

For such comparison, see the information provided in Year 97, Item 7.
Presupposition Types
1. Existential Presupposition
2. Factive Presupposition
3. Non-factive Presupposition
4. Counter-factual Presupposition
5. Lexical Presupposition
6. Structural Presupposition
1. Existential Presupposition
In existential presupposition, the speaker assumes the existence of the entities names.
Existential presupposition is assumed to be present in any definite noun phrase and in
possessive construction.
1) The king of Sweden died. >> There is a king of Sweden.
2) The cat escaped. >> There was a cat.
3) May’s dog isn’t cute >> Mary has a dog.
Note: This symbol >> is a notation and means “The presupposed information is”.
2. Factive Presupposition
Choice (1) is a case of presupposition called “factive presupposition”. Yule (1996, pp. 27-28)
remarks that the presupposed information following some verbs and structures can be treated
as a fact. These verbs and structures include “know (that)”, “realize (that)”, “regret (that)”, “be
glad that”, “be aware that”, “be odd that”, etc.
Examples:
1) She didn’t realize he was ill. >> He was ill.
2) We regret telling him. >> We told him.
3) I wasn’t aware that she was married. >> She was married.
4) It isn’t odd that he left early. >> He left early.
5) I’m glad that it’s over. >> It’s over.
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The utterance in choice (1) is similar to the utterance in example 4: “It isn’t funny that he came
late. He came late.” Therefore, Choice (1) is a case of presupposition. To reason why choice
(1) is a case of presupposition, we can say that “He came late” can be considered as “old
information” and “It isn’t funny” can be considered as “new information”.
3. Non-factive Presupposition
A non-factive presupposition is one that is assumed not to be true. There are some examples of
non-factive presuppositions associated with a number of verbs in English. Verbs like “dream”,
“imagine”, and “pretend”, as shown below, are used with the presupposition that what follows
is not true.
Linguistics
1) I dreamed that I was rich. >> I was not rich.
2) We imagined we were in Hawaii. >> We were not in Hawaii.
3) He pretends to be ill. >> He is not ill.
4. Counter-factual Presupposition
A counter-factual presupposition is one which means what is presupposed is not only not true,
but is the opposite of what is true, or “contrary to facts”. A conditional structure, generally
called a counterfactual conditional, presupposes that the information in the if-clause is not true
at the time of utterance.
1) If you were my friend, you would have helped me. >> You are not my friend.
5. Lexical Presupposition
Generally speaking, in lexical presupposition, the use of one form with its asserted meaning is
conventionally interpreted with the presupposition that another (non-asserted) meaning is
understood. That is, there are always some non-asserted presuppositions in uttering some
“words”. Each time you say that someone “managed” to do something, the asserted meaning is
that the person succeeded in some way. When you say that someone “didn’t manage”, the
asserted meaning is that the person did not succeed. In both cases, however, there is a
presupposition (non-asserted) that the person “tried” to do that something. So, “managed” is
conventionally interpreted as asserting “succeeded and presupposing “tried”. Other lexical
items which act this way include “stop”, “start”, “again”, etc.
1) He didn’t manage to finish his homework. >> He tried.
2) He stopped smoking. >> He used to smoke.
3) They started complaining >> They weren’t complaining before.
4) You’re late again. >> You were late before.
6. Structural Presupposition
In this case, certain sentence structures have been analyzed as conventionally and regularly
presupposing that part of the structure is already assumed to be true. We might say that speakers
can use such structures to treat as presupposed (i.e. assumed to be true) and hence to be accepted
as true by the listener. For example, the wh-question construction in English, as shown below,
is conventionally interpreted with the presupposition that the information after the wh-form (i.e.
“when” and “where”) is already known to be the case.
1) When did he leave? >> He left.
2) Where did you buy the bike? >> You bought the bike.
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 See also: Yule (1996, pp. 25-34)
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9. Which of the following refers to a boundary line between regions that vary in a
particular linguistic feature?
1) Dialect
2) Diglossia
3) Isogloss
4) Sociolect
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Linguistics
Dialects
All speakers of English can talk to each other and pretty much understand each other. Yet, no
two of us speak exactly alike. Some differences are the result of age, sex, social situation, and
where and when the language was learned. These differences are reflected in word choices, the
pronunciation of words, and grammatical rules. The language of an individual speaker with its
unique characteristics is referred to as the speaker’s idiolect.
Like individuals, different groups of people who speak the same language speak it
differently. Bostonians, New Yorkers, Texans, blacks in Chicago, whites in Denver, and
Hispanics in Albuquerque all exhibit variation in the way they speak English. When there are
systematic differences in the way groups speak a language, we say that each group speaks a
dialect of that language. Dialects are mutually intelligible forms of a language that differ in
systematic ways. Every speaker, whether rich or poor, regardless of region or racial origin,
speaks at least one dialect, just as each individual speaks an idiolect. A dialect is not an inferior
or degraded form of a language, and logically could not be so because a language is a collection
of dialects.
Regional Dialects
When various linguistic differences accumulate in a particular geographic region (e.g., the city
of Boston or the southern area of the United States), the language spoken has its own character.
Each version of the language is referred to as a regional dialect. Dialects have phonological
differences, lexical differences, and syntactic differences.
Dialect Atlases
Linguist Hans Kurath published dialect maps and dialect atlases of a region on which dialect
differences are geographically plotted (see the figure below). The dialectologists who created
the map noted the places where speakers use one word or another word for the same item. For
example, the area where the term Dutch cheese is used is not contiguous; there is a small pocket
mostly in West Virginia where speakers use that term for what other speakers call smearcase.
In similar maps, areas were differentiated based on the variation in pronunciation of the
same word, such as [krik] and [krɪk] for creek. The concentrations defined by different word
usages and varying pronunciations, among other linguistic differences, form dialect areas.
A line drawn on the map to separate the areas is called an isogloss. When you cross an
isogloss, you are passing from one dialect area to another. Sometimes several isoglosses
coincide, often at a political boundary or at a natural barrier such as a river or mountain range.
Linguists call these groupings a bundle of isoglosses. Such a bundle can define a regional
dialect. In other words, isogloss is a geographic boundary that separates areas with dialect
differences: e.g., a line on a map on one side of which most people say faucet and on the other
side of which most people say spigot.
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Linguistics
A dialect map showing the isoglosses separating the use of different words that refer to the
same cheese
Diglossia
Yule (2014, pp. 248-249) explains that a rather special situation involving two distinct varieties
of a language, called diglossia, exists in some countries. In diglossia, there is a “low” variety,
acquired locally and used for everyday affairs, and a “high” or special variety, learned in school
and used for important matters. A type of diglossia exists in Arabic-speaking countries where
the high variety (Classical Arabic) is used in formal lectures, serious political events and
especially in religious discussions. The low variety is the local version of the language, such as
Egyptian Arabic or Lebanese Arabic. Through a long period in European history, a diglossic
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situation existed with Latin as the high variety and one of the local languages of Europe (early
versions of modern Italian, French and Spanish) as the low variety or “vernacular.”
Social dialects
Yule (2014, p. 257) explains that whereas the traditional study of regional dialects tended to
concentrate on the speech of people in rural areas, the study of social dialects has been mainly
concerned with speakers in towns and cities. In the social study of dialect, it is social class that
is mainly used to define groups of speakers as having something in common. The two main
groups are generally identified as “middle class,” those who have more years of education and
Linguistics
perform non-manual work, and “working-class,” those who have fewer years of education and
perform manual work of some kind. So, when we refer to “working-class speech,” we are
talking about a social dialect. The terms “upper” and “lower” are used to subdivide the groups,
mainly on an economic basis, making “upper-middle-class speech” another type of social
dialect or sociolect.
As in all dialect studies, only certain features of language use are treated as relevant in the
analysis of social dialects. These features are pronunciations, words or structures that are
regularly used in one form by working-class speakers and in another form by middle-class
speakers. In Edinburgh, Scotland, for example, the word home is regularly pronounced as
[heɪm], as if rhyming with fame, among lower working-class speakers, and as [hom], as if
rhyming with foam, among middle-class speakers. It’s a small difference in pronunciation, but
it’s an indicator of social status.
A more familiar example might be the verb ain’t, as in I ain’t finished yet, which is used
more often in working-class speech than in middle-class speech. When we look for other
examples of language use that might be characteristic of a social dialect, we treat class as the
social variable and the pronunciation or word as the linguistic variable. We can then
investigate any systematic variation in usage by counting how often speakers in each class use
each version of the linguistic variable. This is rarely an all-or-nothing situation, so we usually
find that one group uses a certain form more or less than another and not that only one group
or the other uses the form exclusively.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 279-88); Yule (2014, pp. 248-249, 257);
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10. What are the spatial deictic expressions used in I am busy now so you can’t visit me.
Come back later?
1) now, later
2) come back
3) I, you
4) you
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Deixis
There are some very common words in our language that cannot be interpreted at all if we don’t
know the context. We use deixis to point to people (him, them, those things), places (here, there,
after this) and times (now, then, next week).
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Person deixis: me, you, him, her, us, them, that woman, those idiots
Spatial deixis: here, there, back, beside you, near that, above your head
Temporal deixis: now, then, last week, later, tomorrow, yesterday
All these deictic expressions have to be interpreted in terms of which person, place or time
the speaker has in mind. We make a broad distinction between what is close to the speaker (this,
here, now) and what is distant (that, there, then). We can also indicate whether movement is
away from the speaker (go) or toward the speaker (come). Just think about telling someone to
Go to bed versus Come to bed. Deixis can even be entertaining. The bar owner who puts up a
big sign that reads Free Beer Tomorrow (to get you to return to the bar) can always claim that
Linguistics
you are just one day too early for the free drink.
Note that spatial deixis can include both adverbs (e.g. here, there) and verbs (e.g. come, go).
For more information, please refer to Year 92, Item 26.
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 See also: Yule (1996, pp. 9-16)
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11. Which of the following is a derivational morpheme?

1) -ation in vocalization
2) -ation in vacation
3) -ation is nationality
4) -ation is station
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Morpheme
A morpheme is “a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function.” Units of grammatical
function include forms used to indicate past tense or plural, for example. So, the word renewed
consists of one minimal unit of meaning (new), another unit of meaning (re- = “again”) and a
unit of grammatical function -ed (= past tense). The word tourists has two units of meaning
(tour and -ist) plus a unit of grammatical function -s (= plural).
For more information, refer to Year 91, Item 28; Year 96, Item 7.
Derivational morphemes
Yule (2014) explains that the set of affixes that make up the category of bound morphemes
can also be divided into two types. These are the derivational morphemes. We use these bound
morphemes to make new words or to make words of a different grammatical category from
the stem. For example, the addition of the derivational morpheme -ness changes the adjective
good to the noun goodness. The noun care can become the adjectives careful or careless by the
addition of the derivational morphemes -ful or -less. Derivational morphemes include suffixes,
such as the -ish in foolish, the -ly in quickly, and the -ment in payment, and prefixes, such as re-
, pre-, ex-, mis-, co-, un-.
Inflectional morphemes
Yule (2014) explains that the second set of bound morphemes contains what are called
inflectional morphemes (or “inflections”). These are not used to produce new words in the
language, but rather to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word. Inflectional
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morphemes are used to show if a word is plural or singular, past tense or not, and if it is a
comparative or possessive form. English has only eight inflectional morphemes, all suffixes:
Noun + -’s, -s
Verb + -s, -ing, -ed, -en
Adjective + -er, -est
For more information on inflectional morphemes, refer to Year 91, Item 28.
Concluding Remarks
Linguistics
Regarding choice (1), vocalization can be broken down as follows:
vocalize + -ation root + suffix
But -ation in “vacation”, “nationality” and “station” is part of the root and cannot be separated.
https://www.coursehero.com/file/11988129/Final-Exam-Ch-78-10-11-13/
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 36-52); Hudson (2000, pp. 59-64); Yule (2014, pp. 66-
68)
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12. Which of the following is NOT related to coherence?

1) Allows the reader to make sense of the text because concepts and relations are mutually
accessible and relevant.
2) The grammatical and lexical relationship between different elements of a text which
hold it together.
3) The semantic unity created between the ideas, sentences, paragraphs and sections of a
piece of writing.
4) A semantic property or discourse formed through the interpretation of each individual
sentence relative to the interpretation of other sentences, with “interpretation” implying
interaction between the text, the reader and the writer.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Cohesion
Yule (2014, p. 141) states that texts must have a certain structure that depends on factors quite
different from those required in the structure of a single sentence. Some of those factors are
described in terms of cohesion, or the ties and connections that exist within texts. A number
of those types of cohesive ties can be identified in the following paragraph.
My father once bought a Lincoln convertible. He did it by saving every penny he could.
That car would be worth a fortune nowadays. However, he sold it to help pay for my
college education. Sometimes I think I’d rather have the convertible.
There are connections here in the use of words to maintain reference to the same people and
things throughout: father – he – he – he; my – my – I; Lincoln – it. There are connections
between phrases such as: a Lincoln convertible – that car – the convertible. There are more
general connections created by terms that share a common element of meaning, such as
“money” (bought – saving – penny – worth a fortune – sold – pay) and “time” (once – nowadays
562
– sometimes). There is also a connector (However) that marks the relationship of what follows
to what went before. The verb tenses in the first four sentences are all in the past, creating a
connection between those events, and a different time is indicated by the present tense of the
final sentence.
Coherence
Yule (2014, p. 142) remarks that the key to the concept of coherence (“everything fitting
together well”) is not something that exists in words or structures, but something that exists
in people. It is people who “make sense” of what they read and hear. They try to arrive at an
Linguistics
interpretation that is in line with their experience of the way the world is. Indeed, our ability to
make sense of what we read is probably only a small part of that general ability we have to
make sense of what we perceive or experience in the world. You may have tried quite hard to
make the last example fit some situation that accommodated all the details (involving a red car,
a woman and a letter) into a single coherent interpretation. In doing so, you would necessarily
be involved in a process of filling in a lot of gaps that exist in the text. You would have to create
meaningful connections that are not actually expressed by the words and sentences. This
process is not restricted to trying to understand “odd” texts. In one way or another, it seems to
be involved in our interpretation of all discourse. It is certainly present in the interpretation of
casual conversation. We are continually taking part in conversational interactions where a great
deal of what is meant is not actually present in what is said. Perhaps it is the ease with which
we ordinarily anticipate each other’s intentions that makes this whole complex process seem so
unremarkable. Here is a good example, adapted from Widdowson (1978).
her: That’s the telephone

him: I’m in the bath
her: O.K.
There are certainly no cohesive ties within this fragment of discourse. How does each of these
people manage to make sense of what the other says? They do use the information contained in
the sentences expressed, but there must be something else involved in the interpretation.
Conclusion
To put it very briefly, we talk about “cohesion in form” and “coherence of thought”. “The
grammatical and lexical relationship between different elements of a text which hold it
together” is related to cohesion – not coherence.
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 See also: Yule (2014, pp. 141-142)
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13. Which of the following is used in the following sentence: What do you think about
this: Mom’s getting married?
1) Ellipsis
2) Substitution
3) Cataphoric relation
4) Conjunction
Answer: 3
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563
Explanation:
In this piece of discourse, the demonstrative pronoun “this” refers to “Mom’s getting married”.
Since “the referred” comes after the demonstrative pronoun, it is called a cataphoric reference.
For information on “ellipsis”, refer to Year 92, Item 26; and Year 96, Item 13.
For information on “substitution”, refer to Year 92, Item 94; and Year 96, Item 13.
For information on “cataphoric relation”, refer to Year 92, Item 26.
For information on “conjunction”, refer to Year 96, Item 13.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 166-170); Richards and Schmidt (2010, pp. 93-94);
Linguistics
Yule (2014, pp. 128, 141-142); Yule (1996, pp. 9-10, 17-24)
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14. What distinguishes pragmatics and semantics is whether ---------- is considered.

1) context
2) speech act
3) reference
4) usage
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is concerned with four related areas.
(1) Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or
writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). It has, consequently, more to do with the
analysis of what people mean by their “utterances” than what the words or phrases in those
utterance might mean by themselves. Thus, pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning.
(2) This type of study necessarily involves interpretations of what people mean in a particular
context and how the context influences what is said. It requires a consideration of how
speakers organize what they want to say in accordance with who they’re talking to, where,
when, and under what circumstances. Hence, pragmatics is the study of contextual
meaning.
(3) This approach also necessarily explores how listeners can make inferences about what is
said in order to arrive at an interpretation of the speaker’s intended meaning. This type of
study explores how a great deal of what is unsaid is recognized as part of what is
communicated. We might say that it is the investigation of invisible meaning. Thus,
pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated than is said.
(4) This perspective then raises the question of what determines the choice between the said
and the unsaid. The basis answer is tied to the notion of distance. Closeness, whether it is
physical, social, of conceptual, implies shared experience. On the assumption of how close
or distant the listener is, speakers determine how much needs to be said. Thus, pragmatics
is the study of the expression of relative distance.
Notes:
1. Sentence, utterance, proposition
We begin with the distinction between sentence and utterance—a distinction that is of
fundamental importance to both semantics and pragmatics.
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A sentence is a well-formed string of words put together according to the grammatical

rules of a language. As a unit of the language system, it is an abstract entity or construct defined
within a theory of grammar. For example, (1) is a sentence in English, but (2) is not. (Here, a
sentence is represented in italics, an utterance between double quotation marks, and a
proposition in capitals.)
(1) Lance Armstrong won the centenary Tour de France.
(2) *Lance Armstrong the centenary Tour de France won
Sentence-meaning, then, refers to those aspects of meaning that are ascribed to a sentence in
the abstract, that is, a sentence independent of its realization in any concrete form. The study
Linguistics
of sentence-meaning normally belongs to semantics.
By contrast, an utterance is the use of a particular piece of language – be it a word, a
phrase, a sentence, or a sequence of sentences – by a particular speaker on a particular occasion.
For example, (3)–(6) are all utterances in English. (The quotation marks indicate that what is
put between them is taken from a specific context on a specific occasion of use.)
(3) ‘‘Hello!’’
(4) ‘‘A cappuccino, please.’’
(5) ‘‘Lance Armstrong won the centenary Tour de France.’’
(6) ‘‘Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and
digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read but not
curiously; and some few to be read wholly, with diligence and attention. Some books
also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others.’’ (Francis Bacon)
Of these, (5) is an instantiation of the sentence in (1). In such a case, it is widely assumed
(a` la Bar-Hillel, 1954) that an utterance is the pairing of a sentence and a context, that is, the
situation in which the sentence is uttered (Levinson 1983, pp. 18-19). Utterance-meaning, or
speaker-meaning (as it is often called), then, is definable as what a speaker intends to convey
by making an utterance. The study of utterance-meaning normally falls under pragmatics.
Finally, there is the notion of a proposition. A proposition is what is expressed by a
sentence when that sentence is used to make a statement, that is, to say something, true or false,
about some state of affairs in the external world. Put it the other way round, a sentence, when
uttered to make a statement, is said to convey a proposition. For example, (9) is the proposition
underlying both sentences (7) and (8).
(7) Liszt adored Chopin.
(8) Chopin was adored by Liszt.
(9) LISZT ADORED CHOPIN
The propositional content of a sentence is that part of its meaning which can be reduced to a
proposition. This notion allows semanticists to claim that different (types of) sentences may
share the same propositional content, even though they differ in other aspects of meaning. For
example, the interrogative sentence in (10) is said to have the same propositional content as the
active declarative sentence in (7) and the passive declarative sentence (8), namely (9). The
difference is that while in saying (7) and (8) the speaker asserts the corresponding proposition,
that is, he or she commits him- or herself to the truth of the proposition, in uttering (10) the
speaker questions its truth.
(10) Did Liszt adore Chopin?
565
Propositions may be true or false, may be known, believed, or doubted, may be asserted or
denied, and may be held constant under paraphrase and translation. For example, (11) in
Chinese, (12) in English, and (13) in Italian can be said to express the same proposition.
(11) xia yu le.
(12) It is raining.
(13) Piove.
Regarding the relationship between sentence and proposition, the same proposition can on the
one hand be expressed by different sentences, as is attested by (7) and (8) above. On the other
hand, the same sentence can be used to convey different propositions on different occasions.
Linguistics
As a case in point, consider (14).
(14) In his last years, my uncle fell victim to Alzheimer’s disease.
The sentence in (14), when uttered by different speakers, may say very different things about
some state of affairs in the outside world. If (14) were said by Mary about her uncle John, she
would mean something quite different from what Henry would mean if he had used it to talk
about his uncle Albert. Thus, on these two different occasions, the use of the same sentence
would express two distinct propositions.
Finally, the relationship between sentence, utterance, and proposition may be represented
schematically in the tree diagram in (15) (adapted from Hurford and Heasley 1983, p. 23). What
(15) basically says is that a proposition, being the most abstract of the three notions, can be
expressed by different sentences. A given sentence, being the next most abstract of the three
notions, can itself be instantiated by different utterances, which are the least abstract of the three
notions.
(15) Relationship between sentence, utterance, and proposition
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 See also: Huang (2007, pp. 10-13); Yule (1996, pp. 3-4)
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15. If an act is performed which is a consequence of, or a change brought about by, an
utterance, it is known as ---------.
1) an illocutionary act
2) a performative act
3) a perlocutionary act
4) a locutionary act
Answer: 3
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566
Explanation:
Riemer (2010, p. 109) remarks that Austin distinguished between three types of act present in
every utterance, the locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. Austin defined them
as follows:
1. Locutionary act: the act of saying something;
2. Illocutionary act: the act performed in saying something; and
3. Perlocutionary act: the act performed by saying something.
For explanation and similar items refer to Year 94, Items 19 and 23; and Year 96, Item 5.
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Linguistics
 See also: Nuccetelli and Seay (2007, pp. 329-333); Richards and Schmidt (2010, pp. 429-
430); Yule (1996, pp. 48-52)
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16. If we think of a sentence as what people say in the course of communication, it becomes
a(an) ----------.
1) constative
2) directive
3) expression
4) utterance
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
For explanation on choice (1), refer to Year 97, Item 15.
Choice (3) requires no explanation as “expression” is not technically used in linguistics.
A distinction is made between a “sentence” and an “utterance”. Levinson (1983, p. 118) states
that the distinction between sentence and utterance is of fundamental importance to both
semantics and pragmatics. Essentially, we want to say that a sentence is an abstract theoretical
entity defined within a theory of grammar, while an utterance is the issuance of a sentence, a
sentence-analogue, or sentence-fragment, in an actual context. Hence, semantics deals with
“sentence” and “sentence meaning”, while pragmatics deals with “utterance” and “utterance
meaning”.
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 See also: Huang (2007, pp. 10-13); Yule (1996, pp. 3-4)
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17. In -------, a descriptive grammar begins with a deep structure that is semantic and
consists of combinations of semantic features and semantic relations.
1) Generative syntax
2) Generative semantics
3) Interpretive theory
4) Interpretive semantics
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Generative grammar is a linguistic theory that regards grammar as a system of rules that
generates exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given
language. Noam Chomsky first used the term in relation to the theoretical linguistics of
grammar that he developed in the late 1950s. Linguists who follow the generative approach
have been called generativists. The generative school has focused on the study of syntax, but
has also addressed other aspects of a language's structure, including morphology and
phonology.
Interpretive Semantics
Linguistics
The controversy surrounding generative semantics stemmed in part from the competition
between two fundamentally different approaches to semantics within transformational
generative syntax.
The first semantic theories designed to be compatible with transformational syntax were
interpretive. Syntactic rules enumerated a set of well-formed sentences paired with syntactic
structures, each of which was assigned an interpretation by the rules of a separate semantic
theory. This left syntax relatively (though by no means entirely) "autonomous" with respect to
semantics, and was the approach preferred by Chomsky.
Generative Semantics
This theory was initiated by John R. Ross, Paul Postal, and later James McCawley who were
early students of Noam Chomsky. George Lakoff played a great role in developing and
advocating the theory.
This approach developed out of transformational generative grammar in the mid-1960s as
reaction to the work of Chomsky and his early students. Borrowing from Chomsky’s concept
of deep structure (though contrary to Chomsky’s postulations), this theory posits that the deep
structures are the sole input to semantic interpretation. It accounts for meaning directly other
than through syntactic structures. In generative semantics, a descriptive grammar starts with a
deep structure that is semantic and, to some extent pragmatic. The deep structure comprises
combinations of semantic features, semantic relations, performative and presuppositions.
In generative semantics, all meaning resides in the deep structure (sometimes called
logical structure in order to differentiate it from the syntactic deep structure of interpretive
semantics). Syntactic constituent structure rules do not give rise to the deep logical structures
and transformations do not result in changes of the meaning of a sentence. Besides, since the
deep structure is purely semantic, generative semantics appears to be a clever means for
describing paraphrase and ambiguity: both for syntax and for lexical items. Let us consider the
sentences below:
A) In the old westerns, the hero would always kill his opponent in a gunfight.
B) In the old westerns, the hero would always cause his opponent to die in a gunfight.
The sentences above are stylistically distinct. However, they are paraphrase of each other. The
sentences have the same deep semantic structure.
A major difficulty with generative semantics is its failure to provide a detailed account of
how the semantic deep structures are converted into syntactic structures.
To reiterate, in contrast to interpretive semantics, generative semanticists argued that
interpretations were generated directly by the grammar as deep structures, and were
subsequently transformed into recognizable sentences by transformations. This approach
necessitated more complex underlying structures than those proposed by Chomsky, and more
complex transformations as a consequence. Despite this additional complexity, the approach
was appealing in several respects. First, it offered a powerful mechanism for explaining
568
synonymity. In his initial work in generative syntax, Chomsky motivated transformations using
active/passive pairs such as "I hit John" and "John was hit by me", which despite their identical
meanings have quite different surface forms. Generative semanticists wanted to account for all
cases of synonymity in a similar fashion—an impressively ambitious goal before the advent of
more sophisticated interpretive theories in the 1970s. Second, the theory had a pleasingly
intuitive structure: the form of a sentence was quite literally derived from its meaning via
transformations.
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 See also: Aitchison (2003, pp. 31, 210-212); Nazari Bagha (2011)
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Linguistics
18. Which of the following is TRUE?
1) The meaning of a sentence is abstract, but context-dependent.
2) The illocutionary act is the act performed in saying something.
3) There is no distinction between a constative and a performative.
4) Pragmatics treats the meaning of language as something intrinsic and inherent.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Some key statements regarding the differences between semantics and pragmatics are
provided in the table below.
Semantics Pragmatics
1. It deals with sentence meaning. 1. It deals with utterance meaning.
2. It deals with literal meaning. 2. It deals with speaker meaning.
3. Semantics treats the meaning of language 3. It deals with contextual meaning. That is,
as something intrinsic and inherent. That meaning is context-dependent. Meaning
is, meaning is not context-dependent. changes as context changes. Hence,
meaning is not considered intrinsic and
inherent.
4. Semantics studies meaning in isolation, 4. Pragmatics does not study meaning in
not in context. isolation, but in context.
5. The meaning of a sentence is 5. The meaning of an utterance is
decontextualized, and therefore stable. contextualized, and therefore not stable.
6. Sentences should be complete and 7. Utterances do not always take the form of
grammatical. complete sentences. An utterance can be ‘a
word’, ‘a phrase’, ‘a clause’, ‘a sentence’,
‘a paragraph’, or longer stretches of text.
For information on Choice (1), refer to year 97, Items 14 and 16.
For information on Choice (2), refer to year 97, Item 15.
Choices (1) and (2) of this test item are adopted from the following link:
https://wenku.baidu.com/view/e1a523f8240c844769eaeeee.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Yule (1996, pp. 3-4, 48-52)
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569
19. Which of the following is NOT a case of proform test?

1) The man stole the money and disappeared.
2) What do you think of John? I can't stand him.
3) Have you ever been to Kerman? No, I've never been there.
4) Mary will open the gate with her credit card and John will do so, too.
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Choice (1), “The man stole the money and disappeared”, is a case of “conjunction test”, as
Linguistics
can be seen in example (30), Year 94, Item 24, p. 370.
Choice (2), “What do you think of John? I can't stand him”, is a case of “proform test”
because the constituent “John” is substituted with the proform “him”.
Choice (3), “Have you ever been to Kerman? No, I've never been there.”, is a case of
“proform test” because the PP “to Kerman” is substituted with the proform “there”.
Choice (4), “Mary will open the gate with her credit card and John will do so, too.”, is a
case of “proform test” because the proform “do so”.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Akmajian et al. (2010, pp. 175-181); Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 82-87)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
20. Which of the following sentences does not help to test the constituency of eat the
apples in the sentence John could eat the apples?
1) Eat the apples John certainly could!
2) What could John do? Eat the apples!
3) John could do it.
4) John could eat them.
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Choice (1) uses the preposing constituency test appropriately as the whole VP “Eat the
apples” is moved as a unit to the topic position of the sentence.
Choice (2) uses the “Stand-alone Test” or “Question Test” appropriately as the whole VP
“Eat the apples” is used as in the answer to the question.
Choice (3) uses the “Proform Test” appropriately as the whole VP “eat the apples” is
substituted with the proform “do it”. Since the verb “do” is a transitive verb, it requires “it”.
Choice (4) CANNOT help to test the constituency of “eat the apples” because the whole
VP is not substituted for. Rather, the NP within the VP is substituted with the proform “them”.
For explanation on Constituency Test, refer to Year 97, Item 19.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Akmajian et al. (2010, pp. 175-181); Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 82-87);
-----------------------------------------------------------------
570
21. All of the following are claims about the usefulness of an assessment EXCEPT that it
should ---------.
1) promote equitable decisions
2) be free from bias
3) have beneficial consequences
4) be large-scale
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Bachman and Palmer (2010) argue for a framework called Assessment Use Argument. AUA
provides the basis for “justifying” the intended uses of an assessment. This conceptual
framework consists of a series of inferences that link the test taker’s performance to a claim
about assessment records, to a claim about interpretations, to a claim about decisions, and to a
claim about intended consequences, along with warrants and backing to support those claims.
Testing
As indicated by Bachman and Palmer (2010, pp. 90-92), this framework can also be used
for “adopting an existing language assessment” or for “developing a new language assessment”.
To do so, we should take the following steps:
1. We begin by considering the beneficial consequences we want to bring about.
2. Given these intended consequences, we then consider the decisions we need to make to
help bring these about.
3. Next, we determine what aspect of language ability is relevant to making this decision.
4. We then determine what kind of information we need to collect (such as a score or verbal
description of performance) that we can interpret as an indicator of that aspect of language
ability, and whether we need to use an assessment to obtain information about this.
5. Assuming that we decide to use an assessment, we then determine what kind of
performance we need to obtain from test takers that can be observed and interpreted as an
indicator of the aspect we want to assess.
6. Finally we determine what kind of assessment tasks we need to use in order to elicit the
performance we need, and how we will record this performance. This will involve a
decision about whether to use an existing assessment or to develop a new assessment of
our own.
Bachman and Palmer (2010, p. 99) assert that two elements of an AUA are claims and
data. Claims are statements about the inferences to be made on the basis of data and the
qualities of those inferences. A claim thus includes two parts: (1) an outcome of the assessment
process, and (2) one or more qualities of that outcome. Data consist of the information on which
a claim is based. Bachman (2006) has proposed that the basic “building block” of an AUA is a
data-claim inferential link that is structured as described by Toulmin (2003). In other words,
the claims resulting from one inferential link becomes the data that serve as the basis for
the next inference in the chain. The figure below shows that an AUA includes several data-
claim links.
Chapelle (2012, p. 30) asserts that like in their previous book, Bachman and Palmer (2010)
aim to emphasize that what is needed is evidence that justifies test use, and they therefore lay
out how the test developer can present a chain of argumentation in an “assessment use
571
argument.” The chain in an assessment use argument specifies the connections from the
performance of a test taker, to the records resulting from a scoring process, to the interpretations
made of those records, to the decisions that will be made on the basis of the interpretations, and
finally to the consequences that will result from the decisions. In other words, the aim is to fill
in the middle part of what happens between the test takers’ responses and the positive
consequences that are intended to happen as a result.
Consequences
CLAIM (Qualities)
Inference
DATA Decisions
CLAIM (Qualities)
Testing
Inference
DATA Interpretations
(Qualities)
CLAIM
Inference
Assessment
DATA
Record
(Qualities)
CLAIM
Inference
Test taker’s
performance
DATA Assessment
Task
Data-claim inferential links in an Assessment Use Argument
Consequently, AUA includes four general claims for justifying the use of (or about the
usefulness) of an assessment. These four claims are listed in the table below:
572
Four types of claims in an AUA

Claim 1 The consequences of using an assessment and of the decision that are made are
beneficial to stakeholders.
Claim 2 The decisions that are made on the basis of the interpretations:
 take into consideration community values and relevant legal requirements and
 are equitable for those stakeholders who are affected by the decision.
Claim 3 The interpretations about the ability to be assessed are:
 meaningful with respect to a particular learning syllabus, an analysis of the
abilities needed to perform tasks in the Target Language Use (TLU) domain, a
general theory of language ability, or any combination of these,
 impartial to all groups of test takers,
 generalizable to the TLU domain in which the decision is to be made,
 relevant to the decision to be made, and
 sufficient for the decision to be made.
Claim 4 The assessment records (scores, descriptions) are consistent across different
assessment tasks, different aspects of the assessment procedures (e.g., forms
Testing
occasions, raters), and across different groups of test takers.
Consequently, based on Claim 1, an assessment should “have beneficial consequences”, based

on Claim 2, an assessment should “promote equitable decisions”, and based on Claim 3, an
assessment should be “impartial” or “free from bias”.
For a similar item on AUA, refer to Year 92, Item 51.
For similar items on “bias”, refer to Year 91, Items 32 and 42; Year 92, Item 53; Year 93, Items
51 and 52; and Year 97, Item 21.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
22. Assessment is the process of collecting information about something, but the two
qualities that distinguish assessment from other ways of collecting information such as
casual observations are ------------.
1) systematicity and variability
2) justification and ethical considerations
3) systematicity and substantive grounding
4) substantive grounding and ethical considerations
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Bachman (2004) defines assessment as the process of collecting information about a given
object of interest according to procedures that are systematic and substantively grounded. By
systematicity, he means that assessments are designed and implemented in a way that is clearly
described and potentially replicable by other individuals. And by substantively grounded, he
means that assessment must be based on a widely-accepted theory about the nature of language
ability, language use or language learning, or prior research, or accepted and current practice in
a particular field.
573
Bachman and Palmer (2010, pp. 20-21) provide a more accurate explication of assessment.
They remark that assessment is the process of collecting information about something that
we’re interested in, according to procedures that are systematic and substantively grounded
(Bachman 2004, pp. 6-7). The outcome of this process, such as a score or a verbal description,
is referred to as “an assessment.” In a language assessment, what we’re interested in is making
an interpretation about some aspect of the test taker’s language ability. There are two qualities
that distinguish assessments from other ways of collecting information, such as casual
observations, hearsay, or rumors: systematicity and substantive grounding.
First, assessments are systematic – they are designed and carried out according to clearly
defined procedures that are methodical and open to scrutiny by other test developers and
researchers, as well as by stakeholders in the assessment. This means that an assessment
conducted by one person at one time could potentially be replicated by another person at another
time.
The second quality is that assessments are substantively grounded, which means that they
are based on a recognized and verifiable area of content, such as a course syllabus, a widely
accepted theory about the nature of language ability, prior research, including a needs analysis,
or the currently accepted practice in the field.
Testing
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Bachman (2004, p. 7); Bachman and Palmer (2010, pp. 20-21)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
23. All of the following are misconceptions about language testing EXCEPT that ---------.
1) there is no best way to test language ability for any given situation
2) a test is either good or bad, depending on whether it satisfies one particular quality
3) language test development depends on highly technical procedures and should be left to
experts
4) a justifiable test is one that has a clearly articulated Assessment Use Argument and that
is supported by backing
Answer: 1 and 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Those who want to be able to use language tests in the real world have some misconceptions
which lead to some problems. These misconceptions are three types:
1. The misconception that there is one “best” way to test language ability for any given
situation, and thus having unreasonable expectations about what language tests can do
and what they should be.
2. The misconception that language test development depends on highly technical
procedures and should be left to experts.
3. The misconception that a test is either “good” or “bad” depending on whether it satisfies
one particular quality.
Accordingly, both choices (1) and (4) are false. Note that the test developer chose choice (4) as
the correct option and this proves that he/she has committed a typo in choice (1).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
574
24. Accountability means being able to demonstrate to ----------.

1) test users that the test they took was highly practical
2) stakeholders that the assessment was highly dynamic
3) test users that the test they took had a beneficial backwash effect
4) stakeholders that the intended uses of an assessment are justified
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
According to Bachman and Palmer (2010), “being accountable, or accountability, means being
able to demonstrate to stakeholders that the intended uses of our assessment are justified” (p. 92).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Bachman and Palmer (2010, pp. 11, 92)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

1) Both achievement and diagnostic tests should be norm-referenced in nature.
Testing
2) Both placement and achievement tests should be criterion-referenced in nature
3) Both proficiency and placement tests should be criterion-referenced instruments.
4) Both proficiency and placement tests should be norm-referenced instruments.
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Tests have two very different functions:
(1) To make program-level decisions: Tests help teachers and administrators make program
level decisions, such as proficiency and placement decisions. For such decisions, normally
NRTs are employed, and they are summative.
(2) To make classroom-level decisions: Tests help teachers make classroom-level decisions,
such as diagnostic and achievement decisions. For such decisions, normally CRTs are
employed and they are formative.
1. Program-Level Decisions
1.1. Proficiency decisions
Sometimes, teachers and administrators need to make decisions based on the students’ general
levels of language proficiency. The focus of such decisions is usually on the general knowledge
or skills prerequisite to entry or exit from some type of institution, for example, American
universities. Such proficiency decisions are necessary in setting up entrance and exit standards
for a curriculum, in adjusting the level of program objectives to the students’ abilities, or in
making comparisons between programs. In other words, teachers and administrators must make
a variety of curricular and administrative decisions on the basis of overall proficiency
information.
One example is the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), which is used by
many American universities that have English language proficiency prerequisites in common
(see Educational Testing Service, 1992, 1994). Understandably, such tests are very general in
nature and cannot be related to the goals and objectives of any particular language program.
Another example of the general nature of proficiency tests is the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines
(American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, 1986). Although proficiency tests
575
may contain subtests for each skill, the testing of the skills remains very general, and the
resulting scores can only serve as overall indicators of proficiency.
1.2. Placement decisions

Placement decisions usually have the goal of grouping together students of similar ability
levels. Teachers benefit from placement decisions because their classes contain students with
relatively homogeneous ability levels. As a result, teachers can focus on the problems and
learning points appropriate for that level of student. To that end, placement tests are designed
to help decide what each student’s appropriate level will be within a specific program, skill
area, or course. The purpose of such tests is to reveal which students have more of, or less of, a
particular knowledge or skill so that students with similar levels of ability can be grouped
together.
Put another way, a general proficiency test might be useful for determining which language
program is most appropriate for a student; once in that program, a placement test would be
necessary to determine the level of study from which the student would most benefit. Both
proficiency and placement tests should be norm-referenced instruments because decisions
must be made on the students’ relative knowledge or skill levels.
Testing
2. Classroom-Level Decisions
2.1. Achievement decisions
All language teachers are in the business of fostering achievement in the form of language
learning. In fact, the purpose of most language programs is to maximize the possibilities for
students to achieve a high degree of language learning. Hence, sooner or later, most language
teachers will find themselves interested in making achievement decisions. Achievement
decisions are decisions about the amount of learning that students have done. Such decisions
may involve who will be advanced to the next level of study or which students should graduate.
Teachers may find themselves wanting to make rational decisions that will help to improve
achievement in their language programs. Or they may find a need to make and justify changes
in curriculum design, staffing, facilities, materials, equipment, and so on. Such decisions should
most often be made with the aid of achievement test scores.
2.2. Diagnostic decisions.

From time to time, teachers may also take an interest in assessing the strengths and weaknesses
of each individual student vis-a-vis the instructional objectives for purposes of correcting an
individual’s deficiencies “before it is too late.” Diagnostic decisions are aimed at fostering
achievement by promoting strengths and eliminating the weaknesses of individual students.
For similar items on “CRT”, “NRT”, and “Domain-referenced testing”, refer to Year 91, Item
41; Year 92, Items 48 and 52; Year 93, Item 54; Year 94, Item 31; Year 96, Items 21, 38, 39,
and 40; and Year 97, Items 25, 27, and 33.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------

1) Task-based assessment is a type of performance assessment.
2) Performance assessment is a type of task-based assessment.
3) Task-based assessment is a type of alternative assessment.
4) Dynamic assessment is a type of task-based assessment.
576
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
McKay (2006, pp. 134-135) states that task-based assessment is a kind of performance-
based assessment. Performance-based assessment involves the observation of behavior in the
real world, or of simulated behavior in a real-life task. The principles of alternative assessment,
authentic assessment, criterion-referenced assessment and divergent assessment reflect, with
variations, the basic idea that assessment is best done through samples of learners’ real language
use, rather than through discrete-point items that assess aspects of the learners’ knowledge of
the language.
Tasks are defined as involving learners in purposeful, goal-oriented language use, specific
to a certain situation. Many classroom activities can be used as assessment tasks. Selecting tasks
and procedures for assessment involves great care, as bad decisions can cause disadvantage for
all learners, or for a particular group of learners, or for an individual. Tasks and procedures
should, for example, suit the characteristics of the learners, bias for best, engage the learners
intellectually, assess the most relevant abilities and draw from multiple sources of information.
If teachers have an opportunity to analyze tasks more closely, preferably with other teachers,
they will gradually gain a professional framework that will help them to analyze assessment
Testing
tasks more efficiently.
Assessment tasks and procedures need to be ‘useful’ (Bachman and Palmer, 1996). Tasks
and procedures should be reliable (the learner should get the same results if another teacher
were to assess their work, or if they were to be assessed in the same way again tomorrow); have
construct validity (the interpretations that are made should be meaningful and appropriate), be
authentic (the task should reflect children’s real language use), be interactive (they should
involve language ability in accomplishing the task); be practical, and have positive impact (a
positive effect on the learners, teachers, parents and others affected by the assessment).
The analysis of tasks for ‘usefulness’ can be carried out using a framework of task
characteristics (adopted from Bachman and Palmer 1966). Three purposes can be achieved
using the framework – firstly, analyzing to check if the chosen task reflects the intended real-
life task, that is, whether it is authentic; secondly, to check fairness; and thirdly, to check for
additional support needs amongst the learners.
For items on “performance assessment, refer to Year 91, Item 38; and Year 94, Item 40.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: McKay (2006, pp. 134-135)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
27. The criteria used to judge the quality of items in a criterion-referenced test are ------.
1) content applicability and item discrimination
2) content congruence and content applicability
3) content congruence and item discrimination
4) item difficulty and item facility
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Item analysis techniques in language testing can be categorized as follows:
577
1. Norm-Referenced Item Analysis

a. Qualitative: Item format analysis
b. Quantitative:
(1) Item facility analysis
(2) Item discrimination
2. Criterion-Referenced Item Analysis
a. Qualitative: Item quality analysis (for the analysis of content)
(1) Content congruence
(2) Content applicability
b. Quantitative:
(1) The difference Index
(2) The B-Index
Note that in content congruence the test developer is concerned with judging the degree to
which an item is measuring what it was designed to assess, and in content applicability, the test
developer is concerned with judging the degree to which the content is appropriate for a given
course or program.
Testing
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
28. Sociolinguistic competence, in Bachman's (1990) model of communicative competence,

includes all of the following EXCEPT----------.
1) sensitivity to naturalness
2) sensitivity to differences in register
3) ability to interpret the intention of the speaker
4) ability to interpret cultural references and figures of speech
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Bachman (1990, pp. 87, 94-98) provides a model of communicative competence and identifies
the components of Language Competence. For the schematic representation of this model,
please refer to Year 93, Item 3.
Generally, language competence comprises two types of competence, organizational and
pragmatic. Organizational competence includes the knowledge employed in creating or
recognizing grammatically correct utterances, in comprehending their propositional content,
and in organizing them to form oral or written texts.
Pragmatic competence includes the types of knowledge which, in addition to
organizational competence, are employed in the contextualized performance and interpretation
of socially appropriate illocutionary acts in discourse. These competencies include the
knowledge of language functions (i.e. illocutionary competence), of sociolinguistic rules of
appropriateness, and of cultural references and figurative language.
578
Sociolinguistic competence
While illocutionary competence enables us to use language to express a wide range of functions,
and to interpret the illocutionary force of utterances or discourse, the appropriateness of these
functions and how they are performed varies from one language use context to the next,
according to a myriad of sociocultural and discoursal features. Sociolinguistic competence is
the sensitivity to, or control of the conventions of language use that are determined by the
features of the specific language use context; it enables us to perform language functions in
ways that are appropriate to that context.
Sociolinguistic competence includes:

(1) Sensitivity to differences in dialect or variety
(2) Sensitivity to differences in register
(3) Sensitivity to naturalness
(4) Ability to interpret cultural references and figures of speech
For items related to Bachman’s Model of language competence, refer to Year 93, Item 3; and
Year 97, Item 39.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Testing
 See also: Bachman (1990, pp. 87, 94-98); J. D. Brown (2005, p. 170); Read (2001, p. 6)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
29. The three defining characteristics of Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) testing
are--------------.
1) text authenticity, specificity of needs, and inseparability of language and content
2) authenticity of task, specificity of needs, and inseparability of language and content
3) authenticity of task, specificity of content, and interaction between language and
content knowledge
4) text authenticity, specificity of content, and interaction between language and content
knowledge
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Testing language for specific purposes (LSP) refers to that branch of language testing in which
the test content and test methods are derived from an analysis of a specific language use
situation, such as Spanish for Business, Japanese for Tour Guides, Italian for Language
Teachers, or English for Air Traffic Control. LSP tests are usually contrasted with general
purpose language tests, in which purpose is more broadly defined, as in the Test of English as
a Foreign Language (TOEFL) (Educational Testing Service, 1965). It is important to note that
tests are not either general purpose or specific purpose – all tests are developed for some
purpose – but that there is a continuum of specificity from very general to very specific, and a
given test may fall at any point on the continuum. Note also that LSP testing is a special case
of communicative language testing, since both are based on a theoretical construct of
contextualized communicative language ability, and that LSP tests are no different in terms of
the qualities of good testing practice from other types of language tests.
It should also be noted that, over the years since its beginnings, specific purpose language
testing has been criticized on a number of grounds: specific purpose language proficiency is
really just general purpose language proficiency with technical vocabulary thrown in; we don't
need specific purpose tests since, if we test general language knowledge, specific uses will take
579
care of themselves; specific purpose language tests are unreliable and invalid since subject
knowledge interferes with the measurement of language knowledge; there is no theoretical
justification for specific purpose language testing; and specific purpose language testing is
impossible anyway, since the logical end of specificity is a test for one person at one point in
time.
In his book, Douglas (2002) intends to refute these and other arguments in favor of the
view that specific purpose language tests are indeed necessary, reliable, valid, and theoretically
well-motivated. Typically, LSP tests have been construed as those involving language for
academic purposes and for occupational or professional purposes. Readers may wish to have a
look at the following publications for further information on the field of language for specific
purposes, of which LSP testing is certainly a part: Swales (1985) for a discussion of the
development of the field, and Dudley-Evans and St John (1998) for a discussion of current
developments.
Douglas (2000) focuses on two aspects of LSP testing that may be said to distinguish it
from more general purpose language testing: authenticity of task and the interaction between
language knowledge and specific purpose content knowledge.
Authenticity of task means that the LSP test tasks should share critical features of tasks in
the target language use situation of interest to the test takers. The intent of linking the test tasks
Testing
to non-test tasks in this way is to increase the likelihood that the test taker will carry out the test
task in the same way as the task would be carried out in the actual target situation.
The interaction between language knowledge and content, or background, knowledge is
perhaps the clearest defining feature of LSP testing, for in more general purpose language
testing, the factor of background knowledge is usually seen as a confounding variable,
contributing to measurement error and to be minimized as much as possible. In LSP testing, on
the other hand, background knowledge is a necessary, integral part of the concept of specific
purpose language ability.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Douglas (2000, pp. 1-2)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
30. Multiple-trait scoring refers to -------------.

1) a holistic rating scale that includes features of the specific test task
2) an analytic rating scale that includes features of the specific test task
3) use of a rating scale or rubric in which each category of concern is rated separately
4) use of a rating scale or rubric in which the performance is given just one overall rating
Answer: 1 (The answer provided by Sazman Sanjesh, i.e. (2), is wrong)

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
There are different types of rating scales used for scoring speech samples. One of the
traditional distinctions is between holistic and analytic rating scales. The classic definition of
holistic assessment is provided by Cooper (1977, p. 4) in the context of writing assessment. He
says holistic assessment is:
any procedure which stops short of enumerating linguistic, rhetorical, or
informational features of a piece of writing. Some holistic procedures may specify
a number of particular features and even require that each feature be scored
separately, but the reader is never required to stop and count or tally incidents of
the feature.
580
Analytic assessment is the reverse, namely, counting or tallying incidents. For Hamp-Lyons
(1991) holistic assessment can be broken down into ‘holistic scoring’, ‘primary-trait scoring’
and ‘multiple-trait scoring’. These are defined as:
 Holistic scoring: A single score is given to each speech sample either impressionistically,
or guided by a rating scale. This single score is designed to encapsulate all the features of
the sample, representing ‘overall quality’. This type of scoring is problematic because it
does not take into account the constructs that make up speaking, but just ‘speaking’. And
if speaking is made up of constructs, ‘speaking’ is more like a theory than a construct. A
single score may not do justice to the complexity of speaking.
 Primary-trait scoring: This approach assumes that one can only judge a speech sample in
its context, and so rating criteria should be developed for each individual task. This would
be the natural approach to scoring that would accompany the ‘new behaviorism’ associated
with the variationist position in task research.
 Multiple-trait scoring: Providing multiple scores for each speech sample, with each score
representative of some (1) feature of the performance, or (2) construct underlying the
performance. In the former case the multiple traits are task specific, as in primary-trait
Testing
scoring. In the latter, by relating scores directly to constructs rather than tasks, the scores
may be generalized across a range of task types. While it is clearly impossible to score each
and every construct in even a simple definition of ‘speaking’, multiple-trait scoring does
offer the possibility that the scores are sensitive to more constructs, with the added
advantage that diagnostic information is also available for those score users who require it.
The main disadvantage of multiple-trait scoring is that frequently raters cannot make the
distinctions required to assign three or four separate grades for one speech sample. The
tendency to give the same grade across categories, the ‘halo effect’, has come to be known
as ‘cross-contamination’ (Alderson, 1981).
Thus, multiple-trait scoring is a holistic rating scale, and the best choice is option (1). This
is also clearly put in the following table provided by Fulcher (2003, p. 91):
A framework for describing rating scales

Orientation:
 User
 Assessor
 Constructor
Scoring:
 Analytic Approach
 Holistic Approach
 Holistic scoring
 Primary-trait scoring
 Multiple-trait scoring
Focus:
 Real World
 Construct
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Fulcher (2003, p. 90)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
581
31. All of the following are dimensions related to vocabulary assessment EXCEPT-------.
1) discreteness versus embeddedness
2) open-endedness versus closed-endedness
3) selectiveness versus comprehensiveness
4) context-dependence versus context-independence
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Three Dimensions of Vocabulary Assessment
Read (2001, pp. 7-13) identifies three dimensions of vocabulary assessment. These are
summarized in the following comparative table:
Defining
feature
Discrete Embedded
A measure of vocabulary A measure of vocabulary
knowledge or use of an which forms part of the
Testing
Construct
independent construct assessment of some other,
larger construct
Selective Comprehensive
A measure in which specific A measure which takes
vocabulary items are the account of the whole
focus of the assessment vocabulary content of the
Range input material (reading/
listening tasks) or the test-
taker’s response (writing/
speaking tasks)
Context-independent Context-dependent
A vocabulary measure in A vocabulary measure which
which the test-taker can assesses the test-taker’s
Context produce the expected ability to take account of
response without referring contextual information in
to any context order to produce the expected
response
Read (2001) outlines two contrasting perspectives on the role of vocabulary in language
assessment. (1) One point of view is that it is perfectly sensible to write tests that measure
whether learners know the meaning and usage of a set of words, taken as independent semantic
units. (2) The other view is that vocabulary must always be assessed in the context of a
language-use task, where it interacts in a natural way with other components of language
knowledge. To some extent, the two views are complementary in that they relate to different
purposes of assessment. Conventional vocabulary tests are most likely to be used by classroom
teachers for assessing progress in vocabulary learning and diagnosing areas of weakness. Other
users of these tests are researchers in second language acquisition with a special interest in how
learners develop their knowledge of, and ability to use, target-language words. On the other
hand, researchers in language testing and those who undertake large testing projects tend to be
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more concerned with the design of tests that assess learners' achievement or proficiency on a
broader scale. For such purposes, vocabulary knowledge has a lower profile, except to the
extent that it contributes to, or detracts from, the performance of communicative tasks.
As with most dichotomies, the distinction he has made between the two perspectives on
vocabulary assessment oversimplifies the matter. There is a whole range of reasons for
assessing vocabulary knowledge and use, with a corresponding variety of testing procedures.
In order to map out the scope of the subject, he proposes three dimensions, as presented in the
table above.
The dimensions represent ways in which we can expand our conventional ideas about what
a vocabulary test is in order to include a wider range of lexical assessment procedures. The
dimensions are introduced in detail below.
Discrete – embedded
The first dimension focuses on the construct which underlies the assessment instrument. In
language testing, the term construct refers to the mental attribute or ability that a test is designed
to measure. In the case of a traditional vocabulary test, the construct can usually be labelled as
‘vocabulary knowledge’ of some kind. The practical significance of defining the construct is
that it allows us to clarify the meaning of the test results. Normally we want to interpret the
Testing
scores on a vocabulary test as a measure of some aspect of the learners' vocabulary knowledge,
such as their progress in learning words from the last several units in the course book, their
ability to supply derived forms of base words (like scientist and scientific, from science), or
their skill at inferring the meaning of unknown words in a reading passage.
Thus, a discrete test takes vocabulary knowledge as a distinct construct, separated from
other components of language competence. Whether it is valid to do so is a matter for debate.
However, most existing vocabulary tests are designed on the assumption that it is meaningful
to treat them as an independent construct for assessment purposes and can thus be classified as
discrete measures.
In contrast, an embedded vocabulary measure is one that contributes to the assessment of
a larger construct. An example of such a measure is Bachman and Palmer's task of writing a
proposal for the improvement of university admissions procedures. In this case, the construct
can be labelled ‘academic writing ability’, and the vocabulary scale is one of five ratings which
form a composite measure of the construct. Another example of an embedded measure is found
in reading tasks consisting of a written text followed by a set of comprehension questions. It is
common practice to include in such tests a number of items assessing the learners'
understanding of particular words or phrases in the text. Usually the vocabulary item scores are
not separately counted; they simply form part of the measure of the learners' ‘reading-
comprehension ability’. In that sense, vocabulary assessment is more embedded here than in
the academic-writing test, where the vocabulary rating may well be included in a profile report
of each learner's writing ability.
It is important to understand that the discrete–embedded distinction does not refer
primarily to the way that vocabulary is presented to the test-takers. Many discrete vocabulary
tests do require the learners to respond to words which are presented in isolation or in a short
sentence, but this is not what makes the test discrete. Rather, it is the fact that the test is focusing
purely on the construct of vocabulary knowledge. A test can present words in quite a large
amount of context and still be a discrete measure. For instance, we can take a suitable reading
passage, select a number of content words or phrases in it and write a multiple-choice item for
each one, designed to assess whether learners can understand what the vocabulary item means
as it is used in the text. This may appear to be very much the same kind of test as the one
described above to illustrate what an embedded measure is, but the crucial difference is that in
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this case all the items are based on vocabulary in the passage and we interpret the test score as
measuring how well the learners can understand what those words and phrases mean. We do
not see it as assessing their reading comprehension ability or any other broader construct. Thus,
to determine whether a particular vocabulary measure is discrete or embedded, you need to
consider its purpose and the way the results are to be interpreted.
Selective – comprehensive
The second dimension concerns the range of vocabulary to be included in the assessment. A
conventional vocabulary test is based on a set of target words selected by the test-writer, and
the test-takers are assessed according to how well they demonstrate their knowledge of the
meaning or use of those words. This is what Read (2001) calls a selective vocabulary measure.
The target words may either be selected as individual words and then incorporated into separate
test items, or alternatively the test-writer first chooses a suitable text and then uses certain words
from it as the basis for the vocabulary assessment.
On the other hand, a comprehensive measure takes account of all the vocabulary content
of a spoken or written text. For example, let us take a speaking test in which the learners are
rated on various criteria, including their range of expression. In this case, the raters are not
listening for particular words or expressions but in principle are forming a judgement of the
Testing
quality of the test-takers’ overall vocabulary use. Similarly, some researchers have investigated
productive vocabulary use by setting learners a written composition task and then counting the
number of different words or the number of 'sophisticated', low-frequency words used.
Comprehensive measures can also be applied to the input material for reading or listening
tests. It is common practice for test-writers to use a readability measure as one way of judging
the suitability of a text for the assessment of a particular group of test-takers. Readability
formulas almost always include a vocabulary component, typically in the form of a calculation
of the percentage of 'long' words in the text. It is well established in English that there is an
inverse relationship between the length of a word and its frequency of occurrence in the
language, which means that a text with a high proportion of long words is likely to challenge
the learners both linguistically and conceptually. Although of course other factors influence
readability and listenability as well, the use of a readability formula in this way illustrates a
vocabulary-assessment measure that is both comprehensive and embedded.
Context-independent – context-dependent
The role of context, which is an old issue in vocabulary testing, is the basis for the third
dimension. Traditionally contextualization has meant that a word is presented to test-takers in
a sentence rather than as an isolated element. From a contemporary perspective, it is necessary
to broaden the notion of context to include whole texts and, more generally, discourse. In
addition, we need to recognize that contextualization is more than just a matter of the way in
which vocabulary is presented. The key question is to what extent the test-takers are being
assessed on the basis of their ability to engage with the context provided in the test. In other
words, do they have to make use of contextual information in order to give the appropriate
response to the test task, or can they just respond as if the words were in isolation?
We can illustrate the distinction by looking at a vocabulary item embedded in a reading-
comprehension test.
Humans have an innate ability to recognize the taste of salt because it provides
us with sodium, an element which is essential to life. Although too much salt in
our diet may be unhealthy, we must consume a certain amount of it to maintain
our wellbeing.
What is the meaning of consume in this text?
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a. use up completely
b. eat or drink
c. spend wastefully
d. destroy
The point about this test item is that all four options are possible meanings of the word consume.
Thus, the test-takers need some understanding of the context in order to be confident that they
have chosen the correct option, rather than simply relying on the fact that they have learned 'eat
and drink' as the meaning of consume. To that extent, the item is context dependent.
The issue of context dependence also arises with cloze tests, in which words are
systematically deleted from a text and the test-takers' task is to write a suitable word in each
blank space. Language testing researchers have debated whether cloze-test items can mostly be
answered correctly just by looking at the immediate context of the blank (the phrase or clause
in which it occurs), or whether it is necessary to draw on information from the wider context of
the passage in many cases. Some researchers have made detailed analyses of the contextual
information required to respond to individual cloze items, while others have sought to show
more globally that cloze-test items are or are not context dependent in a broad sense. Thus, the
degree of context dependence can be approached either as a characteristic of individual test
Testing
items or as a property of the test as a whole.
Generally speaking, vocabulary measures embedded in writing and speaking tasks are
context dependent in that the learners are assessed on the appropriateness of their vocabulary
use in relation to the task.
Judgements about appropriateness take us beyond the text to consider the wider social
context. For instance, take a proficiency test in which the test-takers are doctors and the test
task is a role play simulating a consultation with a patient. If vocabulary use is one of the criteria
used in rating the doctors' performance, they need to demonstrate an ability to meet the lexical
requirements of the situation; for example: understanding the colloquial expressions that
patients use for common symptoms and ailments, explaining medical concepts in lay terms,
avoiding medical jargon, offering reassurance to someone who is upset or anxious, giving
advice in a suitable tone and so on. Vocabulary use in the task is thus influenced by the doctor's
status as a highly educated professional, the expected role relationship in a consultation and the
affective dimension of the situation. This is a much broader view of context than we are used
to thinking of in relation to vocabulary testing, but a necessary one nonetheless if we are to
assess vocabulary in contemporary performance tests.
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 See also: Read (2001, pp. 7-13)
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32. The three frames of reference to base construct definition on are -----------.
1) needs analysis, topical knowledge, and strategic competence
2) language instruction syllabus, topical knowledge, and strategic competence
3) language instruction syllabus, theory of language ability, and performance on tasks
4) needs analysis, language instruction syllabus, and theory of language ability
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Frame of Reference for the Construct Definition
One of the first considerations we need to take into account is the need to provide a frame of
reference for our construct definition that is meaningful to all stakeholders, including ourselves
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as test developers. In virtually all language assessment situations, this frame of reference will
be (1) a course syllabus, (2) a needs analysis of TLU (Target Language Use) tasks, (3) a
theory of language ability, or some combination of these. Whichever frame of reference we
use, the definition of the construct should be stated in terms that the stakeholders reading the
AUA (Assessment Use Argument) can relate to and understand. There may be different
versions of the AUA for different audiences. Thus, the construct definition may be defined in
technical terms for the test developers, as part of the Design Statement or Blueprint, while it
will typically be stated in more general language for other stakeholder groups.
1. Construct definitions based on a language instructional syllabus

If an assessment is to be used in an instructional setting to diagnose areas of strength and
weakness or to assess the achievement of specific syllabus objectives, we will then most likely
base the construct definition on the specific components of language ability that are included in
the course syllabus. This course syllabus, in turn, is likely to be based, at least implicitly and in
part, on a theory of language ability. For example, suppose we were teaching a set of specific
grammatical structures, and wanted to develop an achievement test to measure students' ability
to use them, so as to provide feedback on mastery of these specific teaching points. We might
prepare a definition of the construct "ability to use grammatical structures accurately," which
Testing
included a list of the structures we had taught, such as article usage, use of the past tense,
subject-verb agreement, and so forth.
Syllabus-based construct definitions can be written at different degrees of technicality,
depending upon the audiences for whom the AUA is written. For example, if an AUA is written
for experienced language teachers, a construct definition might be stated in quite technical
terms, such as “knowledge of the tense-aspect-modal system in English.” For other
stakeholders, the definition might be stated in more general terms, such as “knowledge of
English verbs.”
2. Construct definitions based on a needs analysis

In other cases, such as the use of assessments for determining admission into an academic
program, or for making decisions about employment, where there may not be a language
instructional syllabus, we will most likely base the definition of the construct on a needs
analysis of the language that is required to perform TLU tasks. In general, needs analysis, or
needs assessment, involves the systematic gathering of specific information about the language
use needs of learners and the analysis of this information for purposes of language syllabus
design. The procedures of needs analysis can be adapted for the purposes of assessment
development.
3. Construct definitions based on a theory of language ability

In some situations, there is either no common syllabus upon which to base a construct
definition, or the target language use domain may be too broad and varied to conduct a needs
analysis. In such situations, we may base our construct definition solely on a theory of language
ability. Large-scale language tests such as the TOEFL and the IELTS, for example, are intended
to be taken by prospective college and university students from all over the world, so they
cannot be based on a course syllabus. Furthermore, scores from these assessments are used by
a wide variety of tertiary institutions in many different countries to make admissions decisions,
so that the results of a needs analysis can provide only general guidelines for defining the
constructs to be assessed. Tests that are based on a theory of language ability are commonly
referred to as "proficiency" tests.
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Another situation in which construct definition may be informed entirely by a theory of

language is that of research settings, such as studies investigating the nature of language ability
and how it can be measured. For example, in a series of research studies conducted in the early
1980s, researchers used complex research designs and statistical analyses to investigate whether
or not tests could be developed whose scores were capable of distinguishing among different
hypothesized components of language ability (See, for example, the papers in Oller (1983), and
in Palmer, Groot, and Trosper (1981), and studies by Bachman and Palmer (1980, 1981).). The
constructs in these studies were informed entirely by theories of language ability similar to the
one described by Bachman and Palmer (2010, pp. 33-58). Another example would be in studies
investigating the nature of second language acquisition or learning, in which tests based on a
theory of language ability may be used as indicators of learners’ levels of acquisition in different
areas of language knowledge.
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33. Both domain-referenced and objectives-referenced tests describe variant ---------.
1) sampling techniques within the overall concept of criterion-referenced testing
Testing
2) elicitation techniques within the overall concept of criterion-referenced testing
3) elicitation techniques within the overall concept of norm-referenced testing
4) sampling techniques within the overall concept of norm-referenced testing
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Domain Score Dependability
All the threshold loss and squared-error loss agreement coefficients have been criticized
because they are dependent in one way or another on the cut-score. Alternative approaches,
called the domain score estimates of dependability, have the advantage of being independent of
the cut-score. However, they apply to domain-referenced interpretations rather than to all
criterion-referenced interpretations. Domain- referenced tests (DRTs) are defined here as a type
of CRT that is distinguished primarily by the way in which items are sampled. For DRTs, the
items are sampled from a general, but well-defined, domain of behaviors rather than from
individual course objectives as is often the case in what might be called objectives-referenced
tests (ORTs). The results on a DRT can therefore be used to describe a student’s status with
regard to that domain in a manner similar to the way in which ORT results are used to describe
the student’s status on small subtests for each course objective. Thus, the terms domain-
referenced and objectives-referenced describe variant sampling techniques within the
overall concept of criterion-referenced testing. Since objectives-referenced tests define a
domain of their own, but within the scope of the course objectives, the analyses appropriate for
DRTs are also appropriate for ORTs. One way of analyzing the consistency of domain-
referenced tests (and by extension, objectives-referenced tests) is the phi coefficient.
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34. The two sources of inconsistency in test-retest method of estimating reliability are----
------------.
1) differential practice effects and differential changes in ability
2) independence and differential changes in ability
3) differential practice effects and nonequivalence
4) nonequivalence and independence
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Stability (test-retest reliability)
As indicated by Bachman (1990), for tests such as cloze and dictation we cannot appropriately
estimate the internal consistency of the scores because of the interdependence of the parts of
the test. There are also testing situations in which it may be necessary to administer a test more
than once. For example, if a researcher were interested in measuring subjects’ language ability
at several different points in time, as part of a time-series design, she would like to rule out the
possibility that changes in observed test scores were a result of increasing familiarity with the
test. This might also be the concern of a language program evaluator who is interested in relating
Testing
changes in language ability to teaching and learning activities in the program. In situations such
as these, reliability can be estimated by giving the test more than once to the same group of
individuals. This approach to reliability is called the ‘test-retest’ approach, and it provides an
estimate of the stability of the test scores over time.
In this approach, we administer the test twice to a group of individuals and then compute
the correlation between the two sets of scores. This correlation can then be interpreted as an
indication of how stable the scores are over time. The primary concern in this approach is
assuring that the individuals who take the test do not themselves change differentially in any
systematic way between test administrations. That is, we must assume that both practice and
learning (or unlearning) effects are either uniform across individuals or random. Practice effects
may occur if certain individuals remember some of the items or feel more comfortable with the
test method, and consequently perform better on the second administration of the test. If, on the
other hand, there is a considerable time lapse between test administrations, some individuals’
language ability may actually improve or decline more than that of others, causing them to
perform differently the second time. In either case, these systematic changes will be a source
of inconsistency in test scores.
These two sources of inconsistency – differential practice effects and differential changes
in ability – pose a dilemma for the test-retest approach, since providing a relatively long time
between test administrations will tend to minimize the practice effects, while providing greater
opportunity for differences in learning. Giving the test twice with little time between, on the other
hand, minimizes the effects of learning, but may enhance practice effects. For this reason, there
is no single length of time between test administrations that is best for all situations. In each
situation, the test developer or user must attempt to determine the extent to which practice and
learning are likely to influence test performance, and choose the length of time between test and
retest so as to optimize reduction in the effects of both. It should be noted here that a more serious
problem inherent in this approach is that test-retest differences due to practice effect – test method
facets – are fundamentally different from test-retest differences that are due to changes in ability.
That is, the former are clearly due to factors other than the ability being tested, and hence can
legitimately be treated as error. Differences due to changes in ability, however, might more
appropriately be interpreted as a function of test takers’ ‘true scores’.
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35. What kind of classification error occurs when a test taker is classified as a master
when his or her domain score is below the cut-off score?
1) Type I
2) Type II
3) False positive
4) False negative
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Incorrect Decisions/Classification Errors
There are two types of incorrect decisions or classification errors.
(1) False positive classification errors occur when a student or a program has been mistakenly
Testing
classified as having satisfied a given level of achievement.
(2) False negative classification errors occur when a student or program has been mistakenly
classified as not having satisfied a given level of achievement.
Bachman (1990)
Classification errors
Whenever we make a mastery/nonmastery classification decision, there are two possible types
of errors that can occur. A ‘false positive’ classification error occurs when we classify the test
taker as a master when his domain score is in fact below the cut-off score. If, on the other hand,
we incorrectly classify him as a nonmaster when his domain score is above the cut-off, we
speak of a ‘false negative’ classification error. For more discussion, refer to Bachman (1990,
p. 216). However, the same discussion is provided by Bachman (2004, pp. 198-204).
Bachman (2004)
Whenever we make a classification decision, there is a certain probability that we will make
an error. A false positive classification error is when we classify a test taker into the higher, or
mastery, group, when his ability is actually at the level of the lower, non-mastery group. A false
negative classification error, on the other hand, is when we classify a test taker into the lower
group, when his ability is actually at the level of the higher group. The costs associated with
these classification errors will not always be the same. For example, in using test scores for
placing students into an academic language program, false positive decisions are generally more
costly than false negatives. This is because it is typically easier to move a student who is
misplaced too low to the next higher level than it is to move a student who is misplaced too
high into the next lower level. In other situations, such as using test scores to identify students
who may benefit from a tutoring service, the program may want to make sure that it does not
erroneously deny services to students who might benefit, and so may decide that it is best to try
to minimize the false negatives.
In addition to considering the relative costs associated with false positive and negative
classification errors, we need to decide whether misclassifications near the cut score are equally
serious as misclassifications far from the cut score. When we use observe scores for making
classification decisions, these scores will have a certain amount of measurement error
associated with them, and hence there will be a certain probability that we will make some
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classification errors on the basis of these observed scores. There is also a probability that some
of these classification errors will involve scores that are relatively close to the cut score, while
other errors will involve scores that are relatively far from the cut score. Thus, we need to decide
if we consider decision errors for scores far from the cut score to be more serious than errors
for scores near the cut score, or whether we consider all decision errors to be equally serious,
irrespective of how far they are from the cut score. For example, if we had set the cut score at
50, and knew that we had misclassified a test taker with an observed score of 49 as a non-master
(false negative), would this be as serious as if we misclassified a test taker with a score of 40 as
a non-master? Or would we consider both classification errors to be equally serious? The
decision we make, regarding how we will consider the seriousness of classification errors, will
determine the approach we will take to estimating the dependability of classification decisions.
Threshold Loss Agreement Indices

If we consider all classification errors to be equally serious, irrespective of how far they are
from the cut score, we will calculate a threshold loss agreement index.
Squared-error Loss Agreement Indices

In situations where misclassification errors far from the cut score are considered more serious
Testing
than those near the cut score, the appropriate approach to estimating agreement is a squared-
error loss agreement index. Two of these have been developed: phi lambda, Φλ, and kappa
squared, κ2(X,Tx).
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 See also: Bachman (1990, p. 216); Bachman (2004, pp. 198-204)
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36. Which of the following statements is NOT true about the real-life approach to
authenticity?
1) It regards the concepts of proficiency and authenticity as virtually identical.
2) It advocates tests that will involve the test taker in interpretation of illocutionary acts.
3) It views authenticity as the extent to which test tasks replicate real-life language use
tasks.
4) It defines language proficiency as the ability to perform language tasks in non-test
situations.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Authenticity Debate (in brief)
The definition of the term ‘authenticity’ as applied to second language instruction and
assessment has been a subject of great debate for over three decades. The inception of
authenticity in applied linguistics can be dated back to the emergence of Communicative
Language Teaching (CLT) in the 1970s.
Some scholars have argued that language tests are by definition inauthentic as they do not
match real-life language use features. In this regard, Klein-Braley (1985) states that ‘if
authenticity means real-life behavior, then any language testing procedure is non-authentic’ (p.
76). Similarly, Spolsky (1985), citing Searle’s distinction between real questions and exam
questions, states:
from this analysis we are forced to the conclusion that testing is not authentic language
behavior, that examination questions are not real, however much like real-life questions
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they seem, and that an examinee needs to learn the special rules of examinations before
he or she can take part in them successfully (p. 36).
Along the same line, Stevenson (1985) maintains that the situation of examiner-candidate
cannot be supposed to be representative of 'real- life communication' as both participants are
aware that it is a test.
On the other hand, it may be argued that language tests have their own authenticity.
Concerning the authenticity of language tests, Alderson (1981) posits that:
The authenticity argument . . . seems to assume that the domains of language teaching
and language testing do not have their own set of specifications for language use which
are distinct from the specifications of other domains. Thus ‘What is this? - It’s a pencil’
is authentic language-teaching language, and so on. If one does not accept this, then
authentic tasks are in principle impossible in a language testing situation. (p. 48)
To resolve the dilemma of authenticity, we may resort to the definition proposed by
Widdowson. Distinguishing between ‘genuineness’ and ‘authenticity’, Widdowson (1978)
emphasized the reader’s significant role in text comprehension, and the importance of
authenticity in L2 instruction. “Genuineness is a characteristic of the passage itself and is an
Testing
absolute quality. Authenticity is a characteristic of the relationship between the passage and the
reader and has to do with appropriate response.” (Widdowson, 1978, p. 80). Accordingly,
elsewhere Widdowson (1979, p. 161) considered genuineness as a quality of texts, and
authenticity as an attribute ‘bestowed’ on texts by the audience. In other words, Widdowson’s
concept of authenticity is concerned with the importance of the interaction between the
audience and the text.
Following Widdowson (1978), Bachman (1990, 1991) distinguished between two types of
authenticity:
situational authenticity – that is, the perceived match between the characteristics of test
tasks to target language use (TLU) tasks – and interactional authenticity – that is, the
interaction between the test taker and the test task.
Bachman (1990), in his interactional approach, defines authenticity as “the interaction between
the language user, the context, and the discourse” (p.302). As to interactional authenticity,
Bachman (1990) goes on to state that:
Authenticity is thus a function of the interaction between the test taker and the test task.
If we could develop a means of classifying test tasks on the basis of dimensions, or
factors that we abstract from authentic language use, we should be able to characterize
the relative authenticity of a given test task in terms of its potential for generating an
authentic interaction with the abilities of a given group of test takers (p. 317).
Bachman and Palmer (1996) use the term ‘authenticity’ to refer to ‘situational authenticity’
and use the term’ interactiveness’ to refer to ‘interactional authenticity’ (i.e., the interaction of
the test takers, and their abilities with the task).
1. Early Debate Widdowson (1979) Genuineness vs. Authenticity

2. Reconceptualization Bachman (1990) Situational vs. Interactional
Authenticity Authenticity
3. A step forward? Bachman & Palmer (1996) Authenticity vs. Interactiveness
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Real-life Approach vs. Interaction Approach

This test item has been developed based on Bachman’s (1990) distinction. Hence, we should
provide extra explanations accordingly. Bachman (1990) makes a distinction between two
approaches to defining “authenticity”.
(1) The “real-life” approach to defining authenticity
(2) The “interaction/ability” approach to defining authenticity
What Bachman (1990) calls the ‘real-life’ approach (RL) approach to defining
authenticity essentially considers the extent to which test performance replicates some specified
non-test language performance. This approach thus seeks to develop test mirror the ‘reality’ of
non-test language use, and its prime concerns are: (1) the appearance or perception of the test
and how this may affect test performance and test use (so-called ‘face validity’), and (2) the
accuracy with which test performance predicts future non-test performance (predictive utility).
Test performance is interpreted as an indication of the extent to which the test taker will be able
to use language in ‘real-life’ (RL) situations. This approach does not, in effect, distinguish
between language ability and the context in which this ability is observed, since non-test
language performance constitutes both the criterion for authenticity and the definition of
proficiency. The RL approach has been the dominant one for the past ten years in the area of
Testing
testing oral proficiency in a foreign language, and its adherents have made substantial
contributions to our understanding of the characteristics and uses of tests which attempt to
mirror reality. It is this view that underlies what has come to be one of the world’s most widely
used and emulated approaches to testing speaking ability - the ILR oral interview.
The other approach to defining test authenticity, which Bachman calls the ‘interactional/
ability’ (IA) approach, is in keeping with both the mainstream approach to measuring
language as a mental ability and the current view of communicative language use. The ‘ability’
part of the IA approach has a long history in language testing, with roots in early theories of
verbal ability, and has appeared in varied manifestations, notably in the skills and components
frameworks of Lado (1961) and Carroll (1961), and in Oller’s (1981) ‘pragmatic expectancy
grammar.’ It also continues to inform a great deal of language test development and use, ranging
from large-scale institutional testing, such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language, to
practical classroom language testing all over the world. The ‘interactional’ aspect of the
approach is rooted in the same views of language and language use that have informed
communicative language teaching, an aspect that Kramsch (1986) has referred to as
‘interactional competence.’
Rather than looking at non-test language performance per se as a criterion, the IA
approach focuses on what it sees as the distinguishing characteristic of communicative
language use - the interaction between the language user, the context, and the discourse. It thus
attempts to design tests that will involve the test taker in the appropriate expression and
interpretation of illocutionary acts. Test performance is interpreted as an indication of the
extent to which the test taker possesses various communicative language abilities, and there is
a clear distinction in this approach between the abilities to be measured, on the one hand, and
the performance we observe and the context in which observations take place, on the other. And
while proponents of this approach recognize the importance of the way test takers and test users
perceive the test, their primary concern is with demonstrating the extent to which test
performance reflects language abilities, or with construct validity.
Both approaches to authenticity are concerned with the context and manner in which we
elicit a sample of performance - with the characteristics of the testing methods we use. In order
to better understand and investigate the issue of test authenticity, therefore, we need to describe
the facets that constitute the test method. That is, just as we must include the features of the
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language use context in a description of non-test communicative language use, so our

description of performance on language tests must include test method facets.
Bachman (1990, p. 307) summarizes the discussion and remarks that the ‘real-life’
approach defines language proficiency as the ability to perform language tasks in non-test
situations, and authenticity as the extent to which test tasks replicate ‘real-life’ language use
tasks. Since non-test language use is the criterion for both, proficiency and authenticity are thus
virtually identical. Test tasks, or methods, are seen as constituting a continuum between
‘direct’ tests, which are absolute replications of non-test language use, and ‘indirect’ tests,
which are not characteristic of non-test language use. Validity in this approach is also
essentially synonymous with authenticity: ‘face validity’ is the appearance of real life; content
relevance is the representation of real life, and predictive utility is essentially precluded without
authenticity (Jones, 1979b, p. 51).
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 See also: Bachman (1990. pp. 301-304, 307); Lewkowicz (2000)
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Testing
37. A test task that requires the processing of a great deal of non-verbal visual input in
the form of charts and graphs could be described as one with a ------- degree of
interactiveness of language knowledge.
1) poor measure of validity and a low
2) strong measure of validity and a low
3) poor measure of validity and a high
4) strong measure of validity and a high
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Authenticity, interactiveness, and construct validity
Authenticity, interactiveness, and construct validity all depend upon how we define the
construct language ability for a given test situation. Authenticity has to do with the relevance
of the test task to the TLU domain, and is thus related to the traditional notion of content
validity. This also provides a basis for specifying the domain to which we want our score
interpretations to generalize and hence, for investigating this aspect of construct validity. The
relationship between interactiveness and construct validity is a function of the relative
involvement of areas of language knowledge, strategic competence, or metacognitive strategies,
and topical knowledge. That is, the extent to which high interactiveness corresponds to
construct validity will depend on how we have defined the construct and on the characteristics
of the test takers. Thus, it is possible for a test task not to provide a valid measure of a given
construct, even though it is relatively interactive for a given group of test takers. A test task that
requires the processing of a great deal of non-verbal visual input in the form of graphs and
charts, for example, might be quite interactive in that it involves the test taker's metacognitive
strategies and topical knowledge. However, if it requires very little involvement of areas of
language knowledge, it may not provide a valid measure of language knowledge.
91, Items 31, 33, 44, 45, and 48; Year 92, Items 55 and 56; Year 93, Item 50; Year 94, Item
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https://quizlet.com/21030824/ling-657-vocab-flash-cards
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 See also: Bachman and Palmer (1996, p. 29)
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38. All of the following are characteristics of the test rubric EXCEPT ---------.
1) the duration of the test
2) the structure of the test
3) how the language that is used will be evaluated or scored
4) the relationship between input and the expected response
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Characteristics of the Test Rubric
Bachman and Palmer (1996, p. 50) state that the test rubric includes those characteristics of the
test that provide the structure for particular test tasks and that indicate how test takers are to
Testing
proceed in accomplishing the tasks. In a test task these need to be made as explicit and clear as
possible, while in language use these characteristics are generally implicit. For this reason,
rubric may be a characteristic for which there is relatively little correspondence between
language use tasks and test tasks. The characteristics of rubric include:
1. the structure of the test, that is, how the test itself is organized,
2. instructions,
3. the duration of the test as a whole and of the individual tasks, and
4. how the language that is used will be evaluated, or scored.
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39. All of the following are sources of error variance due to administration procedures
EXCEPT -----------.
1) evaluator idiosyncrasies
2) mechanics of testing
3) equipment
4) directions
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Sources of Variance
The performances of students on any test will tend to vary from each other, but their
performances can vary for a variety of reasons. In the best of all possible worlds, all the
variance in test scores would be directly related to the purposes of the test. For example,
consider a relatively straightforward test of the spelling rules of English. At first glance,
teachers might think that the variance in students’ performances on such a test could be
attributed entirely to their knowledge of the spelling rules of English. Unfortunately, reality is
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not quite that simple and clear. Many other factors may be potential sources of score variance
on this spelling test. These variables fall into two general sources of variance: (1) those creating
variance related to the purposes of the test (called meaningful variance), and (2) those
generating variance due to other extraneous sources (called measurement error, or error
variance).
To reiterate, the meaningful variance on a test is defined as that variance which is directly
attributable to the testing purposes. The following list, provided by Bachman (1990), shows
potential sources of meaningful variance:
Potential Sources of Meaningful Test Variance for Communicative Competence
COMPONENTS OF LANGUAGE COMPETENCE
Organizational Competence
Grammatical Competence
Vocabulary
Morphology
Testing
Syntax
Phonology/graphemes
Textual Competence
Cohesion
Rhetorical organization
Pragmatic Competence
Illocutionary competence
Ideational functions
Manipulative functions
Heuristic functions
Imaginative functions
Sociolinguistic competence
Sensitivity to differences in dialect or variety
Sensitivity to differences in register
Sensitivity to naturalness
Ability to interpret cultural references and figures of speech
For items on Bachman’s Model of language competence, refer to Year 93, Item 3; and Year
97, Item 28.
Measurement Error or Error Variance

Measurement error (also sometimes called error variance) is a term that describes the variance
in scores on a test that is not directly related to the purpose of the test. Below a summary of the
potential sources of error variance is provided:
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Potential Sources of Error Variance
 Variance due to environment  Variance attributable to examinees

 location  health
 space  fatigue
 ventilation  physical characteristics
 noise  motivation
 lighting  emotion
 weather  memory
 concentration
 Variance due to administration
 forgetfulness
procedures
 impulsiveness
 directions
 carelessness
 equipment
 test wiseness
 timing
 comprehension of directions
 mechanics of testing
 guessing
 Variance due to scoring procedures  task performance speed
Testing
 errors in scoring  chance knowledge of item content
 subjectivity
 evaluator biases
 evaluator idiosyncrasies
 Variance attributable to the test and
test items
 test booklet clarity
 answer sheet format
 particular sample of items
 item types
 number of items
 item quality
 test security
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40. Which of the following statements is true about the interventionist and interactionist
approaches to dynamic assessment?
1) The interventionist approach is rooted in qualitative interpretation of the ZPD, while the
interactionist approach is rooted in quantitative interpretation of the ZPD.
2) The interventionist approach is rooted in quantitative interpretation of the ZPD, while
the interactionist approach is rooted in qualitative interpretation of the ZPD.
3) Both approaches are rooted in the quantitative interpretation of the ZPD.
4) Both approaches are rooted in the qualitative interpretation of the ZPD.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Interpretations of the ZPD in DA research
There are two general approaches to Dynamic Assessment (DA), both of which can be traced
to the different contexts in which Vygotsky discussed the ZPD.
The first, which we term interventionist DA, is rooted in Vygotsky’s quantitative
interpretation of the ZPD as a ‘difference score’. It is currently implemented in either of two
formats: a pretest-treatment-post-test experimental approach; providing item-by-item
assistance selected from a prefabricated menu of hints during the administration of a test.
Interventionist DA is strongly psychometric in its approach to assessment and is not directly
relevant to our current aim of linking DA and Formative Assessment (FA).
The second approach to DA we refer to as interactionist DA. It finds its origins in
Vygotsky’s second, qualitative interpretation of the ZPD – one that foregrounds instruction-
learning over measurement (see Lidz & Gindis, 2003, p. 105).
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 See also: Poehner and Lantolf (2005, p. 7)
Testing
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41. John was confident that no variable other than the one he was investigating influenced
his findings. He believed his research had high ---------.
1) content validity
2) construct validity
3) external validity
4) internal validity
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Four Types of Validity of Research Designs
1. Internal validity
It refers to the validity of the inferences about whether the effect of variable A (the treatment)
on variable B (the outcome) reflects a causal relationship.
Campbell and Stanley (1963) stated that internal validity is the basic requirement if one is
to draw correct conclusions from an experiment. Internal validity refers to the inferences about
whether the changes observed in a dependent variable are, in fact, caused by the independent
variable(s) in a particular research study rather than by some extraneous factors. Internal
validity is concerned with such questions as ‘Did the experimental treatment cause the observed
change in the dependent variable or was some spurious factor working?’ and ‘Are the findings
accurate?’ These questions of internal validity cannot be answered positively by the
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experimenter unless the design provides adequate control of extraneous variables. If the design
provides control of variables, you can eliminate alternative explanations of the observed
outcome and interpret it as showing an intrinsic relationship between variables. Internal validity
is essentially a problem of control. The design of appropriate controls is a matter of finding
ways to eliminate extraneous variables that could lead to alternative interpretations and hence
lower internal validity. Anything that contributes to the control of a design contributes to
internal validity.
Eleven extraneous variables that frequently represent threats to the internal validity of a
research design have been identified. These variables are called threats because unless they are
controlled, they may very well produce an effect that could be mistaken for the effect of the
experimental treatment. If uncontrolled, these extraneous variables raise doubts about the
accuracy of the experiment because they permit an alternative explanation of the experimental
findings. For a brief explanation on these threats, please refer to Year 91, Item 55.
2. Statistical conclusion validity

It refers to the validity of the inferences about the covariation between treatment and outcome.
In other words, statistical conclusion validity refers to the appropriate use of statistics to infer
whether an observed relationship between the independent and dependent variables in a study
is a true cause-effect relationship or whether it is just due to chance. Any inappropriate use of
statistics is thus a threat because it may result in an erroneous conclusion about the effect of the
independent variable on the dependent variable. Threats to statistical conclusion validity
include using tests with low power, which may fail to detect a relationship between variables;
violating the assumptions of statistical tests, which can lead to over- or underestimating the size
and significance of an effect; using measures with low reliability or with restricted range of
scores, both of which lessen the probability of detecting a relationship; and using statistical tests
that result in over- or underestimations of the size of an effect.
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3. Construct validity
It refers to the validity of the inferences about psychological constructs involved in the subjects,
settings, treatments, and observations used in the experiment. In other words, the construct
validity of experiments is defined as the validity of the inferences made about a construct based
on the measures, treatment, subjects, and settings used in an experimental study.
4. External validity
It refers to the validity of the inferences about whether the cause-effect relationship holds up
with other subjects, settings, and measurements. In other words, external validity refers to the
extent to which the findings of a study can be generalized to other subjects, settings, and
treatments.
please refer to Year 91, Item 55; Year 92, Item 36; Year 96, Items 41, 42, and 43; and Year 97,
Items 42 and 55.
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42. Explain what is happening with the threat of maturation.

1) The subject's performance is better because he/she is aware that his performance is
observed.
2) The subject's experience is not normal in comparison to the other subjects.
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3) The subject gets better at something after completing it a second time.
4) The subject gets better at something because time has passed.
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Maturation refers to changes (biological or psychological) that may occur within the subjects
simply as a function of the passage of time. These changes threaten internal validity because
they may produce effects that could mistakenly be attributed to the experimental treatment.
Subjects may perform differently on the dependent variable measure simply because they are
older, wiser, hungrier, more fatigued, or less motivated than they were at the time of the
first measurements. Maturation is especially a threat in research on children because they are
naturally changing so quickly. For example, it can be difficult to assess the effects of treatments
for articulation problems among preschoolers because young children often naturally outgrow
such problems. It has been difficult to assess the effects of compensatory programs such as
Head Start on children’s cognitive development because normal development ensures that
children’s cognitive skills will naturally improve over time.
please refer to Year 91, Item 55; Year 92, Item 36; Year 96, Items 41, 42, and 43; and Year 97,
Items 41, and 55.
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43. A manipulation causes participants in the experimental group to score higher on a

certain measure than the control group participants. The researcher claims that the
measure is a measure of self-esteem when, in fact, the measure really assesses mood.
The researcher repeats the study numerous times, using a wide variety of participants.
The same pattern of results is obtained each time. This study has --------------.
1) poor validity, good reliability
2) poor validity, poor reliability
3) good validity, good reliability
4) good validity, poor reliability
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Reliability is a matter of consistency in the results, while validity is the matter of measuring
what the test/measure is supposed to measure. The measure used in this study does not measure
what it purports to measure (i.e. self-esteem), rather it measures “mood” (i.e. a different
construct which is not of interest). Therefore, this study has good reliability (i.e. consistency of
results, but poor validity.
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44. When does a researcher use a grouped frequency distribution to organize the data?
1) When the range of the data is small.
2) When the range of the data is large.
3) When the data is normally distributed.
4) When the data she is using is categorical.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
One technique to organize and summarize data is to use frequency distributions. Frequency
distribution is an organized tabulation/graphical representation of the number of individuals in
each category on the scale of measurement. The scale of measurement usually used for
frequency distributions is of a nominal/categorical type. However, we can use interval/ratio
data by grouping our data into categories.
Summarizing Information: Frequency Distributions

1. Relative Frequency Distributions
2. Cumulative Frequency Distributions
3. Cumulative Percentage Distributions
The table below schematically shows the difference between these three frequency
distributions:
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Frequency Distributions
Score Frequency Relative Cumulative Cumulative
(f) Frequency (%) Frequency Percentage
Distribution
25 1 5 1 5
26 1 5 2 10
27 1 5 3 15
28 1 5 4 20
29 1 5 5 25
30 0 0 5 25
31 1 5 6 30
32 3 15 9 45
33 2 10 11 55
34 0 0 11 55
35 1 5 12 60
36 1 5 13 65
37 1 5 14 70
38 1 5 15 75
39 1 5 16 80
40 1 5 17 85
41 1 5 18 90
42 1 5 19 95
43 0 0 19 95
44 1 5 20 100
Total 20 100 --- ---
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4. Grouped Frequency Distributions (of interval data)
When a distribution contains many scores and the scores vary over a wide range of numbers,
the types of frequency distributions shown in the table above do not really help very much.
Although one can see at a glance what the lowest and highest scores are, the problem is that the
tables themselves remain confusing because there are so many entries in the left-hand column
that it is hard to take in all the information about the data set as a whole. Consequently, what is
needed is some way of summarizing the information so that it will be manageable, which can
be done by constructing a grouped frequency distribution.
Grouped frequency distributions are just like simple frequency distributions except that
they have groups (or sets) of scores in the left column instead of single scores. The categories
in the left column contain groups or intervals of scores. When creating a grouped frequency
distribution, scores in the raw data are tallied into score intervals rather than into single score
categories.
Grouped Frequency Distribution
Score Range Frequency Relative Cumulative Cumulative Percentage
(f) Frequency (%) Frequency Distribution
25-29 5 25 5 25
30-34 6 30 11 55
35-39 5 25 16 80
40-44 4 20 20 100
Total 20 100 --- ---
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 See also: Anastas (2000, pp. 440-444); Smith, Gratz, & Bousquet (2009, p. 22)
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45. What kind of distribution is observed when it has a long right tail?
1) A flat distribution.
2) A bimodal distribution.
3) Positively skewed distribution.
4) Negatively skewed distribution.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Frequency distributions can have a variety of shapes. Below you can see schematic
representations of the distributions in the test alternatives.
A negatively skewed distribution A positively skewed distribution

(also known as “skewed to the left) (also known as “skewed to the right)
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A uniform/flat distribution A bimodal distribution
In a distribution, when there is a long tail to the right, it is called a positively skewed
distribution, and when there is a long tail to the left, it is called a negatively skewed distribution
Year 94, Item 44; Year 96, Item 45; and Year 97, Item 58.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 124-125); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, p. 165)
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46. If an individual rejects a true null hypothesis, then she/he has ------------.
1) made a Type I error
2) made a Type II error
3) increased the power of a statistical test
4) made a correct decision to reject the null hypothesis
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
For explanation, and for similar items, please refer to Year 91, Item 52; Year 92, Item 37;
Year 94, Item 60; and Year 96, Item 54.
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47. A researcher wants to display the relationship between the variables "number of
words a learner knows" and "the number of hours he/she studies". The most
appropriate graphical display would be -------.
1) bar chart
2) histogram
3) scatter plot
4) stem plot
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
The purpose of tables, charts, and graphs is to summarize and display data clearly and
effectively to communicate information about the data to the user. They are all means of
summarizing quantities of information to the reader. Tables, charts, and graphs offer the
opportunity to analyze data sets and explore, understand, and present distributions, trends,
and relationships in the data.
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Graphing Distributions
1. Continuous Data
(1) histograms
(2) frequency polygons
(3) ogives
(4) stem-and-leaf displays
2. Discrete and Categorical Data
(1) bar charts
(2) pie charts
1. Graphing Distributions: Continuous Data

Researchers can also display frequency data graphically instead of in a table. Although using a
table or graph to summarize frequency data is equally effective for the most part, graphs have
the main advantage of being more visual and less intimidating than tables in many cases. In this
section, we look at several ways to graph distributions of continuous data: histograms,
frequency polygons, ogives, and stem-and-leaf displays.
1.1. Histograms
Grouped data are often summarized graphically using histograms. Histograms are graphs that
distribute the intervals along the horizontal scale (x-axis) and list the frequency of scores in
each interval on the vertical scale (y-axis). To illustrate, we can construct a histogram for the
data given in Figure 1, which shows the frequency table and the respective histogram for the
time (in months) it took a sample of 200 college graduates to find employment.
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Note that each rectangle touches adjacent rectangles at the boundaries of each interval. The
adjacent rectangles touch because it is assumed that the data are continuous. In other words, it
is assumed that the data were measured along a continuum.
Figure 1: A frequency table (left) and histogram (right) summarizing the frequency distribution
for the time (in months) that it took a sample of 200 college graduates to find employment
In sum, a histogram is a graphical display used to summarize the frequency of continuous data
that are distributed in numeric intervals (grouped). That is, histograms summarize the frequency
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of continuous data that are quantitative.
1.2. Frequency Polygons

A frequency polygon is a dot-and-line graph where the dot is the midpoint of each interval, and
the line connects each dot. The midpoint of an interval is distributed along the x-axis and is
calculated by adding the upper and lower boundary of an interval and then dividing by 2. Figure
2 illustrates a frequency polygon for the same data used to construct the histogram in Figure 1.
Figure 2: A Frequency Polygon (A frequency polygon summarizing the frequency distribution

for the time (in months) that it took a sample of 200 college graduates to find employment)
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1.3. Ogives
A dot-and-line graph can also be used to summarize cumulative percentages. This type of graph,
called an ogive (pronounced ˈəʊdʒaɪv, əʊˈdʒaɪv), is used to summarize the cumulative
percentages of continuous data at the upper boundary of each interval. Figure 3 shows an ogive
for the cumulative percent distribution, from the bottom up, for the same data used to construct
the histogram in Figure 1. The y-axis of an ogive always ranges from 0% to 100% of the data.
Figure 3: An Ogive (An ogive summarizing the cumulative percent distribution for the time (in
months) that it took a sample of 200 college graduates to find employment)
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1.4. Stem-and-leaf Displays
Constructing a stem-and-leaf display requires grouping values into stems, then listing them
across each row. To illustrate this type of display, consider the data listed in Table 1 for the
number of times per day that 20 patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder washed their
hands.
Table 1: A List of the Number of Times per Day That 20 Patients with Obsessive-Compulsive
Disorder Washed Their Hands
12 14 10 47
33 23 16 52
24 32 26 44
42 46 29 19
11 50 30 15
To construct the stem-and-leaf display for these data, we must first recognize the beginning
digits of these numbers. For example, 12 begins with the number 1, and 50 begins with a 5, so
let us reorganize the data so that every number with the same first digit is placed in the same
row, as shown in Table 2a. Here we can see that seven numbers begin with the digit 1 (10, 11,
12, 14, 15, 16, and 19), four begin with 2 (23, 24, 26, and 29), three begin with 3 (30, 32, and
33), four begin with 4 (42, 44, 46, and 47), and two begin with 5 (50 and 52). To simplify this
further, we can place the first digit in its own column (separated by a vertical line) so that it is
never repeated in a single row, as shown in Table 2b. This arrangement of data is called a stem-
and-leaf display.
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In a stem-and-leaf display, numbers to the right of the vertical line are the leaf, and numbers
to the left of the vertical line are the stem.
In sum, stem-and-leaf displays organize a set of data by the common digits shared by
values. That is a stem-and-leaf display, also called a stem-and-leaf plot, is a graphical display
where each individual score from an original set of data is listed. The data are organized such
that the common digits shared by all scores are listed to the left (in the stem), with the remaining
digits for each score listed to the right (in the leaf).
A stem is located to the left of the vertical line in a stem-and-leaf display. A stem lists the
first digit or digits for each number in each row. A leaf is located to the right of the vertical line
in a stem-and-leaf display. A leaf lists the last digit or digits for each number in each row.
Table 2. Stem-and-Leaf Displays

(a)
10 11 12 14 15 16 19
23 24 26 29
30 32 33
42 44 46 47
50 52
(b)
1 0 1 2 4 5 6 9
2 3 4 6 9
3 0 2 3
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4 2 4 6 7
5 0 2
2. Graphing Distributions: Discrete and Categorical Data

Researchers often measure discrete variables – variables measured in whole units. For example,
the number of traffic accidents and the number of college graduates are discrete variables
because these variables are measured by counting one traffic accident or college graduate at a
time.
Researchers often measure categorical variables, which vary by class. Examples include
race, gender, and marital status. Discrete and categorical data are graphed differently than
continuous data because the data are measured in whole units or classes and not along a
continuum. Two types of graphs for discrete and categorical data described here are bar charts
and pie charts.
2.1. Bar Charts

Bar charts are much like histograms, except that the bars are separated from one another,
whereas the vertical rectangles or bars on histograms touch each other. The separation between
bars reflects the separation or "break" between the whole numbers or categories being
summarized. For this reason, bar charts are appropriate for summarizing distributions of
discrete and categorical data.
To construct a bar chart, list the whole units or categories along the x-axis, and distribute
the frequencies along the y-axis. To illustrate, Figure 4 gives the frequency distribution and the
respective bar chart for the number of naps that mothers give their children daily. (The original
data for Figure 4 are given in Table 1.)
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In sum, bar charts are used to summarize discrete and categorical data. Bar charts are
similar to histograms, except that the bars are separated to indicate discrete units or classes. In
other words, a bar chart, or bar graph, is a graphical display used to summarize the frequency
of discrete and categorical data that are distributed in whole units or classes.
Figure 4: A Bar Chart (A frequency table (left) and a bar chart (right) summarizing the average
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number of naps per day that mothers give their children, who are younger than age 3)
2.2. Pie Charts

The pie chart is another graphical summary used almost exclusively for discrete and categorical
data. Educators often teach children subtraction and other mathematical operations by "slicing
up pieces of pie." Similarly, you can think of pie charts as slices or pieces of data. To construct
a pie chart, we typically distribute data as relative percentages. Consider Table 3, which
displays the educational attainment in the United States of a sample of Americans in 2012.
Table 3: The Frequency and Relative Percentage of Educational Attainment of the Population
25 Years and Older in the United States, 2012
Level of Education F (x) Relative Percentage
High school graduate (or less) 121,552 59.4%
Associate’s degree 19,737 9.7%
Bachelor’s degree 40,561 19.8%
Master’s degree 16,459 8.0%
Professional/doctoral degree 6,271 3.1%
Total 204,580 100.0%
Source: Table created based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey,
2012 Annual Social and Economic Supplement
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Converting this distribution to a pie chart is simply a matter of finding the correct angles
for each slice of pie. There are 360 degrees in a complete circle; therefore, we multiply each
percentage by 3.6 (because 100 percent x 3.6 = 360°) to find the central angles of each category.
The result is shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5. A Pie Chart for the Distribution of Educational Attainment of the Population 25 Years
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and Older in the United States, 201 2 (Source: Table created based on data from the U.S. Census
Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2012 Annual Social and Economic Supplement)
CORRELATION
Correlation is the measurement of the extent to which pairs of related values of two variables
tend to change together or ‘co-vary’; it is a standardized measure of co-variation. If one variable
tends to increase with the other, the correlation is positive. If the relationship is inverse, it is a
negative correlation. A lack of relationship is signified by a value close to zero but a value of
zero could occur for a curvilinear relationship. These relationships can be illustrated in a
scatterplot (or scattergram).
Scatter plot
A powerful graphical technique for demonstrating correlational relationships is the
scatterplot/scattergram. This plots pairs of values, one for variable A, the other for variable
B, on a chart, thus demonstrating the scattering of paired values.
In Figure 6, the point marked with an arrow represents a case whose score on the X-variable
is 8 and whose score on the Y-variable is 120. It is sometimes possible to see that the points of
a scattergram fall more or less on a straight line. This line through the points of a scattergram
is called the regression line. Figure 6 includes the regression line for the points of the
scattergram.
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Figure 6: A scattergram showing the relationship between two variables
Concluding remarks
Since the researcher is interested to display the “relationship” between two variables, the most
appropriate graphical display is “a scatter plot”. Bar charts, histograms and stem plots are used
for summarizing data.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 143-147); Coolican (2014, pp. 386-387, 525); Hatch and
Lazaraton (1991, pp. 147, 427-431); Howitt and Crammer (2011, pp. 61-63)
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48. The data in the following table shows the 22 games played by a football team during
a certain period.
Result Play
Home Away
Win 80% 60%
Lose 20% 40%
Total 100% 100%
The variables Play (home or away) and Result (win or lose) are ------------.
1) a numerical and a categorical variable respectively
2) both numerical variables
3) both categorical variables
4) a categorical and a numerical variable respectively
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
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Types of Variables
Dichotomous/binary Nominal
Categorical/
qualitative Nominal
Polytomous
Ordinal
Variables
Interval
Discrete
Ratio
Numerical/
quantitative Interval
Continuous
Ratio
There are several ways to classify variables. Variables can be categorical/qualitative, or they
can be numerical/quantitative.
1. Categorical Variables
When researchers classify subjects by sorting them into mutually exclusive groups, the attribute
on which they base the classification is termed a categorical variable. Home language, county
of residence, father’s principal occupation, and school in which enrolled are examples of
categorical variables. Other examples of categorical variables include ‘gender’ (male, female),
‘eye color’ (blue, green, brown), ‘marital status’ (married, single), ‘nationality’ (Iranian, Italian,
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Russian, American), ‘self-esteem’ (high, medium, low), ‘proficiency level’ (high, intermediate,
beginner).
1) Dichotomous/binary variables: The simplest type of categorical variable has only two
mutually exclusive classes and is called a dichotomous variable. Male–female, citizen–
alien, and pass–fail are dichotomous variables.
2) Polytomous Variables: Some categorical variables have more than two classes (hence
called polytomous/polychotomous variables); examples are educational level,
religious affiliation, and state of birth.
2. Numerical Variables
1) Discrete variables: Discrete variables are numerical variables that represent quantities
that are counted, that do not allow for decimal points (e.g. You can’t have 3.5 students
in your class; coins don’t come in amounts of 2.3 coins), and that they can only take on
a finite number of values. As a guide, discrete numerical variables arise when we ask
the question “How many?”
2) Continuous variables: Continuous variables are quantitative variables based on data
that can be measured on a continuum or scale, and which have infinite number of values,
and that they allow for decimals (e.g. age, weight, blood pressure, achievement test
scores).
Nominal, ordinal, interval or ratio?

What and how variables are measured is an integral part of statistics whether you are conducting
the research or interpreting the data. Correct classification of data is essential to prevent
incorrect classification of results, leading to incorrect analyses.
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Nominal Scale
The most basic form of the four types of measurement used in statistics is nominal. Nominal
scales are used for labeling variables, without any quantitative value. “Nominal” scales could
simply be called “labels.” In other words, it refers to a discrete classification of data, in which
data are neither measured nor ordered but subjects are merely labelled to distinct categories.
Basic categories such as “name, gender, religion, eye color, and nationality” are all variables of
data that are just observations, not necessarily related or comparable, mostly things that are
simply listed.
Ordinal Scale
This scale is used to rate or rank multiple categories in a specific order. The distances between
points cannot be assumed to be equal. Examples of ordinal measurement include satisfaction
surveys, agree/disagree questionnaires and class ranking. For labelling the categories, number
scales may also be used, but not for the purpose of mathematic process, so they have no true
concrete measurable value.
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Interval Scale
An interval scale has measurements where the difference between values is meaningful. In
other words, the differences between points on the scale are measurable and exactly equal. The
main difference between interval scale and ratio scale is the presence or absence of absolute
zero. Temperature would be an example of interval scale because it lacks an absolute zero point.
Note: Some scholars believe that Likert data/responses fall into this category because equal
distances between the data points cannot be assumed. However, if the number of points is
increased such that equal distances between points can be assumed, Likert data can be thought
of as “interval.”
Ratio Scale
The main difference between interval scale and ratio scale is the presence or absence of
absolute zero. While temperature can be measured on an interval scale, there isn’t a true
absolute zero since minus five degrees Fahrenheit is also known as five degrees below zero, not
the absence of temperature. With weight, however, zero means zero, or no weight. Two
different weights are measured on a scale with any two numbers equal distance apart. Weight
measurement scales start at zero and increase infinitely.
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Distinctiveness Ordered in Equal Absolute Allowed Arithmetic

(i.e. distinct magnitude intervals zero Operations
categories) (i.e. ordered (i.e. point
categories) meaningful
distance)
Nominal  =,≠
Ordinal   =,≠,<,>
Interval    = , ≠ , < , >, + , –
Ratio     = , ≠ , < , >, + , – , ,÷
Concluding remarks
Since the variables Play (home or away) and Result (win or lose) have ‘nominal’ values/levels,
these variables are categorical. Or we can say that since the variables Play and Result are
binary/dichotomous (i.e. with only two levels), these variables are categorical.
This test item was developed based on the content in the following link:
http://www.stpats.nunan.com.au/2864/downloads/FM_Ch04_DD.pdf
For more information on scales of measurement, refer to Year 92, Item 41; and Year 96, Item
50.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 29, 40-41); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, pp. 60-62)
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49. The data in the above table suggests that there is a home ground advantage for this
team because ------------.
1) the team only lost 20% of ‘home’ games
2) the team won 80% of their ‘away’ games
3) the percentage of ‘home’ wins is higher than the percentage of ‘away’ wins
4) the percentage of ‘away’ wins (60%) is higher than the percentage of ‘away’ losses
(40%)
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
The data in the following table shows the 22 games played by a football team during a certain
period.
Result Play
Home Away
Win 80% 60%
Lose 20% 40%
Total 100% 100%
Since this test requires the test takers to decide on a home ground “advantage” for this team,
only choice (3) is the best option. That is, choice (1) sounds reasonable, but it is not compared
with any other possibility. Choice (2) is completely incorrect as the team won 60% of their
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‘away’ games. Choice (4) is also incorrect because it compares “away wins” with “away losses”
– it compares the team to itself, not to any other team.
http://www.stpats.nunan.com.au/2864/downloads/FM_Ch04_DD.pdf
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 29, 40-41); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, pp. 60-62)
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50. Which correlation is the strongest?

1) –1.00
2) –.60
3) +.80
4) +.05
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Since the magnitude of choice (1) is greater than the magnitude of all the other choices, choice
(1) is the best option.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 139-143); Coolican (2014, p. 524); Howitt and Cramer
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(2011, pp. 68-72)
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51. The key defining characteristic of experimental research is that -----------.

1) samples are large
2) hypotheses are proved
3) a positive correlation exists
4) the independent variable is manipulated
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Experimental research involves a study of the effect of the systematic manipulation of one
variable(s) on another variable. The manipulated variable is called the experimental treatment
or the independent variable. The observed and measured variable is called the dependent
variable.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 28-29, 324-325); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, pp. 95-98)
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52. Which of the following is the definition of a hypothesis?

1) A statement that is empirically specific about some phenomenon.
2) A statement proposing the relationship between two or more variables.
3) A statement proposing the relationship between two or more concepts.
4) A statement consisting of an educated guess about some phenomenon.
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Answer: 2
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Explanation:
The hypothesis has been defined by Kerlinger (1970) as a conjectural statement of the relations
between two or more variables, or ‘an educated guess’, though it is unlike an educated guess in
that it is often the result of considerable study, reflective thinking and observation.
Kerlinger (1970) has identified two criteria for ‘good’ hypotheses. The first is that
hypotheses are statements about the relations between variables; and second, that hypotheses
carry clear implications for testing the stated relations.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, p. 95); Cohen et al. (2007, pp. 14-15)
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53. If younger people are less likely to attend universities than older people, the
relationship between age and university attendance is ------------.
1) symmetric
2) curvilinear
3) negative
4) positive
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
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Symmetricity is not related to correlation. It is more related to the shape of distributions. For
more information, please refer to Year 92, Item 38.
As stated above, correlation is the measurement of the extent to which pairs of related
values of two variables tend to change together or ‘co-vary’; it is a standardized measure of co-
variation. If one variable tends to increase with the other, the correlation is positive. If the
relationship is inverse, it is a negative correlation. A lack of relationship is signified by a value
close to zero, but a value of zero could occur for a curvilinear relationship, as well.
A Curvilinear Relationship
A curvilinear relationship is a type of relationship between two variables where as one variable
increases, so does the other variable, but only up to a certain point, after which, as one variable
continues to increase, the other decreases.
If you were to graph this kind of curvilinear relationship, you may come up with an
inverted-U. The other type of curvilinear relationship is one where as one variable increases,
the other decreases up to a certain point, after which, both variables increase together. This may
give you a U-shaped curve.
The curvilinear correlation coefficient will be zero or nearly zero. For example, in a U-
shaped curvilinear relationship, since the left half is negative and the right half is positive, thus,
they neutralize each other.
Types of Correlation
In the figure below different types of correlation are provided. Panel A is appropriate for this
test item. Because as age “increases”, so the tendency to attend universities “increases”. Hence,
the best option is choice (4).
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Therefore, there are three general kinds of relationships between two variables:
1. Linear: The appropriate correlation coefficient is the Pearson correlation coefficient.
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2. Curvilinear: Since the Pearson correlation coefficient yields a zero correlation coefficient
in curvilinear relationships, it is only appropriate as a measure of linear relationship. For
curvilinear relationships we need to use other measures of correlation like “the eta ratio
coefficient.”
3. No relationship
Concluding remarks
In this question, as the magnitude of age increases, the magnitude of university attendance
increases as well. Hence, the correlation is positive.
For more information, please refer to Year 96, Item 52.

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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 145-146); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, 427-429, 437-438)
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54. ANOVA and/or the difference of means test is typically used whenever ---------.
1) the number of observations exceeds ten thousands
2) observed and expected tables are quite different in the crosstab
3) the sampling distribution doesn't coincide with the normal distribution
4) the independent variable is nominal and the dependent one is interval or ratio
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Guidelines for selecting a statistical test
Type Test IV DV Symbol
Parametric Pearson’s r Interval/ratio Interval/ratio r
Non-parametric Spearmean’s rho Ordinal or higher Ordinal ρ
Parametric Independent t test Nominal with 2 groups Interval/ratio t
Non-parametric Mann-Whitney U Nominal with 2 groups Ordinal z
Parametric Dependent t-test Interval/ratio Interval/ratio t
Non-parametric Wilcoxon signed ranks Ordinal or higher Ordinal z
Parametric One-way ANOVA Nominal with 3 groups+ Interval/ratio F
Non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis H Nominal with 3 groups+ Ordinal χ2
Parametric none none none none
Non-parametric Chi-square test nominal nominal χ2
IV = Independent Variable
DV = Dependent Variable
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 See also: Abu-Bader (2016, p. 159)
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55. What threat to validity exists when the participants drop out of the experiment?
1) Selection bias
2) History
3) Mortality
4) Maturation
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Experimental mortality (attrition)
The experimental mortality (attrition) threat occurs when there is differential loss of participants
from the comparison groups. This differential loss may result in differences on the outcome
measure even in the absence of treatment. If, for example, several of the lowest scorers on a
pretest gradually drop out of the experimental group, the remaining subjects will have a higher
mean performance on the final measure because the lowest scoring subjects are
underrepresented when the posttest is administered.
Attrition is not usually a serious threat unless the study goes on for a long time or unless
the treatment is so demanding that it results in low-performing participants dropping out.
please refer to Year 91, Item 55; Year 92, Item 36; Year 96, Items 41, 42 and 43; and Year 97,
Items 41 and 42.
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56. The mean plus or minus one standard deviation for a normal distribution provides a
probability range of --------percent.
1) 32
2) 50
3) 68
4) 95
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
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–4 –3 –2 –1 X̅ +1 +2 +3 +4
The above figure is a normal probability distribution. A normal probability distribution is a

typical bell-shaped curve symmetric about the mean. The distribution is defined by the two
single value parameters, mean and standard deviation. The first standard deviation on either
side of the mean incldues 34.13% of the elements in the distribution, and the probability of the
random variable falling within one standard deviation is therefore 68.26%. Similarly the
probabiltiy of being within two standard deviations of the eman is 95.44%. Only 26% of the
elements are more than three standatrd deviations from the mean. The total area under the curve
is unity (i.e. 1) with an area of 0.5 (1/2) on each side of the mean.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 136-137); Coolican (2014, p. 395)
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1) It is possible for a measure to be valid but not reliable.
2) Researchable questions are necessarily narrow and specific.
3) An experiment is the best research strategy for investigating the causes of phenomena.
4) The more dispersed the data values in a particular data set are, the larger the variance
and standard deviation will be.
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Answer: 1
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Explanation:
As for Choice (1), reliability is considered a necessary but not sufficient condition for validity.
In this regard, Ary et al. (2014, p. 276) state that “if a measure is to yield valid score-based
interpretations, it must first be reliable.” Hence, Choice (1) is FALSE and the option to be
chosen.
With regard to Choice (2), Dörnyei (2007, pp. 72-73) makes a distinction between
‘research topic’, ‘research purpose’, and ‘research questions’. He remarks that every
investigation has a starting point and unless we adopt someone else's (for example, the
supervisor's) design idea or join an ongoing investigation as a co-researcher, this starting point
is a broad 'research topic'. Initially, this is only a general and rather vague area of research
interest (for example, a problem or an intriguing phenomenon that we have noticed) and in
order to be able to specifically address it we need to develop it into a 'research purpose'. The
research purpose is a relatively short statement (not more than a paragraph) that describes the
objective of the planned study, explaining why the investigation is undertaken and what its
potential significance is.
The next step towards narrowing down and 'operationalizing' the research purpose is to
formulate specific 'research questions'. Their role is to translate the research purpose into
specific questions that the planned study will aim to answer. Being able to produce good
research questions indicates that the researcher is ready to embark on the actual investigation
(whereas vague or missing research questions usually send alarm signals to a supervisor or
referee), and good research questions also provide orientation to the research methodology that
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can best achieve the research purpose. Thus, Choice (2) is correct, and thus not the option to
be chosen.
With respect to Choice (3), when doing research, researchers always want to investigate
the causes of phenomena. If they can find the causes, they can easily manipulate those causes
and achieve the effect they wish. In other words, when it is logically determined that one factor/
cause demonstrates a predictable influence on another, a cause-and-effect relationship is
said to exist. Experimental research is the most robust way to demonstrate whether this
association exists. If there is a true cause-and-effect relationship between two (or more)
variables, then one of the more important purposes of research may be met. That aim is to be
able to generalize the relationship to other conditions and situations outside the experiment. In
this manner sound experimental research not only determines what happens in the present but
also allows for the prediction of future events (i.e., given condition A, one is confident that B
will occur). So, Choice (3) is correct, and thus not the option to be chosen. For more
information, please see Ary et al. (2014, pp. 324-325).
Dispersion
The dispersion of a variable refers to the spread of scores or variation in the dataset. When
describing a variable, it is important to describe both its measure of central tendency and its
measure of dispersion. The five most commonly used measures of dispersion are the range,
interquartile range, variance, standard deviation, and coefficient of variation.
All of these measures of dispersion depend on the scatter/dispersion of scores: That is, the
more dispersed the data values in a particular data set are, the larger the values of these measures
will be.
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With variance and standard deviation, the greater the dispersion of the values around their
mean, the larger the variance and standard deviation. If there is no dispersion (i.e., if all values
are equal), the standard deviation and variance is zero. A large standard deviation is an
indication of a wide spread of data with a possibility of some extreme scores. If the standard
deviation is small, the data points will be more closely clustered around the center of the data
(i.e. the mean).
Therefore, the more dispersed the data values in a particular data set are, the larger the
variance and standard deviation will be. Consequently, Choice (4) is correct, and thus not the
option to be chosen.
Options (2) and (3) are taken from the following book: Instructor's Manual Approaches to
Social Research (pp. 7-8).
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 324-325); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, p. 85); Dörnyei (2007,
pp. 72-73)
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58. Which of the following is/are true about a positively skewed distribution?
I. The mean is greater than the median.
II. The median should be used as the measure of center because it is more resistant
to extreme observations than the mean.
III. The standard deviation should be used as the measure of spread because it is
more resistant to extreme observations than the range or inter-quartile range.
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1) II only
2) I and II only
3) I and III only
4) I, II, and III
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
A positively skewed distribution
A positively skewed distribution has the following shape with the peak (highest frequency) on
the left-hand side. This is the position of the mode. However, it should be clear that the vertical
line drawn at the mode does not divide the distribution into two equal parts. To have exactly
50% of the distribution on each side, the median must be located to the right of the mode.
Finally, the mean is located to the right of the median because it is the measure of central
tendency that is influenced most by the extreme scores in the tail and, therefore, tends to be
displaced toward the tail of the distribution. Thus, in a positively skewed distribution, the
typical order of the three measures of central tendency from smallest to largest (left to right) is
the mode, the median, and the mean.
Consequently, the mean is greater than both the median and the mode because it is to the
right of both the median and the mode. Hence, Choice (I) is correct. But in a negatively skewed
distribution, the mean is smaller than the median because it is to the left of the median.
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Number of scores
Mode Median Mean
A comparison of measures of Central Tendency (Van Blerkom, 2017, p. 241)
Mode  the score occurring most frequently

 often used with categorical and discrete data
 displays the least stability from sample to sample
Median  the middle score in a list of ranked scores
 the 50th percentile
 generally most appropriate with skewed distributions
 displays moderate stability from sample to sample
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Mean  the balancing point of a distribution
 frequently most appropriate for relatively symmetrical distributions
 generally the preferred measure of central tendency
 displays the greatest stability from sample to sample
Van Blerkom (2017, p. 241) states that with skewed distributions, the sample median is often
the preferred measure of central tendency. This is so because median is not influenced by
extreme scores. Therefore, Choice (II) is correct.
Relationship between Range and Extreme Scores

Range is the distance from the upper limit of the highest score to the lower limit of the lowest
score. In other words, range refers to the absolute difference between the lowest and highest
scores, and is easily influenced by extreme scores. Therefore, if we have extreme scores at one
end of the distribution, the range will be influenced.
Relationship between Standard Deviation and Extreme Scores

The standard deviation is the most widely reported measure of variability, largely because it
plays a central role in the most popular computational methods that are used for drawing
statistical inferences, which are inferences about the characteristics of a population that are
derived by using data from a random sample. However, the standard deviation is sensitive to
the presence of outliers, which are extreme scores far removed from the majority of the other
scores.
Therefore, Choice (III) is false.

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https://www.coursehero.com/file/p3te6bq/99For-XN1-12-find-the-probability-PX5-a-0-b-1-c-
01-d-98-100The-length-of-human/
Year 94, Item 44; Year 96, Item 45; and Year 97, Item 45.
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 See also: Gravetter and Wallnau (2014, pp. 81-82); Van Blerkom (2017, p. 241)
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59. Identify the correct parenthetical citation for a quote from page one hundred and
three from this source:
Keaveney, S. (2004). When MTV goes CEO. In D. Brundage & M. Lahey (Eds.),
Acting on words (pp. 99-103). Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Pearson.
1) According to Keaveney, “Before mid-millennium, Gen Xers will be the CEOs of the
future” (Brundage & Lahey, 2004, p. 103).
future” (Keaveney, 2004, p. 103).
3) According to Keaveney (2004), “Before mid-millennium, Gen Xers will be the CEOs
of the future” (p. 103).
future” (103).
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
APA in-text citation for a book chapter
When citing a chapter in a book, note the author of the chapter and year of publication in the
text of your paper.
Author’s name in text (no page number):
Cassell and Jenkins (2000) compared reaction times. . .
Author’s name in reference (no page number):
In a recent study of reaction times (Cassell & Jenkins, 2000). . .
Author’s name in text (page number):
According to Cuno (2008), “For years, archaeologists have lobbied for national and
international laws, treaties, and conventions to prohibit the international movement of
antiquities” (p. 1).
Author’s name in reference (page number):
The argument runs that, “The term 'Czechoslovak' had become a rich source of contention
almost immediately after the state's formation” (Innes, 2001, p. 16).
No known author:
A similar study was done of students learning to format a research paper ("Using APA," 2001).
 Use an abbreviated version of the title of the page in quotation marks to substitute for
the name of the author
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No known author or date:

In another study of students and research decision, it was discovered that students succeeded
with tutoring ("Tutoring and APA," n.d).
 Use the first few words from the title and the abbreviation ‘n.d.’ (‘no date’)
See Chapter 6 of the Publication Manual for additional details on formatting in-text
citations.
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 See also: American Psychological Association (2010)
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60. In an experiment, the group that does not receive the intervention is called ----------.
1) the control group
2) the treatment group
3) the participant group
4) the experimental group
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
The control group is the group in a study that does not receive the experimental treatment; it
is compared with the experimental group to determine the effects of the treatment. It is also
called “the comparison group.”
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The experimental group is the group in a research study that receives the experimental
treatment. The experimental group is also called “the participant group”, “the treatment group”,
and “the intervention group”.
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61. Which of the following ways of learning best captures the concept of parameter setting
in Universal Grammar?
1) Inductive and explicit
2) Inductive and implicit
3) Deductive and explicit
4) Deductive and implicit
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
It is important to distinguish implicit learning from two concepts it is often confused with in
the second language literature: inductive learning and implicit memory. Inductive learning
(going from the particular to the general, from examples to rules) and implicit learning (learning
without awareness) are two orthogonal concepts (see the figure below). Via traditional rule
teaching, learning is both deductive and explicit. When students are encouraged to find rules
for themselves by studying examples in a text, learning is inductive and explicit. When children
acquire linguistic competence of their native language without thinking about its structure, their
learning is inductive and implicit. The combination of deductive and implicit is less obvious,
but the concept of parameter setting in Universal Grammar could be seen as an example;
supposedly learners derive a number of characteristics of the language being learned from
the setting of the parameter, and this clearly happens without awareness.
Deductive Inductive
Traditional Rule
Explicit
teaching discovery

Using Learning L1
Implicit
parameters from input
The inductive/deductive and implicit/explicit dimensions
In the same vein, implicit memory and implicit learning are in principle independent concepts.
Even though implicitly acquired knowledge tends to remain implicit, and explicitly acquired
knowledge tends to remain explicit, explicitly learned knowledge can become implicit in the
sense that learners can lose awareness of its structure over time, and learners can become aware
of the structure of implicit knowledge when attempting to access it, for example for applying it
to a new context or for conveying it verbally to somebody else. In Reber's own experiments
with artificial grammars, instructions encourage explicit retrieval, which may lead to making
knowledge itself more explicit (Buchner & Wippich, 1998).
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 See also: Doughty and Long (2003, pp. 314-315)
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62. Learning a second language is expected to benefit from automaticity for all of the
following reasons EXCEPT it --------------.
1) contributes to important but not all aspects of fluency.
2) leaves more attentional resources over for other purposes.
3) expands consciously held, skill relevant knowledge that is describable.
4) makes automatized information immune to interference from other sources of
information.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Pedagogical Implications of Automaticity
The concept of automaticity obviously has implications for second language pedagogy
(DeKeyser, 2001; Hulstijn, 2001; Johnson, 1996; Robinson, 2001; Skehan, 1998).
There are several possible reasons to expect learning to benefit from automaticity.
The most commonly cited one is that because automatic processing consumes fewer
attentional resources than does controlled processing, the more automatic performance
becomes the more attentional resources there are left over for other purposes. Thus, for
example, if one can handle the phonology and syntax of a second language automatically, then
more attention can be paid to processing semantic, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic levels of
communication.
A second reason to favor automaticity is that once a mechanism becomes automatic it
will process information very quickly and accurately, being immune to interference from
other sources of information. This in itself improves the quality of performance. It has even
been suggested that this consideration may be more important than the freeing up of resources
(Stanovich, 1991), although there does not appear to be any research to directly test this.
Third, there are strong reasons for associating automaticity with important (but, of
course, not all) aspects of fluency (Segalowitz, 2000; Skehan, 1998). To the extent that fluency
represents the ability to speak or read quickly, accurately, and without undue hesitation, then

automatic execution of certain aspects of L2 performance such as pronunciation, grammatical
processing, and word recognition would, by definition, promote fluency. Fluency is, of course,
a worthwhile goal in itself, insofar as it facilitates communication. In addition, however,
increasing learners’ fluency may increase their motivation to use the language, which in turn
assists them in seeking out and profiting from increased L2 contact.
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63. What kind of evidence is Speaker A receiving in the following exchange?

A: I seed the man.
B: No, we say "I saw the man."
1) Positive and direct.
2) Positive and indirect.
3) Negative and direct.
4) Negative and indirect.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Evidence types
Traditionally, there are three types of evidence discussed in the literature on language learning
(both first and second): positive evidence, negative evidence, and indirect negative evidence.
Positive evidence
Broadly speaking, positive evidence refers to the input and basically comprises the set of well-
formed sentences to which learners are exposed. In some SLA literature (particularly that
dealing with instruction), positive evidence is referred to as models. These utterances are
available from the spoken language (or visual language in the case of sign language) and/or
from the written language. This is the most direct means that learners have available to them
from which they can form linguistic hypotheses.
Negative evidence
Negative evidence refers to the type of information that is provided to learners concerning the
incorrectness of an utterance. This might be in the form of explicit or implicit information. The
following are examples of explicit (direct) and implicit (indirect) negative evidence
respectively:
(1) I seed the man.
No, we say “I saw the man”
(2) From Mackey, Gass, and McDonough (2000):
NNS: There's a basen of flowers on the bookshelf
NS: a basin?
NNS: base
NS: a base?
NNS: a base
NS: oh, a vase
NNS: vase

In the first example, the learner is receiving direct information about the ungrammaticality of
what was said, whereas in the second example, un-grammaticality must be inferred. In the
second example, it is, of course, possible that the learner will not understand that this is intended
as a correction and may only think that the speaker really did not hear what was said, although
as the interaction progresses, it becomes less and less likely that the “lack of understanding”
explanation is an appropriate one.
As a summary of the two evidence types discussed thus far, Long provides a useful
taxonomy. Evidence can be positive or negative. If positive, it can be either authentic or
modified. If modified, it can be simplified or elaborated. Negative evidence can also be of two
types: pre-emptive (occurring before an actual error – as in a classroom context) or reactive. If
reactive, it can be explicit or implicit. Explicit evidence is an overt correction. Implicit evidence
can result in a communication breakdown or in a recast. Recasts, in turn, can be simple (a
repetition) or elaborated (a change to a [generally grammatical] form).
Indirect negative evidence is the least relevant in a discussion of interaction. It is,
nonetheless, perhaps the most interesting of the types of evidence that learners can avail
themselves of. Unfortunately, it is the least studied, perhaps because no theoretical arguments
rest crucially on it. Chomsky (1981, pp. 8–9), in discussing evidence types, states: indirect
negative evidence – a not unreasonable acquisition system can be devised with the operative
principle that if certain structures or rules fail to be exemplified in relatively simple expressions,
625
where they would be expected to be found, then a (possibly marked) option is selected
excluding them in the grammar, so that a kind of “negative evidence” can be available even
without corrections, adverse reactions, etc. There is good reason to believe that direct negative
evidence is not necessary for language acquisition, but indirect negative evidence may be
relevant. As Plough (1994, p. 30) states, it is an “indirect means of letting the learner know that
a feature is not possible because it is never present in the expected environment.”
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 See also: Doughty and Long (2003, pp. 225-226, 249)
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64. Which of the following statements about fossilization is TRUE?
1) Fossilization is local, not global.
2) Fossilization is only a product, not a process.
3) Fossilization is only found in adults, not in children.
4) Just like stabilization, fossilization is permanent and thus cannot be reversed.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Issues with the Fossilization Hypothesis
In hindsight, the original Fossilization Hypothesis is both broad and loose, and is right in some
respects but wrong in others. A brief appraisal follows.
In its broadest construal, the term “fossilization’ refers to unsuccessful L2 learning, with
success defined as ‘productive performance in the TL by the L2 learner which is identical to that
produced by the native speaker of that TL” (Selinker 1972, p. 223). The term is also broad in that
it spans the macro-to-micro spectrum: at the macro end is the notion that the vast majority of L2
learners are destined to fail to master a second language, while at the micro end are two specific
behavioral events, backsliding and regression, both indicative of deterioration in L2 performance.
Additionally, the hypothesis is broad because it considers fossilization both phylogenic, that is,
affecting a given interlingual community, and ontogenetic, that is, idiosyncratic.

The hypothesis is loosely framed to the extent that it effectively conflates a process, a
product, and a mechanism in a single term, ‘fossilization’. There is, therefore, much confusion
surrounding the term (Long 2003). Consider the following quote from Selinker (1972, p. 221):
What seems to be most promising for study is the observation concerning fossilization.
Many IL linguistic structures are NEVER really eradicated for most second-language
learners; manifestations of these structures regularly reappear in IL productive
performance, especially under conditions of anxiety, shifting attention, and second-
language performance on subject matter which is new to the learner. It is this observation
which allows us to claim that these psycholinguistic structures, even when seemingly
eradicated, are still somehow present in the brain, stored by a fossilization mechanism
(primarily through one of these five processes) in an IL. (emphasis in the original)
Here the polysemous nature of the term ‘fossilization’ cannot be clearer. First, fossilization
denotes a defective linguistic structure that is never really eradicated, implying a process, a
product, and irreversibility. Second, fossilization is found in most L2 learners, children and
adults alike, suggesting pervasiveness. Third, fossilization is driven by a mechanism stored in
the brain, pointing to its neuro-cognitive nature. Fossilization is therefore a catch-all term
(Birdsong 2003, 2006), and as a theoretical construct, the term is ambiguous (Han 1998, 2004,
2011; Long 2003).
Another claim made by the fossilization hypothesis is that the interlanguage system can
fossilize in its entirety, resulting in what may be called ‘global fossilization’. Both past and
626
current research has consistently converged on the finding that fossilization is local, not
global. In other words, fossilization hits the subsystems of interlanguage only selectively, rather
than its gestalt. Based on the aggregate evidence, Han and Odlin (2006, p. 8) concluded that
“L2 acquisition will never have a global end state; rather, it will have fossilization, namely,
permanent local cessation of development.”
Fossilization is permanent, and thus, by definition, cannot be reversed, unlike
stabilization, a term often mistakenly treated as synonymous with fossilization in the SLA
literature.
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 See also: Han (2013, pp. 136-140)
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65. Instruction of difficult grammatical rules ------------.
1) stretches ultimate attainment.
2) speeds up the explicit learning process.
3) slows down active cognitive processing on the side of the learners.
4) enhances later implicit acquisition by increasing chances of noticing.
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Drawing on what we know about the various roles of instruction in general for L2 acquisition
(especially Long, 1983, 1988; Long & Robinson, 1998), on Schmidt’s (1990, 1994, 1995, 2001)
hypothesis that noticing, but not necessarily understanding, is important for L2 acquisition, and
on recent evidence that instruction is important to enhance subsequent noticing (Peckham,
2000), one can hypothesize different degrees of usefulness of explicit teaching for different
levels of difficulty, as shown in the following table. It is important to note, however, that rule
difficulty is an individual issue that can be described as the ratio of the rule’s inherent linguistic
complexity to the student’s ability to handle such a rule. What is a rule of moderate difficulty
for one student may be easy for a student with more language learning aptitude or language

learning experience, and therefore the role of instruction for that element of grammar may vary
from bringing about the learning of a structure that otherwise would not be learned to merely
speeding up the learning process. Conversely, for a weaker student, the goal may not be to get
the student to learn the rule at issue, but to draw enough attention to the forms involved so that
the student will notice them more at some level and at least implicitly acquire some concrete
uses of these forms through subsequent exposure rather than acquire the more abstract rule
during instruction. Thus, for one and the same rule, the goal as well as the degree of
effectiveness of explicit instruction will vary depending on the subjective difficulty of the rule.
Rule difficulty Role of instruction

Very easy Not useful (not necessary)
Easy Speeding up explicit learning process
Moderate Stretching ultimate attainment
Difficult Enhancing later implicit acquisition by increasing chances of noticing
Very difficult Not useful (not effective)
The role of instruction for rules of various levels of difficulty
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66. The concept of attention in the model of human information processing has three
uses, including attention as ----------.
1) arousal, activation, and effort
2) selection, capacity, and effort
3) selection, activation, and arousal
4) perception, execution, and capacity
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Three general stages of information processing at which attention operates are captured in the
following figure. The stages correspond broadly to three current themes in attentional research
and theory (Sanders, 1998; Sanders & Neumann, 1996; Sergeant, 1996); (i) auditory and visual
information intake and processing; (ii) central control and decision-making functions, such as
allocation of attention to competing task demands, and automatization; and (iii) response
execution and monitoring via sustained attention. These three themes and stages also correspond
to three uses of the concept of attention; to describe selection of information (we pay attention
to things as a way of selecting them for further processing); to describe the capacity of
attentional resources (sometimes we are able to pay a lot of attention to a task, while at other
times we are not); and to describe the effort involved in sustaining attention to task goals (we
can maintain the level of attention we pay to a task, or attention and performance can decline over
time). These are distinct but related uses of the concept of attention; each one related to separate
functions, which, however, often operate in conjunction with each other.
A generic model of human information processing with three memory systems
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 See also: Doughty and Long (2003, p. 633)
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67. What does it mean when we say complex systems are nonlinear?
1) They change in response to changes in their environment.
2) They result in the spontaneous occurrences of something new.
3) A small change in one parameter of these systems can have huge implications
downstream.
4) They emerge without direction from external factors and without a plan of the order
embedded in an individual component.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Complex dynamic systems exhibit nonlinearity, which means that an effect is not
proportionate to a cause. In a nonlinear system, a small change in one parameter can have
huge implications downstream. This sensitivity has been called the “butterfly effect,” to make
the point that a small change, such as a butterfly’s flapping its wings in one part of the world,
can have a big impact on the weather elsewhere.
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 See also: VanPatten and Williams (2015, p. 228)
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68. According to Long, all of the following are features of Focus on Forms (FonFs)
EXCEPT it --------.
1) tends to result in boring lessons
2) results in more false beginners than finishers
3) fails to recognize that the teachability of grammatical forms is constrained by their

learnability.
4) allows for the slow and gradual process involved in the learning of L2 linguistic
features
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
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69. Which of the following does the option of focus on form in advance involve?
1) Priming the learner to attend to specific forms, for example, by pre-teaching the forms,
prior to their engagement in a communicative task.
2) Attracting learner’s attention to a specific form in the previous utterance, for example,
by means of a recast.
3) Attention to form and meaning simultaneously.
4) Temporary switching of selective attention to form.
629
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
The timing of focus on form
When it comes to the notion of focus on form, a key issue is timing. Doughty (2001) discussed
four possibilities:
1. simultaneous processing (i.e. attention to form and meaning occur conjointly);
2. focus on form in advance (i.e. priming the learner to attend to specific forms, for
example, by pre-teaching the forms, prior to their engagement in a communicative task);
3. shifts of attention during processing (i.e. selective attention is temporarily switched to form);
4. immediately contingent focus on form (i.e. attracting learner’ attention to a specific form
in the previous utterance, for example by means of a recast).
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70. Input-enrichment activities for grammar teaching are those ---------.
1) in which the targeted feature is both frequent and salient in the input provided
2) which induce learners to process the target structure through input rather than by
eliciting production of the structure
3) whose purpose is to affect the ways in which learners attend to input data
4) in which awareness at the level of understanding rather than at the level of noticing is
intended
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Ellis (2003) refers to three principal ways in which researchers have set about designing focused
task; (A) structure-based production tasks, (B) comprehension tasks, and (C) consciousness-
raising tasks.

A. Structure-based production tasks
In a key article, Loschky and Bley-Vroman (1993) discuss what they call ‘structure-based
communication tasks’. They distinguish three ways in which a task can be designed to
incorporate a specific target language feature: 1. task-naturalness, 2. task-utility, and 3. Task-
essentialness.
B. Comprehension tasks
Comprehension-based tasks may be more successful in eliciting attention to a targeted feature
than production-based tasks because learners cannot avoid processing them. Ellis considers
tasks that are designed to obligate learners to process a specific feature in oral or written input.
These tasks go under various names: comprehension tasks (Loschky and Bley-Vroman 1993),
interpretation tasks (Ellis, 1995) and structured-input tasks (VanPatten 1996). Comprehension
tasks are based on the assumption that acquisition occurs as a result of input-processing. This
is the assumption which posits that intake arises as a result of learners paying conscious
attention to linguistic forms in the input ('noticing). Noticing involves attention to form as
learners attempt to understand the message content. In the case of unfocused comprehension
tasks no attempt is made to structure the input to promote intake; thus learners can avoid
processing syntactically by relying on semantic processing (Swain, 1985). In the case of
focused comprehension, however, the input is contrived to induce noticing of predetermined
630
forms; syntactic processing is required. Ellis considers two ways in which this has been
attempted: input enrichment and input processing.
Input enrichment
Input enrichment involves designing tasks in such a way that the targeted feature is (1) frequent
and/or (2) salient in the input provided. Enriched input can consist of oral/written texts that
learners simply listen to or read, or written texts in which the target structure has been
graphologically highlighted in some way (for example, through the use of underlining or bold
print), or oral/written texts with follow-up activities designed to focus attention on the structure,
for example, questions that can only be answered if the learners have successfully processed
the target structure.
Input processing
‘Input-processing instruction’ is a term coined by VanPatten (1996). Its goal is to “alter the
processing strategies that learners take to the task of comprehension and to encourage them to
make better form-meaning connections than they would if left to their own devices” (p. 60).
C. Consciousness-raising tasks
Consciousness-raising (C-R) tasks differ from the kinds of focused tasks we have considered
above in two essential ways. First, whereas structure-based production tasks, enriched input
tasks, and interpretation tasks are intended to cater primarily to implicit learning, C-R tasks are
designed to cater primarily to explicit learning-that is, they are intended to develop awareness
at the level of ‘understanding' rather than awareness at the level of noticing' (Schmidt,
1994). Thus, the desired outcome of a C-R task is awareness of how some linguistic feature
works. Second, whereas the previous types of task were built around content of a general nature,
for example, stories, pictures of objects, opinions about the kind of person you like, C-R tasks
make language itself the content. In this respect, it can be asked whether C-R tasks are indeed
tasks. They are in the sense that learners are required to talk meaningfully about a language
point using their own linguistic resources. That is, although there is some linguistic feature,
only think about it and discuss it. The 'taskness' of a C-R task lies not in the linguistic point that
is the focus of the task but rather in the talk learners must engage in in order to achieve an
outcome to the task.

The rationale for the use of C-R tasks draws partly on the hypothesized role f for explicit
knowledge as a facilitator for the acquisition of implicit knowledge and partly on the claims in
the psychological literature that learning is more significant if it involves greater depth of
processing (for example, Craik and Lockhart, 1972). C-R tasks cater for discovery learning
through problem solving (Bourke, 1996), in accordance with the general principle that what
learners can find out for themselves is better remembered than what they are simply told.
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 See also: Ellis (2003, pp. 151-163)
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71. Which of the following statements is true about the concepts of scaffolding and ZPD?
1) Scaffolding is a term coined by Lantolf, while ZPD is a term that was popularized by
Bruner.
2) Scaffolding, unlike ZPD, is thought of in terms of the quantity of assistance provided
by the expert to the novice rather than in terms of quality.
3) Scaffolding, unlike ZPD, is thought of in terms of the quality of assistance provided
by the expert to the novice rather than in terms of quantity.
4) Scaffolding is a term popularized by Vygotsky, while ZPD is a term that was coined
by Bruner.
631
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Scaffolding, a term popularized by Jerome Bruner and his colleagues nearly four decades
ago (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976), refers to any type of adult–child (expert–novice) assisted
quality, of mediation that is negotiated between expert and novice (Stetsenko, 1999). ZPD is a
term coined by Vygotsky.
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72. Who has argued that instruction will be most beneficial if it focuses on structures
from the next stage?
1) Nick Ellis
2) Larry Selinker
3) Manfred Pienemann
4) Michael Sharwood Smith
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
The predictions of the Teachability Hypothesis proposed by Manfred Pienemann are as follows:
1. Stages of acquisition cannot be skipped through formal instruction.
2. Instruction will be most beneficial if it focuses on structures from 'the next stage'
(Pienemann, 1998, p. 250).
For more on Processability and Teachability hypotheses, Refer to Year 93, Item 79, and Year
96, Item 64.

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 See also: Mitchell and Myles (2004, p. 116); Mitchell, Myles, and Marsden (2013, p. 120)
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73. Instruction can take into account the learner’s built-in syllabus through all of the
following possibilities except ------------.
1) focusing on instruction of pragmatic meaning
2) focusing the instruction on the explicit rather than the implicit knowledge
3) ensuring that the learners are developmentally ready to acquire a specific target feature
4) adopting a zero grammar approach
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Principle 5 of Instructed SLA proposed by Ellis: Instruction needs to take into account the
learner's built-in syllabus.
Early research into naturalistic SLA showed that learners follow a natural order and sequence
of acquisition (i.e., they master different grammatical structures in a relatively fixed and
universal order, and they pass through a sequence of stages of acquisition en route to mastering
each grammatical structure). This led researchers like Corder (1967) to suggest that learners
632
have their own "built-in syllabus" for learning grammar as implicit knowledge. By and large,
the built-in syllabus is universal (i.e., it is the same irrespective of the learner's age or L1).
Nevertheless, the L1 has been found to have some influence. For example, Japanese learners of
English may master plural -s somewhat later than Spanish learners because there is no
equivalent structure in Japanese whereas there is in Spanish. Krashen ( 1981) famously argues
that grammar instruction plays no role in the development of implicit knowledge (what he calls
acquisition), a view based on the conviction that learners (including classroom learners)
automatically proceed along their built-in syllabus as long as they have access to
comprehensible input and are sufficiently motivated. He argues that grammar instruction can
contribute only to explicit knowledge (i.e., learning). A number of empirical studies were
conducted to: ( 1) compare the order of acquisition in instructed and naturalistic learners (e.g.,
Pica, 1983); (2) compare the success of instructed and naturalistic learners (Long, 1983); and
(3) examine whether attempts to teach specific grammatical structures resulted in their
acquisition (White, Spada, Lightbown, & Ranta, 1991). These studies show that, by and large,
the order and sequence of acquisition is the same for instructed and naturalistic learners (e.g.,
Ellis, 1989; Pienemann, 1989), that instructed learners generally achieve higher levels of
grammatical competence than naturalistic learners, and that instruction is no guarantee that
learners will acquire what they have been taught. This has led to the conclusion that it is
beneficial to teach grammar but that it is necessary to ensure it is taught in a way that is
compatible with the natural processes of acquisition. How, then, can instruction take account
of the learner's built-in syllabus? There are a number of possibilities:
Zero grammar approach. Adopt a zero grammar approach, as proposed by Krashen; that
is, employ a task-based approach that makes no attempt to predetermine the linguistic content
of a lesson.
Developmental readiness. Ensure that learners are developmentally ready to acquire a
specific target feature. However, this is probably impractical because teachers have no easy
way of determining which level individual students have reached and it would necessitate a
highly individualized approach to cater to differences in developmental levels among the
students. Also, as we noted earlier, such fine-tuning may not be necessary. While instruction in
a target feature may not enable learners to "beat" the built-in syllabus, it may serve to push them

along it as long as the target structure is not too far ahead of their developmental stage.
Explicit knowledge. Focus the instruction on explicit rather than implicit knowledge
because explicit knowledge is not subject to the same developmental constraints as implicit
knowledge. While it is probably true that some declarative facts about language are easier to
master than others, this is likely to reflect their cognitive rather than their developmental
complexity, which can be taken into account more easily in deciding the order of instruction.
Traditional structural syllabuses, in fact, are graded on the basis of cognitive complexity. It
should be noted, however, that not all researchers accept the universality and inviolability of
the built-in syllabus. Skill-learning theory, for example, is premised on the assumption that
declarative knowledge of a grammatical structure can be converted into procedural knowledge
at any time given the right amount and type of practice. Similarly, the adoption of Vygotskian
sociocultural theory "would require that we . . . eradicate the assertion that SLA progresses
along a predetermined mental path" (Johnson, 2004, p. 172). However, these researchers do not
offer evidence to support their claims-at least, not where the development of implicit knowledge
is concerned.
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74. Which of the following is NOT a contribution that learner output can make?
1) It forces syntactic processing.
2) It helps to automatize existing knowledge.
3) It matches instruction to particular aptitude for learning.
4) It provides opportunities for learners to develop discourse skills.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Principle 7 of Instructed SLA proposed by Ellis: Successful instructed language learning
also requires opportunities for output.
Contrary to Krashen's insistence that acquisition is dependent entirely on comprehensible input,
most researchers now acknowledge that learner output also plays a part. Skehan (1998),
drawing on Swain (1995), summarizes the contributions that output can make:
A. Production serves to generate better input through the feedback that learners' efforts at
production elicit.
B. It forces syntactic processing (i.e., obliges learners to pay attention to grammar).
C. It allows learners to test hypotheses about the target language grammar.
D. It helps to automatize existing knowledge.
E. It provides opportunities for learners to develop discourse skills (e.g., by producing "long
turns").
F. It is important for helping learners to develop a "personal voice" by steering conversation to
topics they are interested in contributing to.
R. Ellis (2003) adds one additional contribution of output:
G. It provides the learner with "auto-input" (i.e., learners can attend to the input provided by
their own productions).
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75. To carry out strategy training in teaching listening comprehension, teachers need to
know all of the following EXCEPT --------.
1) how to make student aware of the distinction between skills, strategies, and techniques
2) the order in which strategies should be presented and practiced
3) how much time should be allocated to strategy training
4) the theories and principles behind strategy training
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
For the past 20 years or so, considerable research effort has been devoted to understanding the
nature of listening strategies and how listening strategies used by good listeners can be taught
to so-called ineffective listeners. As a result of this line of research, strategy training activities
have now become a standard feature of most modern listening coursebooks. Different authors
recommend different procedures of learner strategy training, but most would include a
presentation–practice–evaluation cycle (for example Littlejohn 2008). Some authors have
suggested that in order for strategy training to have any beneficial effect, it should be
implemented intensively and systematically. This, of course, places a heavy demand on the
teachers because they will need to know at least the following to carry out strategy training:
634
1. They need to know the theories and principles behind strategy training
2. They need to know how to select the strategies that the students need to learn
3. They need to know the order in which these strategies should be presented and practiced
4. They need to know how to integrate these strategies into the curriculum
5. They need to know how much time should be allocated for strategy training.
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 See also: Renandya and Farrell (2011, pp. 54-55)
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76. According to Fillmore, fluency includes all of the following abilities EXCEPT -----.
1) talking as fast as a native speaker
2) using language creatively and imaginatively
3) saying appropriate things in a variety of contexts
4) talking in coherent and semantically dense sentences that show mastery of syntax and
semantics
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
What is fluency?
Fluency is often discussed in relation to accuracy. While most second language professionals
tend to agree on what it means to be accurate in a language, the concept of fluency is not as
easy to define. Hartmann and Stork (1976) state that a person is fluent when he or she uses the
language's structures accurately while at the same time concentrating on meaning, not form.
The fluent speaker uses correct patterns automatically at normal conversational speed.
Interestingly, here accuracy is seen as a major part of fluency. An early advocate of the fluency-
accuracy polarity was Brumfit (1984). He contrasts the two in pedagogical contexts and makes
the distinction that "accuracy will tend to be closely related to the syllabus, will tend to be
teacher-dominated, and will tend to be form-based. Fluency must be student-dominated,

meaning-based, and relatively unpredictable towards the syllabus" (p. 121). Brumfit further
points out that fluency is meant "to be regarded as natural language use, whether or not it results
in native-speaker-like language comprehension or production" (p. 56). It involves maximizing
the language so far acquired by the learner by creating natural use in the classroom as much as
possible.
Fillmore (1979) proposes that fluency includes four abilities: (1) the ability to talk without
awkward pauses for relatively long periods of time; (2) the ability to talk in coherent and
semantically dense sentences that show mastery of syntax and semantics; (3) the ability to say
appropriate things in a variety of contexts; and (4) the ability to use language creatively and
imaginatively.
These are abilities that language users all possess to varying degrees. Fillmore's categories
are interesting in that they relate to language but also to personality. They also show that there
is an interaction between language use and knowledge of the world. In particular, this is seen
in the third and fourth characteristics. Hedge (1993) describes fluency as "the ability to link
units of speech together with facility and without strain or inappropriate slowness or undue
hesitation" (p. 275). Similarly, Richards and Schmidt (2010) describe fluency as "the features
which give speech the qualities of being natural and normal, including native-like use of
pausing, rhythm, intonation, stress, rate of speaking, and use of interjections and interruptions"
(p. 222). These descriptions emphasize a smoothness of language delivery, without too many
635
pauses or hesitations. They suggest natural language use, not necessarily speaking quickly.
Thornbury (2005) describes features of fluency centered primarily around pausing. A speaker's
rate of speech is important, but it is not the only factor or even the most important one. Research
on listeners' perceptions of a speaker's fluency suggests that pausing is equally important.
Thornbury's four features of fluency are:
1. Pauses may be long but not frequent.
2. Pauses are usually filled.
3. Pauses occur at meaningful transition points.
4. There are long runs of syllables and words between pauses.
Fluency as a concept, it seems, includes many perspectives, and the features that make it up are
still being debated. Koponen and Riggenbach (2000) conclude that "there can ultimately be no
single all-purpose definition of fluency" (p. 19).
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77. What is the reading activity in which students (1) listen to the reading passage, (2)
listen and follow the text with their eyes, (3) listen and speak along with the text, (4)
read the text silently, and (5) read the text aloud?
5) Rereading
6) Repeated reading
7) Rate build-up reading
8) Shadow reading
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Fluent reading
One key methodological issue that teachers and materials developers need to pay particular

attention to is the selection of level-appropriate texts. For readers to develop appropriate levels
of fluency, the text they are using must not be too difficult. Reading materials need to provide
texts of varying levels of difficulty. But, in far too many reading classrooms around the world
the texts that students are asked to read are at a difficult level of reading. Perhaps this is a factor
that contributes to why so many students report not liking to read.
One simple reading fluency practice that teachers can use to build reading fluency is called rate
build-up reading. What follows includes how Anderson (2014) describes the way this practice
is actualized:
In rate build-up reading, students are given 60 seconds to read as much material as they
can. I specifically ask students to mark a “1” in the text where they finished reading after the
first minute. They then begin reading the text again from the beginning and are given an
additional 60 seconds. They are to read more material during the second 60-second period than
they did during the first. After the second time through the same material, I ask them to mark a
“2” where they are in the text when I say stop. The drill is repeated a third and a fourth time.
The purpose of this activity is to reread "old" material quickly, gliding into the new. As the eyes
move quickly over the "old" material, the students actually learn how to get their eyes moving
at a faster reading rate. The exercise involves more than simply moving the eyes quickly: the
material should be processed and comprehended. As students participate in this rate-building
activity, they learn to increase their reading rate. After each reading, I take the opportunity to
636
conduct some type of a comprehension check to help strengthen readers' comprehension. I may
ask them to turn to a partner and describe one thing they liked about what they read. Or I may
ask them to identify any vocabulary words that are new to them. Or I may ask them to complete
a graphic organizer for the key ideas in the text. Also, after the second reading and the third
reading, I have the readers set a reading fluency goal. I ask them to look at where the number
“1” is in the text and where the number “2” is. I then ask them where they hope the number
“3” will be after they read the text the third time. I have them write the number “3” in the text
and draw a circle around the number. They then read for the third time, and I ask them if they
have reached their goal. I usually know whether they reached the goal based on the moans or
exclamations of excitement when I say stop. I repeat the same goal-setting process between the
third and fourth times through the text.
This activity takes no more than 10 minutes of class time. Once students understand the
goal of building the amount of text that is read during each 60-second period, they want to
engage in this activity to push themselves to be more fluent readers. After introducing this
activity in class, I ask the students to follow the same instructions on their own outside of class
during their extensive reading. This provides students the opportunity to practice on their own
something that we have done in class during intensive reading.
Grabe (2009) argues that "fluency practice cannot be an afterthought in instructional planning;
rather, it needs to become an equal partner with comprehension practice in reading instruction"
(p. 105). Anderson (2014) encourages teachers to explicitly build more fluency practice into
their instructional practices. In addition to rate build-up reading, ideas on how to build reading
fluency include shadow reading, repeated reading, class-paced reading, and self-paced
reading (Anderson, 1999, 2009).
Shadow reading has five steps. First, students listen to the reading passage. Second, students
listen and follow the text with their eyes. Next, students listen and speak along with the text.
Fourth, students read the text silently. Finally, students read the text aloud. After each of these
steps, the teacher should engage the students in a comprehension check so that the focus is not
just on reading rate. Also, any of these steps may be repeated as many times as is necessary to

achieve fluent reading.
Repeated reading is somewhat similar to rate build-up reading in its purpose but not in how it
is carried out. Students read a short passage over and over again until they achieve criterion
levels of reading rate and comprehension. For example, they may try to read a short 100 word
paragraph four times in two minutes. The criterion levels may vary from class to class, but
reasonable goals to work toward are criterion levels of 200 wpm at 70% comprehension.
During a class-paced reading activity, the class sets a reading rate goal (i.e., 200 wpm). Once
that goal is established, the average number of words per page of the material being read is
calculated. It is then determined how much material needs to be read in one minute to meet the
class goal. For example, if the class goal is to read 200 wpm and the material being read has an
average of 100 words per page, the class would be expected to read one page every 30 seconds.
As each 30-second period elapses, the teacher indicates to the class to move to the next page.
Students are encouraged to keep up with the established class goal. Of course, those who read
faster than 200 wpm are not expected to slow down their reading rate. As long as they are ahead
of the designated page, they continue reading.
During a self-paced reading activity, each student determines his or her own reading rate goal.
The student then determines how much material needs to be read in a 60-second period to meet
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the rate. For example, suppose a student's objective rate is 180 wpm and the material being read
has an average number of 10 words per line. The student would need to read 18 lines of text in
1 minute to meet the goal. The activity proceeds nicely by having each student mark off several
chunks of lines and silently read for a period of 5-7 minutes with the instructor calling out
minute intervals. Students can then determine if they are keeping up with their individual
reading-rate goal.
For information about rereading and also more about repeated reading, refer to Year 96, Item 75.
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78. It is possible to promote accuracy in the pre-task phase through all of the following
strategies EXCEPT --------.
1) repeated performance
2) giving time for planning the task
3) reducing the cognitive complexity of the task
4) pre-teaching certain linguistic forms that can be used while completing the task
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Addressing Grammar within Task Work
A focus on grammar can be addressed at several different stages of the teaching/learning
process – at the stages of Input, Intake, Acquisition, Access or Output. Doughty and Williams
(1998, p. 3) suggest that focus on form ‘entails a prerequisite engagement in meaning before
attention to linguistic features can be expected to become effective’. Skehan (1996) proposes
the following principles as the basis of a methodology that includes a focus on form as part of
an overall communicative approach to teaching:
a. exposure to language at an appropriate level of difficulty

b. engagement in meaning-focused interaction in the language
c. opportunities for learners to notice or attend to linguistic form while using the language
d. opportunities to expand the language resources learners make use of (both lexical and
syntactic) over time
There are potentially three points at which a focus on grammar can be provided in task work –
prior to the task, during the task and after the task.
Addressing Accuracy Prior to the Task
Pre-task activities have two goals: (1) to provide language support that can be used in
completing a task; (2) to clarify the nature of the task so that students can give less attention to
procedural aspects of the task and hence monitor the linguistic accuracy of their performance
while carrying out a task. Skehan (1996, p. 53) notes: ‘Pre-task activities can aim to teach, or
mobilize, or make salient language which will be relevant to task performance’. This can be
accomplished in the following ways:
1. By pre-teaching certain linguistic forms that can be used while completing a task. For
example, prior to a role-play task which practices ‘calling an apartment owner to discuss renting
an apartment’ (Richards & Hull, 1986), students first read advertisements for apartments and
learn key vocabulary they will use in a role-play. They also listen to and practice a dialogue in
which a prospective tenant calls an apartment owner for information. The dialogue serves both
to display different questioning strategies and to model the kind of task the students will
638
perform. Other pre-task activities used in the role-plays include brainstorming activities,
vocabulary classification tasks and prediction tasks, all of which serve to generate language
awareness as well as to develop schemata relevant to a task.
2. By reducing the cognitive complexity of the task. If a task is difficult to carry out, learners’
attention may be diverted to the structure and management of the task, leaving little opportunity
for them to monitor the language they use on the task. One way of reducing the cognitive
complexity of a task is to provide students with a chance for prior rehearsal of a task. This is
intended to ‘ease the processing load that learners will encounter when actually doing a task’
(Skehan, 1996, p. 54). This could be achieved by watching a video or listening to a cassette of
learners doing a task similar to the target task, or it could consist of a simplified version of a
task similar to the one the learners will carry out. Dialogue work prior to carrying out the role-
play described above serves a similar function.
3. By giving time to plan the task. Time allocated to planning prior to carrying out a task can
likewise provide learners with schemata, vocabulary and language forms that they can call upon
while completing the task. Planning activities include vocabulary generating activities such as
word classification and organization, information generating activities such as brainstorming,
or strategy activities in which learners consider a range of strategies for solving a problem,
discuss their pros and cons, and then select one which they will apply to the task.
Addressing Accuracy during the Task

A focus on form can be facilitated during the completion of a task by choosing how the task is
to be carried out. The way it is implemented can determine whether it is carried out fluently and
with an acceptable level of linguistic performance, or disfluently with excessive dependence on
communication strategies, employment of lexical rather than grammaticalised discourse, and
overuse of ellipsis and nonlinguistic resources. Task implementation factors include:
1. Participation: whether the task is completed individually or with other learners
2. Procedures: the number of procedures involved in completing the task
3. Resources: the materials and other resources provided for the learners to use while
completing the task
4. Order: the sequencing of a task in relation to previous tasks

5. Product: the outcome or outcomes students produce, such as a written product or an oral one
The effect of participation arrangement on tasks performance has been noted by Brown,
Anderson, Shillcock, and Yule (1984, cited in Skehan, 1996b, p. 26): ‘The greater the number
of participants there are in a task the greater the pressure on those transacting a task, and the
greater the likelihood that fluency will predominate as a goal over accuracy and
complexity/restructuring’. Foster found that dyads rather than groups ‘coupled with the
obligation to exchange information, was the “best” for language production, negotiations and
modified output’ (1998, p. 18). Resources students work from can also affect task performance.
The use of pictures in a storytelling task might provide an accessible framework or schema for
the story, clarifying such elements as setting, characters, events, outcomes, and so on, giving
the learners more opportunity to focus their planning or performance on other dimensions of
the task. Or, in conducting a survey task, the design of the resources students use could have a
crucial impact on the appropriateness of the language used in carrying out the task. If the survey
form or questionnaire the students use provides models of the types of questions they should
ask, it may result in a better level of language use during questioning and make other aspects
of the task easier to manage, since less planning will need to be devoted to formulating
appropriate questions. In the role-plays discussed earlier (Richards & Hull, 1986), considerable
trialing was needed of the role-play cue sheets students used in carrying out their role-plays
before a format was arrived at which gave partial language support and which guided but did
639
not dominate students’ improvisations during each activity. Procedures used in completing a
task can also be used to influence language output. A task that is divided into several shorter
subtasks may be more manageable than one without such a structure, allowing students to deal
with one section of the task at a time. For example, the procedures used in the role-play activities
mentioned earlier consisted of:
1. preparatory activity designed to provide schemata, vocabulary and language
2. dialogue listening task, to model shorter version of target task
3. dialogue practice task, to provide further clarification of task
4. first practice, using role-play cues
5. follow-up listening
6. second role-play practice
The order of a task in relation to other tasks may influence use of target structures. For example,
if students are to carry out a task that requires the use of sequence markers, a prior activity
which explains sequence markers and models how they are used may result in more frequent
use of sequence markers during the performance of the target task (see Swain, 1998). The
product focus of a task will also influence the extent to which students have an opportunity to
attend to linguistic form. A task may be completed orally, it may be recorded or it may require
writing. In each case, different opportunities for language awareness are involved. Learners can
also record their performance of a task and then listen to it and identify aspects of their
performance that require modification.
Addressing Accuracy after the Task

Grammatical appropriateness can also be addressed after a task has been completed (see
Willis & Willis, 1996). Activities of this type include the following:
1. Public performance: After completing a task in small groups, students carry out the task in
front of the class or another group. This can have the effect of prompting them to perform the
task at a more complex linguistic level. Aspects of their performance which were not initially
in focus during in-group performance can become conscious as there is an increased capacity
for self-monitoring during a public performance of the task.
2. Repeat performance: The same activity might be repeated with some elements modified,

such as the amount of time available. Nation (1989), for example, reports improvements in
fluency, control of content and, to a lesser extent, accuracy when learners repeated an oral task
under time constraints and argues that this is a way of bringing about long-term improvement
in both fluency and, to some extent, accuracy.
3. Other performance: The student might hear more advanced learners (or even native
speakers) completing the same task, and focus on some of the linguistic and communicative
resources employed in the process (for example, Richards, 1985).
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 See also: Richards and Renandya (2002, pp. 160-164)
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79. Which of the following statements is NOT true about intensive reading?
1) Students often work with short texts.
2) Students work with close guidance from the teacher.
3) The goal is to help students obtain detailed meaning from the text.
4) It produces skilled readers but not skilled readers.
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Extensive reading (ER), with its emphasis on encouraging learners to read self-selected, large
amounts of meaningful language, fits well with current principles for good second and foreign
language pedagogy.
What Is Extensive Reading?

According to Carrell and Carson (1997, pp. 49–50), “extensive reading . . . generally involves
rapid reading of large quantities of material or longer readings (e.g., whole books) for general
understanding, with the focus generally on the meaning of what is being read than on the
language.” Although this definition provides an overview of ER, Davis (1995, p. 329) offers
one description of ER from an ELT classroom implementation perspective:
An extensive reading program is a supplementary class library scheme, attached to an
English course, in which pupils are given the time, encouragement, and materials to read
pleasurably, at their own level, as many books as they can, without the pressures of testing
or marks. Thus, pupils are competing only against themselves, and it is up to the teacher to
provide the motivation and monitoring to ensure that the maximum number of books is
being read in the time available. The watchwords are quantity and variety, rather than
quality, so that books are selected for their attractiveness and relevance to the pupils’ lives,
rather than for literary merit.
Although ER programs come under different names, including Uninterrupted Sustained Silent
Reading (USSR), Drop Everything and Read (DEAR), Silent Uninterrupted Reading for Fun
(SURF), and the Book Flood Approach (Elley & Mangubhai, 1983), they all share a common
purpose: that learners read large quantities of books and other materials in an environment that
nurtures a lifelong reading habit. In addition, these programs share a common belief that the
ability to read fluently is best achieved through an instructional program that emphasizes
reading extensively in the language.
ER differs from intensive reading. In intensive reading, students normally work with short
texts with close guidance from the teacher. The aim of intensive reading is to help students
obtain detailed meaning from the text, to develop reading skills – such as identifying main

ideas and recognizing text connectors – and to enhance vocabulary and grammar
knowledge. It is important to note that these two approaches to teaching reading – intensive
and extensive reading – should not be seen as being in opposition, as both serve different but
complementary purposes (Carrell & Carson, 1997; Nuttall, 1996).
As mentioned above, in intensive reading students spend lots of time analyzing and
dissecting short, difficult texts under the close supervision of the teacher. The aim of intensive
reading is to help students construct detailed meaning from the text, develop reading skills, and
enhance vocabulary and grammar knowledge. This overemphasis on the explicit teaching of
reading and language skills leaves little room for implementing other approaches. The
intensive reading approach by itself, Day and Bamford further argue, may produce skilled
readers but not skilled readers.
The following characteristics are generally thought to be among the most important the
characteristics of successful ER programs:
1. Students read large amounts of material
2. Students usually choose what they want to read
3. Reading materials vary in terms of topic and genre
4. The material students read is within their level of comprehension
641
5. Students usually take part in post-reading activities

6. Teachers read with their students, thus modeling enthusiasm for reading
7. Teachers and students keep track of student progress
The Benefits of Extensive Reading

ER is seen as offering many advantages (Day & Bamford, 1998; Krashen, 1993; Nation, 1997),
some of which are as follows:
1. enhanced language learning in such areas as spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and text structure
2. increased knowledge of the world
3. improved reading and writing skills
4. greater enjoyment of reading
5. more positive attitude toward reading
6. higher possibility of developing a reading habit
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80. In teaching spoken grammar to students, which of the following forms best observes
negative face?
1) Can I help you?
2) May I help you?
3) Can you help me?
4) Would you help me?
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Face and politeness and spoken grammar
The field of pragmatics has long concerned itself with how speakers relate to one another in
terms of conveying and negotiating meanings and intentions in contexts, and spoken grammar

is, par excellence, the study of grammatical forms and their functions in immediate, shared
contexts. The notion of face is a key concept in pragmatics (Brown & Levinson, 1987) and
spoken grammar serves this need in face-to-face interaction. The notion of face is concerned
with two goals: (1) showing esteem/respect for one's fellow human beings (often referred to as
positive face or positive politeness); and (2) not imposing on them (often referred to as negative
face or negative politeness). We can show positive face through grammar by using, where
available, respectful forms (e.g., many languages distinguish between respectful and familiar
forms for you). In English, the system of situational ellipsis plays a part in this (compare Want
a coffee? with Do you want a cup of coffee?), as does the modal verb system. May I help you?
is considered more oriented toward politeness and respect for the listener than Can I help you?
Likewise, Would/Could you help me? is considered less of an imposition on the listener
than Will/Can you help me? or just Help me!
While the goals of positive and negative politeness pertain to both speaking and writing, there
are very important differences. First of all, positive politeness (showing respect or esteem to
the person we are speaking or writing to) is particularly important in writing, where how we
address our interlocutor can only manifest itself in what we write. For example, addressing a
professor as Hi jenny in an email is not normally acceptable. However, it may be acceptable in
some face-to-face situations, for example, at an end-of-semester class party where the context
642
is very informal and where first names are generally being used. On the other hand, negative
politeness (not imposing on your interlocutor) is important in writing, but it is even more crucial
in face-to-face communication. One of the main ways in which we show negative politeness in
speaking is by softening or hedging what we say so as not to impose on our listener. This means
carefully choosing less direct structures.
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81. The objective model of curriculum planning is appealing for all of the following
reasons EXCEPT ---------.
1) epistemological objectivism
2) ease of evaluation
3) clarity of goals
4) accountability
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Models of Curriculum Planning
Both Clark (1987) and White (1988) refer to the framework developed by Skilbeck (1982) to
explore the ‘value systems’ underlying educational traditions, and relate it to language teaching.
The three traditions are identified as Classical Humanism, Reconstructionism and
Progressivism, which they relate to the structural grammar/systems approach, the notional-
functional syllabus, and the process-procedural approach, respectively.
The Content Model: Classical Humanism

The central focus of the curriculum in this model is the content of what is to be learned by, or
transmitted to, the learner. In the Classical Humanist tradition, the content is a valued cultural
heritage, the understanding of which contributes to the overall intellectual development of the

learner; and, from the point of view of epistemological objectivism, the content is knowledge
which has been identified and agreed to be universal, unchanging and absolute. This model has
been the dominant philosophy underlying the history of the Western educational system for
centuries, derived from theories of knowledge going back to Aristotle and Plato. Its attraction lies
in the fact that most people, when challenged, would have fairly definite ideas of what they
consider as essential to a ‘good’ education, for example, literature, ethics/religion, the physical
sciences, the biological sciences, history, a second language, with a resultant ability in the learner
“to think effectively, to communicate thought, to make relevant judgements, to discriminate
among values” (Hirst, 1965, p. 2). Undoubtedly, this owes much to the power this model holds
over us as products of a largely content-based curriculum. However, as Kelly (1989, pp. 45–46)
points out, the model is inadequate as the basis for curriculum design because it is unable to cope
with a discussion of the wider purposes of education, and does not take into account the abilities
or problems of the individual learner or the complexities of the learning process itself. In the era
of globalization and the growth of multicultural societies, it cannot justify the transmission of one
particular culture; within the ethos of ‘education for all’ it is unable to take account of the widely
differing needs of a massive student population, where the ‘educated’ are no longer an elite
trained to rule the next generation of workers; as the basic premises of science no longer rest on
objective, logical, value-free theories but are shaken by the discoveries and uncertainties of
quantum physics, the foundations of universal knowledge are no longer secure and an educational
643
philosophy based on these foundations is no longer acceptable. That is not to say that ‘content’
has no role whatsoever in curriculum design, only that as a model it is too simplistic, and too
much a product of an earlier, very different society, to be the central planning factor for curricula
today. In the field of English language teaching, this model underpins the grammar-based
curriculum, where the syllabus is concerned with the grammar and vocabulary of the language.
If we return to Richards’s definition of curriculum, then the purposes of the program are to
transmit knowledge of the language system to the learners and to ensure that they master the
grammar rules and vocabulary of the language; the content, or the syllabus, is a selection and
sequencing of individual grammar points and lexis; the teaching procedures and learning
experiences will include drilling of grammatically correct sentences, explanations of theory and
memorization of lists of vocabulary; and assessment is based on the learner’s ability to produce
grammatically accurate language. The starting point for the grammar-based curriculum, then, is
the target language as a relatively fixed concept and it largely ignores factors such as context,
appropriacy of use, modes of discourse or individual learner needs; as such, it reflects an
essentialist (or objectivist) approach to meaning. With the advent of the communicative approach
to language learning in the late 1960s and 1970s, this approach to language curriculum design
has increasingly fallen out of favor. Although it still has a place in content for syllabus design, as
a basis for planning a curriculum, the grammar-based approach is not the primary factor.
The Objectives Model: Reconstructionism

The starting point for this model of curriculum planning is no longer the content, but the objectives
of the teaching-learning program; as such, it relates to the second educational tradition identified
by Skilbeck (1982), Reconstructionism, where the main purpose of education is to bring about
some kind of social change. Its origins lie in the movement for the scientific management of
education and the work of behavioral psychologists in the first half of the twentieth century, who
defined learning as a process of observable changes in behavior which could be measured. It was
the influential curriculum designer R. W. Tyler who promoted the use of behavioral objectives
as the basis for curriculum design in the 1930s, long before the movement really took off in the
1960s, when Mager (1962) published Preparing Instructional Objectives, and gave the clearest
definition available of behavioral objectives, as having three essential characteristics:

1. They must unambiguously describe the behavior to be performed.
2. They must describe the conditions under which the performance will be expected to occur.
3. They must state a standard of acceptable performance (the criterion).
Today, there is a welter of terms used to describe intended learning outcomes: performance
indicators, learning objectives, performance objectives, expected outputs which are particularly
relevant to the business ethos and the emphasis on public or client accountability which form
some of the constraints within which educational development takes place.
The attraction of the model is that it provides:

1. Clarity of goals: The objectives of a learning program are clear to both the teacher and the
learners, which facilitates the selection of learning materials and activities.
2. Ease of evaluation: Where there are clearly specified objectives, the success of the learners,
and of the program, can easily and accurately be evaluated to the extent that the objectives
have been fulfilled.
3. Accountability: In both formal and business sectors, the model provides clear methods for
needs identification, establishing learning purpose and providing measurable ‘products’ of
the educational program.
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Some severe criticisms of the approach have been summarized by Kelly (1989), and he points
out that the most fundamental criticism is that philosophically it reduces people to the level of
automatons who can be trained to behave in particular ways and precludes such concepts as
autonomy, self-fulfillment and personal development. As such, it is too unsophisticated, and
attempts to impose a linear process on something that is spiraling and cyclical. Kelly does
acknowledge, however, that the objectives model can be appropriate in the area of vocational
training and in subjects which require the transmission of particular skills. Reviewing the role
of behavioral objectives in foreign language learning, Tumposky (1984, p. 302) claims that
“There has been a mixed, but largely negative, reaction to behavioral objectives from teachers
of foreign languages, including teachers of ESL/EFL”. She explores some of the same contra
arguments as Kelly, emphasizing the limits such objectives place on creativity and the cognitive
and affective aspects of learning, in their reduction of education to an instrument for behavioral
change. Her perspective is very much that of the teacher and an interpretation of the objectives
model in its narrowest sense. The objectives model, however, was the basis of the Council of
Europe Threshold Level project in the 1970s, one of the most important movements in the
transition from a grammar-based approach to a communicative approach to language teaching,
which resulted in the notional-functional syllabus and an emphasis on needs analysis and the
eventual ends of language learning rather than a narrow linguistic focus.
The Process Model: Progressivism

Kelly sums up the objections to the contents and objectives models as “the fact that neither offers
any real help with that decision which must precede all others, namely the choice of content and/or
aims and objectives,” and proposes the process model as an approach to curriculum planning
which attempts to deal with this “value issue as the prime concern in educational planning” (1989,
p. 84). The purpose of education from the point of view of the process model is to enable the
individual to progress towards self-fulfillment. It is concerned with the development of
understanding, not just the passive reception of ‘knowledge’ or the acquisition of specific skills.
The goals of education are not defined in terms of particular ends or products, but in terms of the
processes and procedures by which the individual develops understanding and awareness and
creates possibilities for future learning. Content, then, is based on principles derived from research

into learning development and the overall purposes of the educational process, which allows the
formulation of objectives related to the procedural principles. The model rests on concepts of
learner needs, interests and development processes and is thus open to the criticism of subjectivity
in the definition of these concepts, but, as the body of research in the field of developmental
psychology expands, there is an increasing acceptance of its underlying philosophy. In practice,
however, as a basis for national curriculum development projects, it is less attractive than the
objectives model for large-scale curriculum development and planning related to government
trends in the West towards vocational training to meet employment needs.
In the language teaching world, there has been a move towards the ‘learner-centered
curriculum’ (Nunan, 1985, 1988; Candlin, 1984), and even towards a definition of a ‘learning-
centered curriculum’ (Dickinson, 1987). Although these ideas inform much of the work done
in curriculum research and development, as the central principle for curriculum design they are,
as yet, peripheral rather than mainstream.
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82. Which of the following best describes the role of a textbook as a structuring tool?
1) It should be used as a means of collegial support and shared responsibility among
teachers.
2) It should serve as a useful map or plan of what is intended and expected.
3) It should provide support and help with classroom management.
4) It should be a vehicle for teacher ad learner training.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
A function for textbooks that is often overlooked is their role as a structuring tool.
Communicative language classes are social events, and so, inherently unpredictable and
potentially threatening to all participants (e.g., Reid, 1994). This is particularly so in periods of
change (Luxon, 1994) such as those experienced by teachers implementing new programs or
working with unfamiliar learner types. Learners are, of course, by definition, always facing
enormous and possibly threatening change as their language skills develop. One strategy both
teachers and students use in dealing with this uncertainty is ‘social routinization’, the process by
which classroom interaction becomes increasingly stereotyped to reduce the unpredictability and,
thereby, the stress. Materials can play a key role in this process: ‘Textbooks survive … and
prosper primarily because they are the most convenient means of providing the structure that the
teaching-learning system – particularly the system in change – requires’ (Hutchinson & Torres,
1994, p. 317). A textbook, from this perspective, does not necessarily drive the teaching process,
but it does provide the structure and predictability that are necessary to make the event socially
tolerable to the participants. It also serves as a useful map or plan of what is intended and
expected, thus allowing participants to see where a lesson fits into the wider context of the
language program. Hutchinson and Torres (1994) suggest that this is important as it allows for:
1. Negotiation: The textbook can actually contribute by providing something to negotiate
about. This can include teacher and learner roles as well as content and learning strategies.
2. Accountability: The textbook shows all stakeholders ‘what is being done . . . in the closed
and ephemeral world of the classroom’ (Hutchinson and Torres, 1994).

3. Orientation: Teachers and learners need to know what is happening elsewhere, what
standards are expected, how much work should be covered, and so on.
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83. Which view/model show that good teachers always know what material to use with a
given class and have access to or even can create them?
1) The content model
2) The pragmatic model
3) The difference view
4) The deficiency view
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
There appears to be very little research, however, on the exact role of textbooks in the language
classroom. Allwright (1981) suggests that there are two key positions. The first – the deficiency
view – sees the role of textbooks or published materials as being to compensate for teachers’
646
deficiencies and ensure that the syllabus is covered using well thought out exercises. Underlying
this view is the assumption that ‘good’ teachers always know what materials to use with a
given class and have access to, or can create, them. They thus neither want, nor need,
published materials. The difference view, on the other hand, sees materials as carriers of
decisions best made by someone other than the teacher because of differences in expertise. This
view was mentioned by several of the teachers participating in the TESL-L debate, who argued
for the use of published materials on the grounds that these are better – and cheaper in terms of
cost and effort (McDonough & Shaw, 1993) – than what teachers can produce consistently in
the time available to them.
For many, however, both the deficiency and difference views challenge teachers’
professionalism and reduce them to classroom managers, technicians or implementers of
others’ ideas. This attitude is not limited to language teachers. Loewenberg-Ball and Feiman-
Nemser (1988), for example, found that preservice primary school teachers in two American
universities were taught explicitly that textbooks should be used only as a resource, and that
following a textbook is an undesirable way to teach.
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84. Which of the following is NOT one of the steps in Tyler’s model of lesson planning?
1) Problem conception
2) Specifying objectives
3) Organizing learning activities
4) Specifying methods of evaluation
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
There are a number of approaches to lesson planning. The dominant model of lesson planning

is Tyler’s (1949) rational-linear framework. Tyler’s model has four steps that run sequentially:
(1) specify objectives; (2) select learning activities; (3) organize learning activities; and (4)
specify methods of evaluation. Tyler’s model is still used widely in spite of evidence that
suggests that teachers rarely follow the sequential, linear process outlined in the steps (Borko
& Niles, 1987). For example, Taylor (1970) studied what teachers actually did when they
planned their lessons and found that they focused mostly on the interests and needs of their
students. More important, he found that teachers were not well prepared in teacher-education
programs for lesson planning.
In response to these findings, Yinger (1980) developed an alternative model in which
planning takes place in stages. The first stage consists of “problem conception” in which
planning starts with a discovery cycle of the integration of the teacher’s goals, knowledge, and
experience. The second stage sees the problem formulated and a solution achieved.
The third stage involves implementing the plan along with its evaluation. Yinger sees
this process as becoming routine, whereby each planning event is influenced by what went on
before and what may happen in the future. He also sees a place for considering each teacher’s
experiences as influencing this ongoing process of planning.
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647
85. What type of materials evaluation begin with an examination of the blurb,
introduction, and table of contents of a given textbook?
1) Empirical
2) External
3) Internal
4) Retrospective
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
In their model of materials evaluation, McDonough, Shaw, and Masuhara (2013) have proposed
the following stages:
1. The External Evaluation
In this central stage of the model they have included criteria that will provide a comprehensive,
external overview of how the materials have been organized. Their aim is basically that of
examining the organization of the materials as stated explicitly by the author/publisher by
looking at:
• the ‘blurb’, or the claims made on the cover of the teacher’s/students’ book
• the introduction and table of contents
that should enable the evaluator to assess what Tomlinson (2003, p. 16) calls analysis in that ‘it
asks questions about what the materials contain, what they aim to achieve and what they ask
learners to do’ (Littlejohn, 2011 makes a similar distinction). They also find it useful to scan
the table of contents page in that it often represents a ‘bridge’ between the external claim made
for the materials and what will actually be presented ‘inside’ the materials themselves. At this
stage we need to consider why the materials have been produced. Presumably because the
author/publisher feels that there is a gap in the existing market that these materials are intended
to fill: so we shall have to investigate this further to see whether the objectives have been clearly
spelt out. After completing this external evaluation, and having funds and a potential group of
learners in mind, we can arrive at a decision as to the materials’ appropriacy for

adoption/selection purposes. If our evaluation shows the materials to be potentially appropriate
and worthy of a more detailed inspection, then we can continue with our internal or more
detailed evaluation. If not, then we can ‘exit’ at this stage and start to evaluate other materials
if we so wish, as the following figure illustrates:
Macro-evaluation
Inappropriate/potentially appropriate
(External)
Exit
Micro-evaluation
Inappropriate/appropriate Adopt/select
(Internal)
Exit
An overview of the materials evaluation process
648
2. The Internal Evaluation

The evaluation procedure can be continued by performing an in-depth investigation into the
materials. The essential issue at this stage is for us to analyze the extent to which the
aforementioned factors in the external evaluation stage match up with the internal consistency
and organization of the materials as stated by the author/publisher – for, as we saw in the
previous stage, strong claims are often made for these materials. In order to perform an effective
internal inspection of the materials, we need to examine at least two units (preferably more) of
a book or set of materials. In the internal evaluation stage we need to examine the following
criteria: the treatment and presentation of the skills, the sequencing and grading of the materials,
the type of reading, listening, speaking and writing materials contained in the materials,
appropriacy of tests and exercises, self-study provision and teacher–learner ‘balance’ in use of
the materials.
3. The Overall Evaluation

At this stage we hope that we may now make an overall assessment as to the suitability of the
materials by considering the following parameters:
1. The usability factor. How far the materials could be integrated into a particular syllabus as
‘core’ or supplementary. For example, we may need to select materials that suit a particular
syllabus or set of objectives that we have to work to. The materials may or may not be able
to do this.
2. The generalizability factor. Is there a restricted use of ‘core’ features that make the
materials more generally useful? Perhaps not all the material will be useful for a given
individual or group but some parts might be. This factor can in turn lead us to consider the
next point.
3. The adaptability factor. Can parts be added/extracted/used in another context/modified for
local circumstances? There may be some very good qualities in the materials but, for
example, we may judge the listening material or the reading passages to be unsuitable and
in need of modification. If we think that adaptation is feasible, we may choose to do this.
4. The flexibility factor. How rigid is the sequencing and grading? Can the materials be

entered at different points or used in different ways? In some cases, materials that are not
so steeply graded offer a measure of flexibility that permits them to be integrated easily
into various types of syllabus.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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86. Which of the following is an example of extending when it comes to adapting

materials?
1) The only pronunciation practice in the materials is on individual sounds and minimal
pairs. Our students need to be intelligible, and intelligibility entails more than
articulating a vowel or a consonant correctly. Therefore, we decide to add some work
on sentence stress and rhythm.
2) Although the new grammar material is important and relevant, the addition of a
discussion section at the end of the unit will help to reinforce and contextualize the
linguistic items covered.
3) Our students find the explanation of a new grammar point rather difficult, so further
exercises are added before they begin the practice material.
649
4) If there is insufficient coverage of the skill of listening, the reading passage provided
may also be paralleled by the provision of listening comprehension material, using the
same vocabulary and ideas but presented through a different medium.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
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87. According to Kachru, the three paradigms of marginality include --------.

1) paradigm myopia, paradigm lack, and paradigm misconception
2) paradigm hyperopia, paradigm lag, and paradigm misconnection
3) paradigm hyperopia, paradigm lack, and paradigm misconception
4) paradigm myopia, paradigm lag, and paradigm misconnection
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
The Postmethod Predicament
In their edited volume, Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament, Carol Brecken-bridge
and Peter van der Veer identify two characteristics of what they call the postcolonial
predicament:
the first is that the colonial period has given us both the evidence and the theories that select
and connect them; and, second, that decolonization does not entail immediate escape from
the colonial discourse. Despite all the recent talk of “third-world voices,” this predicament
de fines both the ex-colonizer and the ex-colonized. To some extent this is tantamount to
saying that we cannot escape from history . . . a history characterized by a particular

discursive formation that can be called “orientalism.” (1993: 2)
Postmethod pedagogy as a postcolonial project faces a similar predicament: it has to deal with
a colonial history characterized by a particular discursive formation called method, which, as
the above discussion shows, has been shaped by a form of orientalism. The discursive formation
of the colonial concept of method continues to cast a long hegemonic shadow over ELT
pedagogic practices even after colonialism has formally ended. It is, however, doubtful whether
it can continue to hold such a hegemonic hold without the direct or indirect support of the
subaltern. As Kumaravadivelu sees it, then, the postmethod predicament has two dimensions:
the process of marginalization, and the practice of self-marginalization.
The process of marginalization

What makes the structure of the colonial construct of method still stand strong is the process of
marginalization with its steadfast adherence to some of the flawed assumptions that continue to
govern second language learning, teaching, and research, and its equally steadfast avoidance of
any meaningful engagement with critiques of those assumptions.
This process of marginalization is manufactured and maintained by what Kachru (1996)
has called “paradigms of marginality.” He has identified a cluster of three paradigms –
paradigm myopia, paradigm lag, and paradigm misconnection. These paradigms, he argues,
explain why and how flawed research practices - such as treating monolingual speakers and
societies as norms for forming hypotheses about bilingual development, claiming the status of
650
“scientific theory” for those attitudinally loaded hypotheses, and delinking the investigative
processes of hypothesis formation, hypothesis testing and hypothesis confirmation from
sociolinguistic contexts and historical realities of language use – continue to hold sway in
applied linguistic circles. He also argues convincingly how these paradigms of marginality are
being used as “a very effective strategy of subtle power” (p. 242).
The practice of self-marginalization

Self-marginalization is not a new phenomenon. It is perhaps as old as the history of human
domination-subordination. Alvares 91979/91) is right when he observes: “no ideology
legitimizing superiority-inferiority relations is worth its salt unless it wins at least a grudging
assent in the minds of those dominated” (p. 187). In other words, members of the dominated
group, knowingly or unknowingly, legitimize the characteristics of inferiority attributed to them
by the dominating group. As social historians have remarked, why “circumstances related to
particular historical contexts that may be reversed” have “led colonial peoples to more essential
conclusions about themselves is not entirely clear. The fact that they frequently did come to
such conclusions was one of the most degrading consequences of colonialism” (Rudolph and
Rudolph, 1969, p. 167 cited in Alvares, 1979/91, p. 187).
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 See also: Kumaravadivelu (2003, p. 546-547)
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88. What kind of corrective feedback are conversational recasts?

1) Implicit and output-prompting
2) Implicit and input-providing
3) Explicit and output-prompting
4) Explicit and input-providing
Answer: 2
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Explanation:

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 See also: Hall (2016, p. 503); Hinkel (2011, p. 593-4)
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89. All of the following are sources of inconsistency between teachers’ stated beliefs and
observed practices except -------
1) I believe in X but it gives me more joy to teach through Y.
2) I believe in X but the curriculum requires me to do Y.
3) I believe in X but my students learn better through Y.
4) I believe in X but my learners are motivated by Y.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
The study of teachers’ beliefs has in the last 24 years emerged as a major area of enquiry in the
field of language teaching. One strand of this work has focused on the relationship between
teachers’ beliefs and their classroom practices; more specifically, there has been interest in the
extent to which teachers’ stated beliefs correspond with what they do in the classroom, and
651
there is evidence that the two do not always coincide (e.g. Karavas-Doukas, 1996). Such
differences have been viewed as an undesirable or negative phenomenon (and described using
terms such as incongruence, mismatch, inconsistency, and discrepancy). In an article by Phipps
and Borg (2009), they argue for a more positive perspective on such differences, which they
conceptualize as ‘tensions’, i.e. ‘‘divergences among different forces or elements in the
teacher’s understanding of the school context, the subject matter, or the students” (Freeman,
1993, p. 488). More specifically, they examine divergences between what English language
teachers say and do in teaching grammar, and, by exploring the reasons for these, also provide
insight into deeper tensions among competing beliefs that teachers hold.
The findings of their study suggests that, in teaching grammar, the beliefs of the three
teachers in the study were not always aligned with their practices, as illustrated by the following
Table. This table is a composite summary of the three aspects of grammar teaching examined
in the study, the beliefs teachers expressed in relation to these aspects of practice, their observed
practices in each case, and the factors teachers referred to in accounting for the differences
between their beliefs and practices. There were, therefore, several cases where teachers’
professed beliefs about language learning were in strong contrast with practices observed in
their lessons. From a teacher’s point of view the different forms of tension might be expressed
as follows (with X and Y representing divergent positions):
a. I believe in X but my students expect me to do Y.
b. I believe in X but my students learn better through Y.
c. I believe in X but the curriculum requires me to do Y.
d. I believe in X but my learners are motivated by Y.
Aspect Stated belief Observed practice Explanation given

Presenting Grammar should be Expository grammar Student expectations Assessment
grammar presented in context work
Learners learn better if Sentence-level, rule- Students’ level/ responsiveness/
they discover the rules based presentation motivation

Controlled Sentence-level practice is Sentence-level gap-fill Student expectations
grammar not beneficial
practice
Mechanical practice is not Mechanical practice Classroom management
beneficial
Group-work for Group-work is beneficial Teacher-centred/ Need to monitor errors

oral practice for oral practice lockstep Classroom management
oral practice Student responsiveness
Tensions in grammar teaching practices and beliefs

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 See also: Phipps and Borg (2009, pp. 381, 386-387)
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90. Which of the following is NOT an advantage of Critical Incident Questionnaires?

1) They build a case for diversity in teaching.
2) They build mutual trust between students and teachers.
3) They help teachers pursue perfection in their practice.
4) They help teachers diagnose problems before a disaster takes place.
652
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Critical incidents are brief descriptions of vivid happenings that for some reason people
remember as being significant (Tripp, 1993; Woods, 1993). For students, every class contains
such moments and teachers need to know what these are. The critical incident questionnaire
helps us embed our teaching in accurate information about students' learning that is regularly
solicited and anonymously given. It is a quick and revealing way to discover the effects your
actions are having on students and to find out the emotional highs and lows of their learning.
Using the critical incident questionnaire gives you a running commentary on the emotional
tenor of each class you deal with.
Advantages of Critical Incident Questionnaires

1. They Alert Us to Problems Before They Are Disasters
2. They Encourage Students to be Reflective Learners
3. They Build a Case for Diversity in Teaching
4. They Build Trust
5. They Suggest Possibilities for Our Development
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 See also: Baleghizadeh (2015, pp. 141-144); Brookfield (1995)
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653
‫سواالت و پاسخ تشریحی آزمون دکتری آموزش زبان انگلیسی – سال ‪97‬‬
‫‪Issues of Language Teaching‬‬
‫‪654‬‬

‫سال ‪1398‬‬
1- Which of the following underlined segments is a constituent?

1) She seemed incredibly lucky to me.
Answer: 1
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Linguistics
Explanation:
The natural groupings or parts of a sentence are called constituents. The sentence above can
have the following constituents:
She seemed incredibly lucky to me.

NP VP
The VP constituent can further have the following natural groupings or constituents:
She seemed incredibly lucky to me.

Adj.P PP

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2- "Constancy under negation" test is applied for ----------.
1) presupposition
2) implicature
3) entailment
4) paraphrase
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
For explanation, see Year 96, Item 16.
For similar items, see Year 94, Item 20; Year 96, Item 16; and Year 97, Item 4.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, p. 174); Yule (2014, pp. 130-131); Yule (1996)
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3- The thematic role of the underlined words in the following sentence are:
We persuaded Mary to apply for the job as a teacher.
1) Theme-agent-goal-role
2) Theme-agent-role-goal
3) Agent-theme-goal-role
4) Agent-theme-role-goal
656
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Nouns may have various semantic roles in their relation to a verb. A semantic role is the
underlying relationship that a participant (as a noun or noun phrase) has with the verb. It is also
known as semantic case or thematic role.
1. Agent: the animate initiator, causer, doer, or instigator of an action who acts by will or
volition, takes responsibility for the action, and is its direct cause. Examples:
The logger felled the tree.
Linguistics
The tree was felled by the logger.
2. Force: the inanimate cause of an action, which does not act by will or volition. Examples:
The wind felled the tree.
The tree was felled by the wind.
The logger felled the tree with a single blow.
3. Instrument: the means by which an event is caused, or the tool, generally inanimate, used
to carry out an action; an instrument does not act but is acted upon. Examples:
The tree was felled with an axe.
The sweater was knitted by hand.
He used an axe to fell the tree.
Liquor killed him.
His insights impressed us.
He impressed us with his insights.
Note: Agent, Force, and Instrument together could be considered “Cause”.
4. Experiencer: the animate being affected inwardly by a state or action. Examples:

Marianne is lonely/ feels lonely/ is suffering.
I like the book.
The news pleases me. The news enraged me.
The news is pleasing to me.
5. Source: the place-from-which or person-from-whom an action emanates. Examples:

I got the book from the library.
I got some money out of the bank.
The child took the book off the shelf.
I borrowed the book from my teacher.
His leaving pleases me (‘is a source of pleasure to’).
The sun gives off heat.
A caterpillar turns into a butterfly.
The plane left (from) Boston.
6. Goal: the place-to-which or person-to-whom an action is directed, including indirect

objects and directional adverbs. Examples:
I sent a card to my grandmother.
I sent my grandmother a card.
My grandmother was sent a card.
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My grandmother got a card from me.

She reached the coast.
I sent the package to Europe.
A new idea came to me.
We hung the picture on the wall.
Susy jumped onto the step.
I sent the child home.
I walked upstairs.
7. Path: the path taken in moving from one place to another in the course of an action.
Linguistics
Examples:
Hannibal traveled over the mountains.
We walked along the railroad tracks.
The package came via London.
8. Location: the place-at/in-which or the time-at-which an action occurs. Examples:

The dog is in the house/ on the chair/ under the table/behind the couch.
I will return on Tuesday/ at noon.
There are many people in the room.
The room has many people in it.
That bottle contains alcohol.
People filled the room.
Vancouver is a rainy city.
9. Possessor: the possessor of a thing, really a special kind of locative, since the thing and the
possessor must coincide; there are two kinds of possession, depending on whether the
possessor and the thing possessed are inherently connected, such as Judy’s head (inalienable
possession) or not, such as Judy’s car (alienable possession). Examples:
Alienable possession
He has/owns/possesses a dog.
The dog belongs to him. The dog is his.
The jewels are in his possession.
That dog of his is a nuisance.
His dog is a nuisance.
The man with the dog/ who has the dog …
Inalienable possession
She has/?owns/?possesses brown hair.
?The brown hair belongs to her.
?The brown hair is hers.
?The brown hair is in her possession.
That brown hair of hers is beautiful.
Her brown hair is beautiful.
The man with the brown hair…
The man who has brown hair…
10. Benefactive: the person or thing for which an action is performed or the person who derives
something from the actions of another. Examples:
658
Jack answered the phone for José.

The store special-ordered the book for me.
The maitre d’ reserved a place for our party.
11. Factitive: the object resulting from an action or state, having no prior existence but coming
about by virtue of the action or state. Examples:
They formed a circle.
Sir Christopher Wren designed St. Paul’s.
The coach turned into a pumpkin.
He baked a cake.
Linguistics
12. Patient: the person or thing affected by an action, or the entity undergoing a change.
Examples:
I baked the chicken.
The chicken was baked by me.
The chicken baked in the oven.
13. Theme: the person or thing which undergoes an action, or that which is transferred or moved
by an event but otherwise unchanged. Examples:
I put the letter on the table.
The letter flew out of the window
We read the letter.
Note: A Patient is changed in some way by the action, while a Theme is affected by the action,
often by changing location, but is itself unchanged.
14. Neutral: the person or thing which is not changed or even acted upon, but simply present
at an action. Examples:
The house costs a lot.
The table measures three feet by three feet.
Richard saw a tree on the horizon.
15. Range: the specification or limitation of an action. Examples:
The dress costs a hundred dollars.
The man weighs 80 kilograms.
We drove ten miles.
He hummed a silly tune.
He lived out his life happily.
16. Role: a person playing a role or part in an action or state.
We made Lise treasurer of the club.
Hilda is the principal of the school.
HINT: Note the differences between Patient, Theme, Neutral, and Factitive:
Jane broke the vase. (Patient)
Jane moved the vase. (Theme)
Jane saw the vase. (Neutral)
Jane made a vase. (Factitive)
659
A Patient is changed in some way by the action, while a Theme is affected by the action, often
by changing location, but is itself unchanged. A Neutral is present at the event but does not
undergo an action. A Factitive comes about by virtue of the action itself.
For explanation and similar items, refer to Year 91, Item 28; Year 94, Item 27; and Year 95,
Item 7.
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 See also: Brinton and Brinton (2010, pp. 299-300)
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4- The following can be read as: To be or not to be, which represents the ----------- writing
Linguistics
system.
1) rebus
2) logogram
3) cuneiform
4) hieroglyph
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
This general pattern of using existing symbols to represent the sounds of words in a language
is often described in terms of a process known as the rebus principle. In this process, the symbol
for one entity is taken over as the symbol for the sound of the spoken word (or part of it) used
to refer to that entity. That symbol then comes to be used whenever that sound occurs in any
words.
We can create an example, working with the sound of the English word eye. We can
imagine how the pictographic representation could have developed into the logogram
. This logogram is pronounced as eye and, with the rebus principle at work, you could
then refer to yourself as (“I”), to one of your friends as (“Crosseye”), combine the
form with the logogram for “deaf” to produce “defy,” with the logogram for “boat” to produce
“bow-tie,” and so on.
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 See also: Yule (2014, p. 216)
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5- Which of the following is a case of progressive assimilation?

1) ðɪʃ ʃɪp
2) tem bægz
3) hæftǝ gǝʊ
4) wɒtszǝ ‘prɒblǝm
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
In cases where we find a phoneme realized differently as a result of being near some other
phoneme belonging to a neighboring word we call this difference an instance of assimilation.
660
As an example, consider a case where two words are combined, the first of which ends with a
single final consonant (which we will call C f) and the second of which starts with a single initial
consonant (which we will call Ci); we can construct a diagram like this:
- - - - - - Cf | Ci - - - - - -
word
boundary
If Cf changes to become like Ci in some way, then the assimilation is called regressive (the
phoneme that comes first is affected by the one that comes after it); if C i changes to become
Linguistics
like Cf in some way, then the assimilation is called progressive. An example of the latter is
what is sometimes called coalescence, or coalescent assimilation: a final t, d and an initial j
following often combine to form tʃ, dʒ, so that ‘not yet’ is pronounced nɒtʃet and ‘could you’
is kʊdʒu.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Roach (2009, pp. 110-113)
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6- Which of the following is a case of clefting?

1) Where Maya wants to go for her holidays is to Greece.
2) It’s after class that Maya wants to look at your notes.
3) Maya said that she would leave early, and Emily said so too.
4) On your bag, that girl in the blue dress will put a picture of the King.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Cleft constructions
In this construction, the word it appears as subject, be as the verb, and more material follows.
Here are some examples of the cleft construction.
(1) a. John wants to look at your notes after class
b. It is your notes that/which John wants to look at after class
c. It is after class that John wants to look at your notes
d. It is John who wants to look at your notes after class
(2) a. Ann bought a first edition of Richard III for $1000
b. It was Ann who bought a first edition of Richard III for $1000
c. It was a first edition of Richard III that Ann bought for $1000
d. It was for $1000 that Ann bought a first edition of Richard III
For more explanation, see Year 94, Item 24.

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 See also: Sportiche, Koopman and Stabler (2013, p. 70)
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7- The sentence “*John would sang” is ungrammatical because -----------.

1) tense shows up on the verb.
2) tense shows up on the auxiliary.
3) tense shows up on the leftmost auxiliary.
4) it contains more than one marking for tense.
661
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Multi-verb constructions: Tense
The verbs in series in multi-verb constructions bear one marking for tense. But what is tense?
And how is it different from aspect and mood?
Grammatical tense
In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference with reference to the moment of
Linguistics
speaking. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in
their conjugation patterns. Main tenses found in many languages include the past, present,
and future. Some languages have only two distinct tenses, such as past and nonpast, or future
and nonfuture.
David Crystal (2008, p. 479) characterizes ‘tense’ as follows: Tense is a category used in
the grammatical description of verbs (along with aspect and mood), referring primarily to the
way the grammar marks the time at which the action denoted by the verb took place.
Traditionally, a distinction is made between past, present and future tenses, often with further
divisions (perfect, pluperfect, etc.). In linguistics, the relationship between tense and time has
been the subject of much study, and it is now plain that there is no easily stateable relationship
between the two.
Aspect
Richards and Schmidt (2010) provide the following description for ‘aspect’: Grammatical
aspect refers to the resources provided by a language (such as verbal auxiliaries, prefixes and
suffixes) to encode different perspectives taken by a speaker towards activities, events, and
states. Languages make available different options for realizing aspect grammatically. English
has two grammatical aspects: progressive and perfect.
Mood
Richards and Schmidt (2010) provide the following description for ‘mood’: a set of contrasts
which are often shown by the form of the verb and which express the speaker’s or writer’s
attitude to what is said or written. Three moods have often been distinguished:
1. Indicative mood: the form of the verb used in declarative sentences or questions. For
example:
She sat down.
Are you coming?
2. Imperative mood: the form of the verb in imperative sentences. For example:
Be quiet!
Put it on the table!
In English, imperatives do not have tense or perfect aspect (see aspect) but they may be used in
the progressive aspect. For example:
Be waiting for me at five.
662
3. Subjunctive mood: the form of the verb often used to express uncertainty, wishes, desires,
etc. In contrast to the indicative mood, the subjunctive usually refers to non-factual or
hypothetical situations. In English, little use of the subjunctive forms remains. The only
remaining forms are:
a be(present subjunctive), were (past subjunctive) of be

b the stem form, e.g. have, come, sing of other verbs (present subjunctive only).
The use of the subjunctive form is still sometimes found in:

a that clauses after certain verbs. For example:
Linguistics
It is required that she be present.
I demand that he come at once.
b past subjunctive of be in if clauses. For example:
If I were you, I’d go there.
c in some fixed expressions. For example:
So be it.
One tense-marker per simple sentence (or per VP)

Each sentence can contain at most one marking for Tense. In the examples in (1), all the
sentences contain one marking for tense.
(1) a. John would sing.

b. John sings.
c. John is singing.
But in (2), the sentences contain two or more markings for tense, which makes them
ungrammatical.
(2) a. *John would sang.

b. *John is sings.
c. *John has is singing.
Sentence (2a) contains two past markings (i.e. one has changed ‘will’ into ‘would’, and the
other has changed ‘sing’ into ‘sang’). Thus, this sentence is ungrammatical. Sentence (2b)
contains two present markings (i.e. ‘is’ and ‘-s’). Sentence (2c) contains the present makings of
‘has’, and ‘is’ (plus the progressive marking – which is related to aspect, not tense). Thus, to be
grammatical, each sentence can contain at most one marking for Tense.
For more information, follow this link:

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~ctjhuang/lecture_notes/lecch6.html
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 See also: Crystal (2008); Richards and Schmidt (2010)
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8- Which of the following is NOT a case of clipping?

1) Laze from lazy
2) Van from caravan
3) Curio from curiosity
4) Psycho from psychology
663
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Clipping: This occurs when a word of more than one syllable (facsimile) is reduced to a shorter
form (fax), usually beginning in casual speech. The term gasoline is still used, but most people
talk about gas, using the clipped form – with no change in the part of speech.
In Choice (1), Laze is a noun derived from the adjective lazy, with a change in the part of speech.
In Choice (2), Van is a reduced form of caravan, with no change in the part of speech.
In Choice (3), Curio is a reduced form of curiosity, with no change in the part of speech.
Linguistics
In Choice (4), Psycho is a reduced form of psychology, with no change in the part of speech.
For a similar item, see Year 96, Item 3.

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 See also: Yule (2014, p. 54)
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9- Which of the following refers to anomia?

1) A type of aphasia characterized by labored telegraphic output.
2) A type of aphasia characterized by partial loss of the ability to produce language.
3) A type of aphasia characterized by inability to name objects and difficulty in accessing
nouns.
4) A type of aphasia in which individuals have difficulty understanding written and spoken
language.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
For explanation and a similar item, refer to Year 92, Items 22 and 28; and Year 94, Item 28.
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 See also: Yule (2014, p. 161); Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 467, 485)
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10- Which of the following is NOT a case of embedding?

1) The girl the man the boy saw kissed left.
2) The old men are working and I am sleeping here.
3) The surgeon and the doctor whom the nurse aided cured the disease.
4) A farmer who was kicked by his donkey would nevertheless not take revenge.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:

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 See also: Akmajian et al. (2010, p. 150, 198, 501); Hudson (2000, pp. 10, 91-93);
Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 5-6, 52-54, 100-104, 351-353); Yule (2014, pp. 14-15, 105-106)
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11- Which tree diagram matches the following sentence?

The farmers believe the hungry beavers frighten the fish.
Linguistics
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
This sentence is composed of an NP and a VP, on first analysis, as shown below. Thus, choices
(1) and (3) are not correct.
The farmers believe the hungry beavers frighten the fish.

NP VP
Choice (1) is incorrect because ‘The farmers’ does not include a PP. Choice (3) is incorrect
because ‘The farmer’ does not include an adjective, nor a PP.
Choice (2) is incorrect because there are no ‘Det’ before ‘hungry beavers’, no ‘Det’ before
‘fish’, and an extra PP in the tree diagram.
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12- Which of the following is NOT a case of presupposition?

1) John was happy that it was Friday. It was Friday.
2) It showered every day of the week. It showered on Wednesday.
3) John finished mowing the grass before dark. John mowed the grass.
4) John managed to disconnect the burglar alarm. Disconnecting the burglar alarm was
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Choice (2) is a case of entailment.
Linguistics
For more information on entailment and presupposition, refer to Year 93, Items 16 and 92;
Year 94, Item 18; Year 96, Item 16; and Year 97, Items 7 and 8.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 141-142); Akmajian et al. (2010, pp. 241-242); Yule
(1996, p. 25-34); Yule (2014, pp. 130-131)
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13- Which of the following does NOT have structural ambiguity?

1) She gave her dog meat.
2) I found a bat in the attic.
3) There is a restaurant in the district which I like.
4) May I try on that dress in the room?
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
In choice (2) ‘I found a bat in the attic’, the word ‘bat’ is a case of lexical ambiguity.

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 See also: Hudson (2000, pp. 313-314); Yule (2014, pp. 96, 103)
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14- Felicity conditions validate an illocution. In which of the following is the felicity
condition violated when A promises B to do X?
1) A is able to do X.
2) A is willing to do X.
3) X has already been done.
4) A believes B wants X done.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Felicity conditions
There are certain expected or appropriate circumstances, technically known as felicity
conditions, for the performance of a speech act to be recognized as intended. For some clear
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cases, such as (1), the performance will be infelicitous (inappropriate) if the speaker is not a
specific person in a special context (in this case, a judge in a courtroom).
(1) I sentence you to six months in prison.
In everyday contexts among ordinary people, there are also preconditions on speech acts.
(1) There are general conditions on the participants, for example, that they can understand
the language being used and that they are not play-acting or being nonsensical.
(2) Then there are content conditions. For example, for both a promise and a warning, the
content of the utterance must be about a future event. A further content condition for a
promise requires that the future event will be a future act of the speaker.
(3) The preparatory conditions for a promise are significantly different from those for a
Linguistics
warning. When I promise to do something, there are two preparatory conditions: first,
the event will not happen by itself, and second, the event will have a beneficial effect.
When I utter a warning, there are the following preparatory conditions: it isn’t clear that
the hearer knows the event will occur, the speaker does think the event will occur, and
the event will not have a beneficial effect.
(4) Related to these conditions is the sincerity condition that, for a promise, the speaker
genuinely intends to carry out the future action, and, for a warning, the speaker
genuinely believes that the future event will not have a beneficial effect.
(5) Finally, there is the essential condition, which covers the fact that by the act of uttering
a promise, I thereby intend to create an obligation to carry out the action as promised.
In other words, the utterance changes my state from non-obligation to obligation.
Similarly, with a warning, under the essential condition, the utterance changes my state
from non-informing of a bad future event to informing. This essential condition thus
combines with a specification of what must be in the utterance content, the context, and
the speaker’s intentions, in order for a specific speech act to be appropriately (i.e.
felicitously) performed.
Therefore, since the essential condition requires that the speaker intend to carry out the action
as promised (in the future), choice (3) is false. In choice (3) ‘X has already been done’ which
is in contrast with the essential condition.
For more explanation and a similar item, refer to Year 93, Item 25.
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 See also: Hudson (2000, pp. 320-321); Yule (1996, pp. 50-51)
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15- Which of the following has been WRONGLY classified?

1) Commissive: promise
2) Representative: claim
3) Declaration: praise
4) Directive: invitation
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Declarative: a speech act which changes the state of affairs in the world. For example, during
the wedding ceremony the act of marriage is performed when the phrase I now pronounce you
man and wife is uttered. Declaratives include blessings, firings, baptisms, arrests, marrying,
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juridical speech acts such as sentencings, declaring a mistrial, declaring someone out of order,
etc. More examples include:
Referee: You’re out!
Judge: I sentence you to six months in prison!
For explanation and similar items, see Year 94, Item 19; Year 96, Item 5.
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 See also: Richards and Schmidt (2010, pp. 429-430); Yule (1996, pp. 48-52)
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Linguistics
16- Which of the following is NOT right regarding derivational morphemes?
1) When both derivational and inflectional morphemes are present in a word, the
derivational morpheme(s) will generally be attached closer to the root than the
inflectional morpheme(s).
2) Derivational morphemes are added to words to assign tense, number, possession, or
comparison.
3) Derivational morphemes are not necessarily word class changing, they are more of
meaning-changing morphemes.
4) Inflectional morphemes are always added in the end of the affixation process. In other
words, they are the final step in affixation.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
As can be seen in this classification of English morphemes, inflectional suffixes are added to
words to assign tense, number, possession, or comparison. Hence, choice (2) is wrong.
For more explanation and similar items, refer to Year 91, Item 28; Year 97, Item 11.
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17- Read the following data:

Fred should get a haircut, and so should John.
*Fred should get a haircut, and so John.
*Fred should get a haircut, and so should Ricky a haircut.
The analysis that best describes these data is:
1) The word so substitutes for the material dominated by NP.
Linguistics
2) The word so substitutes for the material dominated by AUX.
3) The word so substitutes for the material dominated by VP.
4) The word so substitutes for the material dominated by AUX and VP.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Domination
Some nodes are higher in the tree than others. This reflects the fact that trees show a hierarchy
of constituents. In particular, we want to talk about nodes that are higher than one another and
are connected by a branch. The relation that describes two nodes that stand in this configuration
is called domination. A node that sits atop another and is connected to it by a branch is said to
dominate that node.
In (1), M dominates all the other nodes (N, O, D, E, F, H, I, J). N dominates D, E, and F, and
O dominates H, I, and J. O does not dominate F, as you can see by virtue of the fact that there
is no branch connecting them.
(1)
Do-so substitution (a.k.a. so proform)
Do so (or ‘so proform’) substitutes for entire VP: ‘so proform’ can substitute for V, V+NP. In
other words, so proform’ substitutes for all the material dominated by VP. Examples:
(2) Robin plays the violin, and so does Lee.

(3) Duffy might take the class and so might Biff.
(4) John sent a postcard to his father, and so did bill.
In (2) ‘so proform’ substitutes for the entire VP (i.e. plays the violin). Hence, if ‘so proform’
does not substitute the entire VP, it will be ungrammatical as in the examples below:
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(5) *Duffy might take the class and do might Biff the class.
(7) *John will send the letter and so will Bill the letter.
Thus, ‘so proform’ cannot substitute only the verb in a VP which includes other material.
To conclude, the word so substitutes for the material dominated by VP. In the test above, so
substitutes for the Aux-VP sequence should get a haircut.
For related explanation and similar items, refer to Year 94, Item 24; Year 95, Item 6; Year 96,
Linguistics
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 See also: Carnie (2014, pp. 120-121); Parker and Riley (2012, pp. 51-52, 58)
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18- Which consonants can constitute a syllable nucleus?

1) Stops
2) Nasal and liquids
3) Fricatives and nasals
4) Nasals all oral consonants
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Words are composed of one or more syllables. A syllable is a ‘phonological unit’ composed of
one or more phonemes. Every syllable has a nucleus, which is usually a vowel (but can be a
syllabic liquid or nasal). The nucleus may be preceded and/or followed by one or more
phonemes called the syllable onset and coda. From a very early age English-speaking children
learn that certain words rhyme. In rhyming words, the nucleus and the coda of the final syllable
of both words are identical, as in the following jingle:
Jack and Jill
Went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down
And broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.
For this reason, the nucleus + coda constitute the sub-syllabic unit called a rime (note the
spelling). A syllable thus has a hierarchical structure. Using the IPA symbol σ (lowercase Greek
letter ‘sigma’) for ‘the phonological syllable’, the hierarchical structure of the monosyllabic
word splints can be shown:
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Sounds that may function as the core or nucleus of a syllable possess the feature syllabic.
Clearly vowels are syllabic, but they are not the only sound class that anchors syllables. In fact,
some consonants can also form the nucleus of syllables, which are called syllabic consonants.
Liquids and nasals may also be syllabic, as shown by the words dazzle [dæzl̩ ], faker [fekr̩],
rhythm [rɪðm̩], and wagon [wægn̩]. (The diacritic mark under the [l̩ ], [r̩], [m̩], and [n̩] is the
notation for syllabic.) Placing a schwa [ə] before the syllabic liquid or nasal also shows that
these are separate syllables. The four words could be written as [dæzəl], [fekər], [rɪðəm], and
[wægən]. We will use this transcription. Similarly, the vowel sound in words like bird and verb
Linguistics
are sometimes written as a syllabic r: [br̩d] and [vr̩b]. For consistency we shall transcribe these
words using the schwa—[bərd] and [vərb]—the only instances where a schwa represents a
stressed vowel.
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 See also: Fromkin et al. (2014, pp. 210, 252-253)
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19- The first sounds in the words week and yacht are both -----------.
1) glides
2) liquids
3) labiovelar
4) high vowels
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Glides [j] [w]: The sounds [j] and [w], the initial sounds of you [ju] and we [wi], are produced
with little obstruction of the airstream. They are always followed directly by a vowel and do
not occur at the ends of words (don’t be fooled by spelling; words ending in y or w like say and
saw end in a vowel sound). After articulating [j] or [w], the tongue glides quickly into place for
pronouncing the next vowel, hence the term glide.
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20- Which of the following is wrong?

1) The words pink, scarlet, orange, hot pink, and pumpkin form a subclass of the word red,
they are referred to as hypernyms of red.
2) The verb "get" is a good example of polysemy - it can mean "obtain," "become," or
"understand."
3) Two or more words are homonyms if they either sound the same (homophones), have
the same spelling (homographs), or both, but do not have related meanings.
4) Two lexemes are synonyms if they can be successfully substituted for each other in all
situations,
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
The words pink, scarlet, orange, hot pink, and pumpkin form a subclass of the word red, they
are referred to as hyponyms of red. Red is the hypernym (or superordinate) of pink, scarlet,
orange, hot pink, and pumpkin.
Semantic relations
Lexical words are related to one another semantically in many different ways. Below we
characterize these semantic relations:
1. Synonym
Linguistics
1.1. Strict synonyms (a.k.a. absolute, full, total, or complete synonyms)
1.2. Loose synonyms (a.k.a. partial synonyms)
2. Antonym
2.1. Complementary pairs
2.2. Gradable pairs
2.3. Relational opposites
2.4. Reversive antonyms
2.5. Directional antonyms
2.6. Auto-antonyms
3. Anti-autonym
4. Homonym
4.1. Homophone
4.2. Homograph
5. Paronym
6. Hypernym (or superordinate)
7. Hyponym
8. Polyseme
9. Biseme
10. Monoseme
11. Retronym
12. Meronymy
13. Holonymy
1. Synonym
Words that have similar meanings, that share the same semantic properties, are called
synonyms. These are words that sound different but mean the same. When you paraphrase
(restate) a sentence that you have read or heard, you are using synonyms for some of the original
words. English has so many synonyms that the speaker must choose the word that suits the
intended meaning best. In the following sentence the words in parentheses are synonyms for
each other. Consider how the choice of one or the other affects the meaning of the sentence.
What influences are at work when the speaker chooses one or the other?
A (woman or lady) always carries a (purse or pocketbook) with her.
The words woman and lady have the same semantic properties as shown below.
Woman Lady
[adult] + +
[female] + +
[human] + +
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They may have the same referent. The same adult, female, human being may sometimes be
referred to as a woman and sometimes as a lady. These synonyms have the same denotation.
Their first definition in the dictionary would be the same. However, they have different
connotations; the shade of meaning for each word is different. The context in which you would
use each word is different.
She is a real lady.
She is a real woman.
These two sentences mean very different things. The first sentence tells us that the referent is
polite, kind, and perhaps elegant and proper. The second sentence implies that she is strong and
determined; it may also have sexual overtones.
Linguistics
1.1. Strict synonyms (a.k.a. absolute, full, total, or complete synonyms)
Linguists agree that strict synonymy, which is sometimes also called complete, absolute, or
total synonymy is impossible or at least almost impossible. Even if two lexemes have the same
denotation, they can always be differentiated in many other ways, for example in terms of
connotation, formality or currency. For this reason, synonyms are hardly ever “interchangeable
in all contexts”, which is the criterion for strict synonymy according to Jackson (1988: 66), who
also gives three arguments against strict synonymy. Firstly, a language does not need two words
which are interchangeable in all contexts. As a consequence, strict synonyms are unlikely to
survive in a language because of economic reasons. Secondly, if strict synonyms happen to
occur in a language, it is likely that one member of the synonym pair alters its meaning a little
bit and starts to be used in a different context or on a different style level than the other member.
An example of this phenomenon is the word mutton, which had exactly the same meaning as
the English word sheep when it was borrowed from French. Nowadays, it only denotes the meat
of the animal, but no longer the animal itself. Thirdly, it may also happen that one member will
become obsolete and fall out of use (Jackson, 1988, pp. 66-67).
1.2. Loose synonyms (a.k.a. partial synonyms)

Loose synonyms have the same general reference and the words can substitute each other in a
wide range of contexts yet not in all of them. Loose synonyms are much more frequent than
strict synonyms. Loose synonymy may also be called relative, quasi-, pseudo- or near-
synonymy. Although the definitions for this phenomenon vary to a certain degree, loose
synonymy is often used for words which have the same (or very nearly the same) denotation,
but are not interchangeable in every context like strict synonyms. So we speak of “words that
can substitute for each other in a wide range of contexts but not necessarily absolutely” (Jackson
1988, p. 67) because they differ in a number of ways which will be discussed below. Examples
for loose synonyms are freedom and liberty, malodorous and stinking, begin and start or
sometimes and occasionally.
2. Antonym
Words that have the opposite meaning are called antonyms. They are words that share many of
the same semantic properties, but are opposite in at least one of them. The following are the
main kinds of antonyms.
2.1. Complementary pairs
2.2. Gradable pairs
2.3. Relational opposites
2.6. Auto-antonyms
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2.1. Complementary pairs (or non-gradable antonyms)

Complementary pairs are antonyms that express a binary relationship in which it is perceived
that there is no middle ground, such as the words male/female. The word male can be defined
“not female.” And female can be defined “not male.” Similarly, dead can be defined as “not
alive,” whereas alive can be defined as “not dead.” Some other complementary pairs are
asleep/awake, present/absent, animal/plant. A pair such as conscious/unconscious
demonstrates one way in which complementary pairs can be formed in English: the use of the
prefix un-. Other prefixes that can form complementary pairs are non- and in-.
Linguistics
2.2. Gradable pairs (or non-complementary or classical antonyms or polar opposites)
The opposite of old is young. But young and old are relative to the speaker’s point of view.
From a child’s point of view, people who are over 30 are old. To a senior citizen, people who
are under 65 are young. So old/young is referred to as a gradable pair. In fact, old means less
young and young means less old. They both have the semantic property of describing the age
of a person or animal. But young refers to an earlier age and old refers to a later age. How much
earlier, or how much later, depends on the context of the utterance and the point of view of the
speaker. Other examples of gradable pairs are as follows:
big/little
high/low
fast/slow
A characteristic of gradable pairs of antonyms is that they are actually members of a larger set
of related words. Humongous–gigantic–huge–big–large–medium–little–small–tiny–miniscule
2.3. Relational opposites (or Converse or reciprocal antonyms)

Relational opposites are antonyms that express a symmetrical relationship between two words.
With the antonym pair parent/child, we can say that
Brian is the parent of Kevin.
From this we can infer that
Kevin is the child of Brian.
In the pair teach/learn, we can say that
John teaches the class.
Therefore,
The class learns from John.
Student/teacher, give/receive, and doctor/patient are all relational opposites. The pair
employer/employee demonstrates that in English, one way in which to form words that are
relational opposites is to use the suffixes –er and –ee.
In other words, converse antonyms describe the same relation or activity ‘from different
perspectives’. For example, Bill and Madeline have a relationship, and Bill’s position in the
relationship is parent, and Madeline’s is child.
(1) a. Bill is Madeline’s parent. => Madeline is Bill’s child.
b. John gives to Oxfam. => Oxfam receives from John.
c. Scotland is above England. => England is below Scotland.

Reversive opposites involve the ‘undoing’ of some action: tie/untie, construction/demolition,
build/demolish. For example, while undress can be treated as the opposite of dress, it doesn’t
mean “not dress.” It actually means “do the reverse of dress.” Antonyms of this type are called
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reversives. Other common examples are enter/exit, pack/unpack, lengthen/shorten, raise/lower,

tie/untie. Also, un-, dis-, and de- can make reversive antonyms of verbs (untie, disengage,
decriminalize).

Converse and reversive antonyms can be collected, along with other miscellaneous examples
(e.g. left/right, come/go), in a general category of directional antonyms (Allan, 2009, p. 26).
2.6. Auto-antonyms
Anti-autonym (a.k.a. antagonym, contronym, or Janus word) is a word that carries two opposite
Linguistics
meanings. That is, an auto-antonym is a word that has two opposite meanings. Examples
include:
dust (with the two opposite meanings of ‘add dust’ and ‘remove dust’)
cleave (with the two opposite meanings of ‘‘ and ‘to cling together’)
3. Antiautonym
Antiautonyms: A pair of morphologically related words that have the same or nearly the same
meaning though it looks like one is derived from the other by attaching the negative prefix in-,
e.g. flammable, inflammable. Other examples include loosen, unloosen, and valuable,
invaluable.
4. Homonym
Homonyms are words which are written in the same way and sound alike but which have
different meanings. That is, words with the ‘same spelling’, ‘same pronunciation’, but ‘different
meanings’ are called homonyms. For example, the English verbs lie in You have to lie down
and lie in Don’t lie, tell the truth! are homonyms. Other examples include can (as in the modal
verb I can do something) and can (as in a can, a tin), and rose (the flower) and rose (past tense
of the verb to rise).
In their dictionary, Richards and Schmitt (2010) indicate that homonyms are words that
have different meaning but sound the same, and that might be spelled the same or differently.
Accordingly, they distinguish two sub-types for homonyms: homophones, and homographs.
4.1. Homophone (a.k.a. heterograph)

Homophones are words which ‘sound alike’ but are written differently and often have different
meanings. For example, the English words no and know are both pronounced the same in some
varieties of British English. Other examples include to, too, and two all sound the same, but
each word means something completely different; tale and tail; but and butt; flower and flour;
and it’s and its.
4.2. Homograph (a.k.a. heteronym or heterophone)

Homographs are words written in the same way but which are pronounced differently and have
different meanings. For example, the English words lead /li:d/ in Does this road lead to town?
and lead /led/ in Lead is a heavy metal, are homographs. Other examples include object in an
object (with the stress on the /o/) and I object to your behavior (with the stress on the /e/).
5. Paronym
Paronyms are words that are pronounced or written in a ‘similar’ way but which have different
lexical meanings. Paronyms contrast with homonyms, which are words with different meaning
having the same pronunciation or spelling. Examples of paronyms include:
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 alternately and alternatively

 collision and collusion
 conjuncture and conjecture
 continuous and contiguous
 affect and effect
 except and accept
 upmost and utmost
6. Hypernym
Linguistics
A hypernym (a.k.a. superordinate) is the cover term for a number of words (hyponyms). In
other words, a hypernym is a category which includes some members or sub-sets. For example,
the word animal (as a hypernym) includes ‘types’ of animals; or the word dog (as the hypernym)
includes types of dogs: hound, Dalmatian, dachshund, etc.; or the word flower (as the
hypernym) includes ‘types’ of flowers: daisy, buttercup, and poppy. Thus, these hyponyms can
also be hypernyms, for example buttercup as the hypernym for sub-categories such as meadow
buttercup, bulbous buttercup, creeping buttercup. See the figure below ‘hyponym’.
7. Hyponym
Hyponyms are more specific words that constitute a ‘subclass’ (or ‘subset’, ‘sub-category’,
‘sub-class’, or ‘subordinate’) of a more general word. For example, in English the words animal
and dog are related in such a way that dog refers to a ‘type’ of animal, and animal is a general
term that includes dog and other ‘types’ of animal. The specific term, dog, is called a hyponym,
and the general term, animal, is called a superordinate (or hypernym).
For instance, the words pink, scarlet, orange, hot pink, and pumpkin are all more marked,
specific terms for colors that derive from the color red. In fact, if we were to focus on the red
section of the domain of color, we could name many shades and tones of this portion of the
color spectrum. These words share many of the semantic properties of the word red. Because
these words form a ‘subclass’ of the word red, they are referred to as hyponyms of red.
Similarly, maple, birch, and pine are hyponyms of tree.
A superordinate term can have many hyponyms. For example:
In the examples above, the words ‘bus’, ‘ca’, ‘lorry’, and ‘van’ are sister members of the word
‘vehicle’ and thus are co-hyponyms; and the words ‘walk’, ‘run’, ‘swim’, and ‘fly’ are sister
members of the word ‘move’ and thus are co-hyponyms.
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8. Polyseme (or polysemous words)

A polysemous word is ‘a single word’ with more than one meaning. The word school can be
“an institution for learning” or “a grouping of fish.” This is the basis for the humor of the pun:
Fish are really smart. They always are found in schools.
Note: Polyseme vs. Homonym

It is a well-known problem in semantics to tell the difference between homonymy (‘several
words’ with the same form but different meanings) and polysemy (‘a single word’ with more
than one meaning).
Linguistics
9. Biseme (or bisemous words)
Bisemous words have two meanings or interpretations. They are also called (lexically)
ambiguous words. In the following example, the word bat is lexically ambiguous, or is a
bisemous word.
I found a bat in the attic.
10. Monoseme (or monosemous words)

A monoseme is a word which has a single meaning, and monosemy is the property of terms of
having a single meaning; ‘absence of ambiguity’.
11. Retronym
Retronym is a new term created from an existing word in order to distinguish the original
referent of the existing word from a later one that is the product of progress or technological
development (e.g. acoustic guitar for guitar; an analog clock from a digital clock).
For more examples, follow this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_retronyms
12. Meronymy (a.k.a. ‘partonomy’)

Meronymy is a semantic relation which denotes a constituent part of something. That is,
"X" is a meronym of "Y" if Xs are parts of Y(s).
For example, finger is a meronym of hand because a finger is part of a hand. Similarly, wheels
is a meronym of automobile. Meronymy is the opposite of holonymy.
Note: Meronym vs. Hyponym

Hyponym is a ‘subordinate’ grouping word or phrase (or a subset or member of another
word).
"X" is a hyponym of "Y" if Xs are members of Y(s).
Meronym denotes a constituent ‘part’ of a whole,
"X" is a meronym of "Y" if Xs are parts of Y(s).
For example, a hyponym of tree is pine tree or oak tree ("a kind of tree"), but a meronym of
tree is bark or leaf ("a part of a tree").
Note: Meronomy vs. Meronymy

The difference between meronomy and meronymy is that meronomy is a ‘hierarchy’ that
deals with part–whole relationships (meronymic hierarchy or meronomy) rather than the
discrete sets of a taxonomy while meronymy is the relationship of being a ‘constituent part’
or’ member’ of something. In other words, meronomy is a kind of ‘aggregation’ which
specifies a relation between a whole and a part, that is, meronomy is a kind of ‘structure’ that
represents relationships between wholes and parts.
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13. Holonymy
Holonymy is a semantic relation which defines the relationship between a term denoting the
whole and a term denoting a part of the whole. That is,
‘X’ is a holonym of ‘Y’ if Ys are parts of Xs.
For example, ‘tree’ is a holonym of ‘bark’, of ‘trunk’ and of ‘limb.’ Holonymy is the opposite
of meronymy.
Note: Holonym vs. Hypernym

A hypernym is a superordinate of some members. That is,
‘X’ is a hypernym of ‘Y’ if Ys are members of Xs.
Linguistics
For example, ‘animal’ is a hypernym of ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘whale’, etc.
A holonym is a whole to some ‘parts’. That is,

‘X’ is a holonym of ‘Y’ if Ys are parts of Xs.
For example, ‘tree’ is a holonym of ‘bark’, of ‘trunk’ and of ‘limb.’
Note: Meronym, holonyms, and co-meronyms

A meronym is a word referring to the part, a holonym is a word referring to the whole, and the
names of sister parts of the same whole are called in lexical semantics ‘co-meronyms’. Thus,
face is the meronym of head and a holonym of nose (mouth, chin, cheek, jaw, etc.), where
mouth, chin, cheek, jaw, etc. are co-meronyms.
Note: Do not confuse ‘meronym’ and ‘meronomy’ with ‘metonymy’. Metonymy is a figure of
speech in which a thing or concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated
with that thing or concept (in time and/or space). Examples:
(1) Hollywood won’t buy this story. (Hollywood substitutes for the movie industry, which
is importantly located in Hollywood).
(2) Can you lend me some bread? (Bread substitutes for money, which importantly,
money buys).
See also Year 95, Item 10 for prototype and stereotype.

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 See also: Hudson (2000, p. 313); Rowe & Levine (2015, pp. 159-162)
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21- Which of the following is a characteristic of criterion-referenced tests?

1) They indicate the content of the behavioral repertory.
2) They are appropriate for assessing abstracted language ability traits.
3) They are used to disperse the performances of students in a normal distribution.
4) The interpretation given to an examinee’s score on such tests is called a relative
decision.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
A general definition for a criterion-referenced test (CRT) was provided by Glaser (1963):
Criterion-referenced measures indicate the content of the behavioral repertory, and
the correspondence between what an individual does and the underlying continuum of
achievement. Measures which assess student achievement in terms of a certain criterion
standard thus provide information as to the degree of competence attained by a particular
Testing
student which is independent of reference to the performance of others. (p. 519)
Some confusion has resulted from the fact that the term criterion has been used in two ways in
the CRT literature. In one sense, criterion means the specified knowledge or set of skills and
tasks that the test was designed to sample and measure (as in the Glaser quote above). In another
sense, criterion has been taken to mean the level of performance that is required to pass a test.
For example, both meanings are inherent in the following Glaser and Nitko (1971) definition:
A criterion-referenced test is one that is deliberately constructed to yield measurements
that are directly interpretable in terms of specified performance standards. Performance
standards are generally specified by defining a class or domain of tasks that should be
performed by the individual. (p. 653)
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 See also: Brown and Hudson (2002, p. 3)
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22- The problems related to the claim that task-based language performance assessment
(TBLPA) can be used to make predictions about performance on future language
use tasks outside the test itself are ---------.
1) task selection, implementation and realization
2) task difficulty, validation and conceptualization
3) task selection, generalizability and extrapolation
4) task generalizability, conceptualization and extrapolation
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Bachman (2002) indicates that the complexities of task-based language performance
assessment (TBLPA) are leading language testers to reconsider many of the fundamental issues
about what we want to assess, how we go about it and what sorts of evidence we need to provide
in order to justify the ways in which we use our assessments. One claim of TBLPA is that such
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assessments can be used to make predictions about performance on future language use tasks
outside the test itself. He argues that there are several problems with supporting such
predictions. These problems are related to task selection, generalizability and
extrapolation. Because of the complexity and diversity of tasks in most ‘real-life’ domains, the
evidence of content relevance and representativeness that is required to support the use of test
scores for prediction is extremely difficult to provide.
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23. Studies show that teacher-related factors that affect washback are -----------.
1) teachers’ attitude toward exams, their autonomy, their nationalities, and their identities
2) teachers’ beliefs, their autonomy, their nationalities, and their educational backgrounds
3) teachers’ attitude toward exams, their institutional commitment, their identities, and
their personalities
4) teachers’ beliefs, their attitudes toward exams, their educational backgrounds, and their
personalities
Testing
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
The factors that influence washback
Why is it that the occurrence, strength and kind of washback show the variations highlighted
above? The factors identified by the empirical studies as influential in affecting washback are
many. They can be classified into four main categories: the teacher, resources, the school and
the exam itself.
1. Teacher-related factors
In the studies the teacher is constantly mentioned as playing a pivotal role in determining
whether washback occurs, how and to what degree. Four main teacher-related factors are cited:
their beliefs, their attitudes, their educational level and experience, and their personalities.
2. Resources
The studies mention that resources can affect washback. Factors mentioned are whether or not
customized materials and exam support materials, such as exam specifications, are available to
teachers (Shohamy et al., 1996; Watanabe, 2000) and the types of textbooks available (Cheng,
1997; Hamp Lyons, 1998).
3. The school
Factors mentioned in relation to the school are as follows: its atmosphere and cultural factors
such as learning traditions (Watanabe, 2000); how much administrators put pressure on teachers
to achieve results (Smith, 1991; Shohamy et al., 1996); and the amount of time and number of
students allocated to exam classes (Alderson and Hamp Lyons, 1996; Read and Hayes, 2003).
The studies mention that various factors related to the exam itself can influence degrees
and kinds of washback. These include: its proximity, its stakes, the status of the language it
tests, its purpose, the formats it employs (Shohamy et al., 1996), the weighting of individual
papers (Lam, 1994), when the exam was introduced and how familiar it is to teachers (Andrews
et al., 2002).
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 See also: Spratt (2005, pp. 21-22)
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24- Which of the following is a feature of performance assessment?

1) It fosters test-taking skills.
2) It reflects speed and accuracy.
3) It contributes to classroom change.
4) It offers a static view of achievement.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Meisels, Dorfman, and Steele (1995) state the following characteristics of performance
assessments and group-administered achievement tests:
Performance Assessments Group-Administered Achievement Tests
Testing
I. Low-Stakes I. High-Stakes
1. Non-stigmatizing 1. Potentially stigmatizing
2. Instructionally relevant 2. Instructionally independent
3. Modifiable 3. Uniform administration
4. Record of strengths and weaknesses 4. Comparison of achievements and failures
II. Formative II. Summative

1. Longitudinal I. Pre/Post
2. Continuous recordings 2. Discontinuous accounting
3. Monitors progress 3. Summarizes progress
4. Contributes to classroom change 4. Provides a static "snapshot" of children’s
achievements
III. Instructionally-oriented III. Psychometrically-oriented

1. Contextual objectives 1. Decontextualized objectives
2. Multi-dimensional 2. Restricted dimensions
3. Extensive behavior sampling 3. Limited behavior sampling
4. Reflects quality of work 4. Reflects speed and correctness
IV. Observational IV. Fixed-Response

1. Promotes student learning 1. Samples test-taking skills
2. Enhances student motivation 2. Promotes anxiety
3. Assists teachers in making instructional 3. Imposes instructional change on teachers
decisions 4. Unhelpful for parent reporting
4. Useful for parent reporting
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 See also: Bond (2005, p. 22); Meisels, Dorfman, and Steele (1995, p. 255); Seyfarth
(1993, p. 25)
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25- All of the following are challenges of testing listening comprehension EXCEPT ------.
1) it is extremely hard to construct a pure test of listening that does not require the use of
another language skill
2) there are other test factors such as the test takers’ memory capacity that could also
contribute to the test score
3) text characteristics that can influence test difficulty, including the phonological qualities
of the text are too hard to control
4) while listening comprehension might primarily be viewed as a process of constructing
meaning from auditory input, that process involves more than the auditory signal alone
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Assessing listening
In comparison to the other language skills, the assessment of listening has received little
attention, possibly reflecting (as Brindley, 1998, argues) the difficulties involved in identifying
Testing
relevant features of what is essentially an invisible cognitive operation. Recent discussions of
the construct of listening and how the listening trait might be isolated and measured (Buck,
1990, 1991, 1992b, 1994; Dunkel et al., 1993) suggest that there is a separate listening trait but
that it is not necessarily operationalized by oral input alone.
Buck has extended this claim (see Buck, 1997, 2001), explaining that, while listening
comprehension might primarily be viewed as a process of constructing meaning from
auditory input, that process involves more than the auditory signal alone. Listening
comprehension is seen as an inferential process involving the interaction between both
linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge. Buck (2001) explains that listening comprehension
involves knowledge of discrete elements of language such as phonology, vocabulary and syntax
but it goes beyond this because listening also involves interpretation. Listening must be done
automatically in real time (listeners rarely get a second chance to hear exactly the same text),
involves background knowledge and listener-specific variables (such as purpose for listening)
and is a very individual process, implying that the more complex a text is the more varied the
possible interpretations. It also has unique characteristics such as the variable nature of the
acoustic input. Listening input is characterized by features such as elision and the placement of
stress and intonation. Ideas are not necessarily expressed in a linear grammatical manner and
often contain redundancy and hesitation.
All these features raise the question of what is the best approach to assessing listening.
Recent research into test methods has included research into the use of dictation (see Kaga,
1991 and Coniam, 1998) and summary translation (see Stansfield et al., 1990, 1997; Scott et
al., 1996). While dictation has often been used as a measure of language proficiency in French
and English as second languages, it has been argued that it is not as effective a measure when
the target language has a very close relationship between its pronunciation and orthography.
Kaga (1991) considers the use of ‘graduated dictation’ (a form of modified dictation) to assess
the listening comprehension of adult learners of Japanese in a university context. Her results
indicate that the ‘graduated dictation’ is an effective measure of language proficiency even in
the case of Japanese where, arguably, the pronunciation and orthography in the target language
are closely related. Coniam (1998) also discusses the use of dictation to assess listening
comprehension, in his case a computer-based listening test – the ‘Text Dictation’. He argues
that this type of test is more appropriate as a test of listening than short fragments where the
required responses are in the form of true/false questions, gap-fill etc., because the text is more
682
coherent and provides more context. His results indicate that the Text Dictation procedure
discriminates well between students of different proficiency levels.
Summary translation tests, such as the Listening Summary Translation Exam (LSTE)
developed by Stansfield et al. (1990, 1997, 2000) and Scott et al. (1996), first provide an
instructional phase in which the test takers are taught the informational and linguistic
characteristics of a good summary. Test takers are then presented with three summary
translation tasks. The input consists of conversations in the target language (Spanish or
Taiwanese). These vary in length from one to three minutes. In each case the test takers hear
the input twice and are permitted to take notes. They then have to write a summary of what they
have heard, in English. Interestingly, this test method not only assesses listening, but also
writing and the developers report that listening performance in the target language has an
inverse relationship with writing performance in English. It is also clear from Kaga’s and
Coniam’s research that the target of the assessment is general language proficiency rather than
the isolation of a specific listening trait. This confirms Buck’s (1994) suggestion that there are
two types of listening test, the first being orally presented tests of general language
comprehension and the second tests of the listening trait proper. Indeed, one of the challenges
of assessing listening is that it is well high impossible to construct a ‘pure’ test of listening
that does not require the use of another language skill. In addition to listening to aural input,
Testing
test takers are likely to have to read written task instructions and/or questions. They also have
to provide either oral or written responses to the questions. Consequently, what might be
intended as a listening test could also be assessing another language skill.
To complicate matters further, other test factors such as the test method and test taker
characteristics such as memory capacity (Henning, 1991) could also contribute to the test
score. Admittedly though, research into the effects of these factors has been somewhat
inconclusive. Hale and Courtney (1994) examine the effect of note-taking on test taker
performance on the listening section of the TOEFL. They report that allowing test takers to
make notes had little effect on their test scores while actively urging them to take notes
significantly impaired their performance. This finding perhaps says more about the students’
note-taking experiences and habits than about the value of note-taking in the context of the
TOEFL listening test.
Sherman (1997) considers the effect of question preview. Subjects took listening tests in
four different versions: questions before the listening exercise, sandwiched between two
hearings of the listening text, after the text, or no questions at all. She found that the test takers
had a strong affective preference for previewed questions but previewing did not necessarily
result in more correct answers. In fact, the version that produced significantly more correct
answers was the one in which the test takers heard the passage twice (with the questions
presented between the two hearings). It is not clear, in this case, whether the enhanced scores
were due to the opportunity to preview the questions or the fact that the text was played twice,
or indeed a combination of the two.
In an effort to disentangle method from trait, Yi’an (1998) employed an immediate
retrospective verbal report procedure to investigate the effect of a multiple-choice format on
listening test performance. Her results, apart from providing evidence of the explanatory power
of qualitative approaches in assessment research (see also Banerjee & Luoma, 1997), show how
test takers activate both their linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge in order to process input.
Yi’an argues that language proficiency and background knowledge interact and that
nonlinguistic knowledge can either compensate for deficiencies in linguistic knowledge or can
facilitate linguistic processing. The former is more likely in the case of less able listeners who
are only partially successful in their linguistic processing. More competent and advanced
listeners are more likely to use their non-linguistic knowledge to facilitate linguistic processing.
683
However, the use of non-linguistic knowledge to compensate for linguistic deficiencies does
not guarantee success in the item. Yi’an’s results also indicate that the multiple-choice format
disadvantages less able listeners and allows uninformed guessing. It also results in test takers
getting an item correct for the wrong reasons.
Other research into the testing of listening has looked at text and task characteristics that
affect difficulty (see Buck, 2001: 149-151, for a comprehensive summary). Task characteristics
that affect listening test difficulty include those related to the information that needs to be
processed, what the test taker is required to do with the information and how quickly a response
is required. Text characteristics that can influence test difficulty include the phonological
qualities of the text and the vocabulary, grammar and discourse features. Apart from
purely linguistic characteristics, text difficulty is also affected by the degree of explicitness in
the presentation of the ideas, the order of presentation of the ideas and the amount of
redundancy.
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 See also: Alderson and Banerjee (2002, pp. 85-86)
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26- Which of the following statements is TRUE about the types of group dynamic
Testing
assessment?
1) Concurrent group dynamic assessment attempts to move the group forward through co-
constructing ZPDs with individuals, but cumulative group dynamic assessment supports
the development of each individual by working within the group’s ZPD.
2) Cumulative group dynamic assessment attempts to move the group forward through co-
constructing ZPDs with individuals, but concurrent group dynamic assessment supports
the development of each individual by working within the group’s ZPD.
3) In concurrent group dynamic assessment, individuals take turns engaging directly as
primary interactants with the teacher, with the understanding that each subsequent one-
on-one exchange will have the advantage of building on earlier interactions that the
class witnessed.
4) Cumulative group dynamic assessment may appear to an observer to be similar to whole
class instruction, but of course the absence of extended one-on-one interactions does
not preclude development within individuals’ ZPDs.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Poehner (2009, p. 478) proposes two different approaches to group dynamic assessment (G-
DA) with L2 learners. In the first, which he refers to as concurrent G-DA, the teacher dialogues
with the entire group. To be sure, the teacher may provide mediation in response to an
individual, but the interaction shifts rapidly between primary and secondary interactants as one
learner’s question, struggle, or comment sets the stage for another’s contribution. In this way,
concurrent G-DA may appear to an observer to be similar to whole class instruction, but of
course the absence of extended one-on-one interactions does not preclude development within
individuals’ ZPDs. In the second approach, cumulative G-DA, the teacher conducts a series of
one-on-one DA interactions as the group works toward mastery of a problem. That is,
individuals take turns engaging directly as primary interactants with the teacher, with the
understanding that each subsequent one-on-one exchange will have the advantage of building
on earlier interactions that the class witnessed. This approach is cumulative in that the goal is
684
to move the entire group forward in its ZPD through negotiations with individual learners in
their respective ZPDs. Cumulative G-DA attempts to move the group forward through co-
constructing ZPDs with individuals, but concurrent G-DA supports the development of
each individual by working within the group’s ZPD.
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 See also: Poehner (2009, p. 478)
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27- All of the following are significant issues regarding classroom-based assessment not
only conceptually but also practically EXCEPT --------.
1) utilizing assessment to promote learning
2) connecting classroom assessment to relevant policies
3) increasing the teachers’ professional knowledge and abilities
4) increasing teachers’ awareness of its advantages
Answer: 4
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Testing
Explanation:
Cumming (2009)
A primary issue is these teachers’ own knowledge and professional abilities. A common remark
is, “Why wasn’t there a full course on assessment during my initial degree (i.e., bachelor of
education or TESL certificate)? I’ve needed to know these things for years now.” Or “Why
don’t my employers (or principals or department heads) give us workshops or organize projects
on assessment?” A second issue concerns relating assessment to professional or curriculum
standards in their teaching. Students in this master’s course might remark, “Now I can see how
to use the criteria in this policy to help my students evaluate their own progress.” Or they may
ask, with astonishment, “Why didn’t anyone else ever tell us about the Common European
Framework of Reference for Languages?” A third issue involves relating assessment to their
students’ learning. They might ponder, for instance, “I am never sure whether my responses to
students’ writing really help them improve.” These are three issues about classroom-based
assessment in need of further development, not only conceptually but also in respect to the
practices of ordinary language teaching: (a) increasing professional knowledge and abilities;
(b) connecting classroom assessment to relevant policies, and (c) utilizing assessment to
promote learning.
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 See also: Cumming (2009, pp. 515-516)
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28- Which of the following statements is TRUE about assessment of learning and
assessment for learning cultures?
1) In the latter, formative and summative assessment are seen as distinctly different in both
form and function.
2) In the latter, summative assessments can be used for formative purposes.
3) In the former, summative assessments can be used for formative purposes.
4) In the former, formative assessment has no room and no value.
Answer: 2
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685
Explanation:
Davison and Leung (2009) argue that teacher-based assessment (TBA) shares many of the
characteristics of assessment for learning (AfL), a concept first used in the United Kingdom in
the late 1980s, and widely promoted through the work of the Assessment Reform Group
(Assessment Reform Group, 1999, 2001; Black & Wiliam, 1998). The term was introduced to
ensure “a clear distinction be made between assessment of learning for the purposes of grading
and reporting, which has its own well-established procedures, and assessment for learning,
which calls for different priorities, new procedures and a new commitment” (Assessment
Reform Group, 1999, p. 2). The Assessment Reform Group (1999, p. 7) has described AfL’s
defining characteristics as follows:
 embedded in a view of teaching and learning of which it is an essential part
 learning goals are shared with pupils
 aims to help pupils know and recognize the standards they are aiming for
 pupils are involved in self-assessment
 provides feedback which helps pupils recognize their next steps and how to take them
 underpinned by confidence that every student can improve
 both teacher and pupils review and reflect on assessment data
Testing
In TBA, the term assessment for learning is often used synonymously with the term formative
assessment , so comprehensively documented by Black and Wiliam (1998), but more recently
many researchers have been calling for a sharper distinction between the two terms (Kennedy,
Chan, Yu, & Fok, 2006; Roos & Hamilton, 2005; Stiggins, 2002; Taras, 2005). Traditionally,
formative assessment is seen as informal and fairly frequent, involving the gathering of
information about students and their language learning needs while they are still learning.
Formative assessment is usually contrasted with summative assessment, generally defined as
those more formal planned assessments at the end of a unit, term, or year which are used to
evaluate student progress and/or grade students. In an assessment of learning culture,
formative and summative assessment are seen as distinctly different in both form and function,
with teacher and assessor roles clearly demarcated, but in an assessment for learning culture,
it is argued that even summative assessments of the students’ language skills can and should
also be used formatively to give constructive student feedback and improve learning (see,
e.g., Biggs, 1998; Carless, 2008; Davison, 2007, Davison & Hamp-Lyons, 2009; Hamp-Lyons,
2007; Harlen, 2005; Kennedy et al., 2006; Taras, 2005). These researchers argue that provided
summative assessment is undertaken while students are still learning (and teachers are still
teaching), such assessments can and should also be used for formative purposes, that is, to
improve learning and teaching, thus building a more coherent and stronger assessment for
learning culture. Kennedy et al. propose that in this more inclusive model of assessment:
1. All assessment needs to be conceptualized as assessment for learning.
2. Feedback needs to be seen as a key function for all forms of assessment.
3. Teachers need to be seen as playing an important role not only in relation to formative
assessment but in all forms of summative assessment as well—both internal and
external.
4. Decisions about assessment need to be viewed in a social context because in the end
they need to be acceptable to the community.
Kennedy concludes that “the continuing bifurcation between formative and summative
assessment is no longer useful, despite the fact that such a distinction has resulted in some
excellent research and development work on formative assessment” (p. 14). He joins Harlen
(2005), Carless (2008), and others in calling for more research to be conducted into summative
686
assessment, and as Carless puts it, tests as “productive learning opportunities” (p. 8). However,
Kennedy challenges Roos and Hamilton’s (2005) view that summative assessment as a
procedure is too deeply entrenched, in Roos and Hamilton’s words, to become “a valid
activating mechanism for goal-directed educational activities” (p. 7). Biggs (1996, 1998) also
argues that an exclusive focus on formative assessment may leave many negative summative
assessment practices uncontested. He points out that this is deeply problematic given
summative assessment’s significant influence on student learning, often negative backwash
undermining any of the positive impacts of formative assessment. In fact, as has been well-
documented in systems such as Hong Kong and Singapore (e.g., Cheah, 1998; Hamp-Lyons,
2007), it is extremely difficult to sustain any significant teacher-based formative assessment
practices in most traditional examination-dominated cultures.
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 See also: Davison and Leung (2009, pp. 397-398); Reyneke (2016, pp. 1-3)
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29- Look at the following test items:

A) Why did Captain Scott go to the Antarctic regions?
B) Which explorer went to the Antarctic regions?
Testing
Which of the following item construction rules is violated above?
1) Items should be unambiguous.
2) Items should be independent.
3) Items should contain only relevant information.
4) Items should be clearly organized and formatted.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
General guidelines for item format analysis
This section presents some general item writing rules that may prove helpful in initial stages of
test construction. These rules hold true for all types of items and reflect the implications of
Grice’s (1975) cooperative principles. They are presented here as a means for controlling the
types of psychological processing required of the examinee while taking the test. In all cases,
these rules are designed to help item writers avoid variability due to linguistic or format
confoundings (as described in Table 1).
Linguistic confoundings
Item writers frequently, though inadvertently, introduce linguistic confoundings, or
unintentional language problems, into the task of taking the test. While teachers generally want
a test that measures language, they do not want the results to be due to the examinees not being
able to process the language of the item itself. To avoid such processing errors, test writers
should observe at least the following three rules:
First, avoid writing items whose language is at levels of complexity above the examinees’
level of language proficiency. If some of the examinees do not understand the language of the
stem, answering correctly or incorrectly may be due to one of two factors: (a) a lack of the
knowledge or skill being assessed or (b) an inability to process the information in the stem.
Thus the scores will be ambiguous. For example, the following prompt would be inappropriate
for an intermediate-level student being asked to write a short auto-biographical paragraph:
687
Homo sapiens achieve personality integration through a modified chronological

incorporation of self and society. In one paragraph, relate this to your own growth
experiences.
Second, avoid negative and double negative statements because they are difficult to
process and may cause confusion on the part of the examinee. For example, suppose the
examinees were required to read a passage about a student whose grade was marked down as a
result of continual tardiness, but who did not think tardiness was relevant to grading, and who,
in addition, was afraid to talk to the teacher. Now, consider a test item such as "Why did the
student not deny lack of punctuality as an inappropriate basis for grading?" Clearly a test item
of this sort becomes a problem solving exercise, or riddle, divorced from the information
presented in the passage.
Third, avoid ambiguity in test items. The examinees need to know exactly what is required
of them. For example, the following item could have two answers: Family plays an important
role in life. It sometimes complicates matters. Explain this. If the examinees understand this to
refer to the family’s role in life, one answer would be produced; if they interpret this as referring
to the complication involved, quite another answer might result.
Format confoundings
Testing
Just as the language used in test items can cause problems, format confoundings, or inadvertent
confusion due to item appearance or content, may needlessly disorient students. Three rules
may help to avoid such confusion.
First, as mentioned in Grice’s (1975) cooperative principles, avoid presenting irrelevant
information; instructions that are too complicated or verbose place unintended processing
demands on the examinees. On the other hand, instructions should not be so terse that the
examinees cannot understand what is expected of them. The test directions in Example 1
provide unnecessary and irrelevant information while the directions in Example 2 do not
provide enough information:
Example 1:
The following twenty vocabulary items have been selected from the second reading text in Unit
2 of the reading packet. Your teacher discussed each of these words in class during the
Wednesday vocabulary lesson. The words are presented in alphabetical order, rather than the
order they appeared in the text. Two words come from each paragraph, except paragraph five.
Three words come from that paragraph. Select five of the words and write them on a separate
piece of paper. Then, select the best definition from the list at the end of this handout. Write
that next to each word. Of the remaining fifteen words, select five and show the prefixes, word
roots, and suffixes by writing them below the words and definitions listed above. Put a slash
“/” between each prefix, root, and suffix (for example, Prefix/Root/Suffix).
Example 2:
Write an essay comparing relationships in two countries.
Second, avoid items which are not independent. Items that violate this rule are produced
in two ways. In Example 3, answering a subsequent item is dependent upon correctly
answering an earlier item:
Example 3:
1. What is the square root of 100?
2. Multiply this by 7.
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In Example 4, one item provides the answer to a subsequent item:
Example 4:
1. Why did Captain Cook go to Hawai’i?
2. What explorer went to Hawai’i?
When Items are not independent, interpreting why examinees got an item right or wrong may
be difficult or even impossible.
Third, items should be clearly organized and formatted. All parts of an item should appear
together, not be physically divided across two pages so that examinees don’t answer only the
first part of the item without realizing that there is more. Items of like format should be grouped
together within sections or subtests so examinees will not be confused by unnecessary shifts in
the types of responses they are required to make. Shifting from multiple-choice to short answer
to true/false and back to multiple-choice formats can be distracting. Also, sufficient space
should be provided for examinees to give a complete response to the item. If students are given
five lines to respond to an essay prompt or are provided with half a page to answer a short
answer question, they will tend to see the space as providing guidelines for the extent to which
they are to answer. Finally, the test should look attractive, with a readable typeface and a layout
Testing
that is clear, uncluttered, and consistent. This is a frequently overlooked and underestimated
factor in test development.
These linguistic and format confoundings are summarized in Table 1.
Table l. Linguistic and format confoundings
Linguistic confoundings
1. Items should be written at the examinees’ level of proficiency.
2. Items should not contain negatives or double negatives.
3. Items should be unambiguous.
Format confoundings
1. Items should contain only relevant information.
2. Items should be independent.
3. Items should be clearly organized and formatted.
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 See also: Brown and Hudson (2002, p. 63)
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30- In contrast to ---------, which shows the degree to which a norm-referenced test item
separates the upper and lower groups on a norm-referenced test, the ----------indicates
the degree to which a criterion-referenced test item is distinguishing between masters
and non-masters.
1) difference index — item phi
2) difference index — item discrimination
3) item phi — B-index
4) item discrimination — difference index
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Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Development of language tests
The development of any language test is a major task just like other aspects of language
curriculum development. Such projects are usually accomplished in the following steps:
1. Assemble or write a relatively large number of items of the type you want on the test.
2. Analyze the items carefully using item format analysis to make sure they are well-
written and clear (for guidelines, see Brown, 1996, 1999; Brown & Hudson, 2002).
3. Pilot the items using a group of students similar to the group that will ultimately be
taking the test (under less than ideal conditions, this may actually be the first operational
administration of the test).
4. Analyze the results statistically using item analysis techniques. These are described
below for both norm-referenced tests (NRTs) and criterion-referenced tests (CRTs).
5. Select the most effective items (and get rid of the ineffective items) and make a shorter,
more effective revised version of the test.
Item Statistics
Testing
I. Norm-Referenced Item Statistics
1. Item facility analysis
2. Item discrimination analysis
II. Criterion-Referenced Item Statistics
1. Difference index
2. B-index
I. Norm-Referenced Item Statistics

Two item statistics are often used in the item analysis of such norm-referenced tests: item
facility analysis, and item discrimination analysis.
1. Item Facility Analysis

Item facility (IF) (also called item difficulty or item easiness) is a statistical index used to
examine the percentage of students who correctly answer a given item.
2. Item Discrimination Analysis

Item discrimination (ID) indicates the degree to which an item separates the students who
performed well from those who performed poorly. That is, Item discrimination (ID) indicates
the degree to which a norm-referenced test item separates the upper and lower groups.
II. Criterion-Referenced Item Statistics

Two item statistics are often used in the item analysis of such criterion-referenced tests: the
difference index and the B-index.
1. Difference index
The difference index (DI, not to be confused with ID) indicates the degree to which an item is
reflecting gain in knowledge or skill. In contrast to item discrimination, which shows the degree
to which an NRT item separates the upper third from the lower third of the students on a given
test administration, the difference index indicates the degree to which a CRT item is
distinguishing between the students who know the material or have the skill being taught and
those who do not.
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In other words, the difference index is defined as the item facility on the particular item for
the posttest minus the item facility for that same item on the pretest. [Recall that the definition
of item facility is the proportion of students who answered a particular item correctly.] In other
words, the difference index shows the gain, or difference in performance, on each item between
the pretest and posttest. Calculating the difference index (DI) goes like this: if 10 out of 50
students answered Item 1 correctly on the pretest for a course, the pretest item facility
(IFpretest) would be 10/50 = .20; if 45 out of the same 50 students answered that same item
correctly on the posttest, the posttest item facility (IFposttest) would be 45/50 = .90. Given that
IFposttest = .90 and IFpretest = .20, the DI would be .70 (DI = IFposttest - IFpretest = .90 - .20
= .70)
2. B-index
One problem that may crop up in using the difference index is that two administrations of the
CRT are necessary. To solve this problem, other methods for assessing the sensitivity of CRT
items to differences in knowledge or skill have been developed (see Shannon & Cliver, 1987
for more on these statistics). The most straightforward of these indexes is called the B-index.
The B-index is an item statistic that compares the IFs of those students who passed a test with
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the IFs of those who failed it. In other words, the masters and non-masters on the test are
identified by whether or not they passed the test, and then the B-index indicates the degree to
which the masters (students who passed the test in this case) outperformed the non-masters
(students who failed the test) on each item.
In other words, the B-index is defined as the item facility on the particular item for the
students who passed the test minus the item facility for the students who failed. In other words,
the B-index shows how well each item is contributing to the pass/fail decisions that are often
made with CRTs. For example, if 14 out of the 14 students who passed the test answered Item
1 correctly, the item facility for students who passed (IFpass) would be 14/14 = 1.00; if none
of the six students who failed the test answered that same item correctly, the item facility for
students who failed (IFfail) would be 0/6 = .00. Given that IFpass = 1.00 and IFfail = .00, the
B-index for this particular item would be 1.00 (B-index = IFpass - IFfail = 1.00 - .00 = 1.00).
In sum, the difference index shows the gain, or difference in performance, on each item
between the pretest and posttest, and the B-index shows how well each item is contributing to
the pass/fail decisions that are often made with CRTs.
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 See also: Brown, (2005, pp. 80-84)
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31- Which of the following decisions does NOT support the claim that a given assessment
promotes equitable decisions?
1) Decisions equitable to all test-taker groups
2) Decisions relevant to societal values and legal requirements
3) Decisions based on appropriate standard-setting procedures
4) Decisions based on studies of consequences on the test taker and the instructional
system
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
In brief, Choice (4) is related to Claim 1 of Bachman and Palmer’s (2010) Assessment Use
Argument (AUA). Claim 1 is about ‘Consequences’: The consequences of using an assessment
and of the decisions that are made are beneficial to stakeholders.
Choices (1), (2), and (3) are related to Claim 2, which is related to ‘Decisions’. For a brief
explanation on AUA, refer to Year 97, Item 21.
Fairness
According to the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (American Educational
Research Association, American Psychological Association, and National Council on
Measurement in Education 1999), "concern for fairness in testing is pervasive" (p. 71). In
addition, there has been considerable discussion of fairness in the field of language assessment
(e.g., Elder 1997; Kunnan 2004, 2000b). Although specialists in educational measurement and
language testing agree that fairness is a fundamental concern, defining this has proven elusive.
The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (American Educational Research
Association, American Psychological Association, and National Council on Measurement in
Education 1999), for example, avoids defining the term entirely, stating, "a full consideration
Testing
of fairness would explore the many functions of testing in relation to its many goals, including
the broad goal of achieving equality of opportunity in our society" (p. 73). Nevertheless, the
Standards discuss several different characteristics that comprise fairness: absence of bias,
equitable treatment of test takers in the testing process, equality of testing outcomes for different
groups of test takers, and equity in opportunity to learn the content that is measured in an
achievement test. Similarly, Kunnan (2004) does not define fairness, but discusses it in terms
of different qualities: validity, absence of bias, equity of access, administration, and social
consequences. From this, it is clear that fairness is not a single quality, but is a function of many
different aspects of not only the assessment process itself, but also the use of assessments.
Because of the significance that is attached to fairness in both language assessment and
educational measurement, we feel that it is important to discuss how fairness issues are
addressed in the claims and warrants in an Assessment Use Argument (AUA). Both the
assessment process and the decisions that are made about stakeholders (e.g., students, teachers,
schools, potential employees, individuals seeking professional certification) on the basis of
assessment results will directly affect them in a number of ways. It is thus essential that we
consider the fairness of the assessment process both in the decisions we make on the basis of
the assessment, and in the consequences of assessment use.
I. Fairness in the assessment process

Fairness in assessment has to do with two aspects of assessment:
1. equitable treatment of individuals in the assessment process, and
2. absence of bias in the assessment process, assessment records and in the interpretations that
are made on the basis of these records.
1. Equitability of treatment
Equitability of treatment in the assessment process has to do with access, test administration,
and recording of results. Equitability of treatment requires that:
 All test takers have equal access to information about the assessment and the
assessment procedures.
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 All test takers have equal opportunity to prepare for the assessment. For example,
giving an achievement test that is based on the content of a specific course to students
who have not been taught this content would not be fair.
 All test takers have equal access to the assessment, in terms of location, cost, and
familiarity with the procedures and equipment used.
 All test takers are given comparable opportunities to demonstrate their ability.
 All test takers are given the assessment under equivalent and appropriate conditions.
(this is equivalent to choice (3): Decisions based on appropriate standard-setting
procedures)
 The results of the assessment are reported in a timely manner, in ways that are clearly
understandable to all stakeholder groups that assure confidentiality to individuals.
1.1. Equitability of treatment in an AUA

These requirements are addressed in several places in the AUA. Consistency warrants state that
the assessment is given under the same conditions to all test takers, while impartiality warrants
state that the assessment tasks do not include response formats or content that may either favor
or disfavor some test takers, do not include content that may be offensive, that individuals have
Testing
equal access to information about the assessment content and assessment procedures, as well
as to the assessment itself, and have equal opportunity to prepare for the assessment and for
achievement and certification decisions. Equitability warrants state that test takers are classified
only according to the cut scores and decision rules, and not according to any other
considerations, that test takers and other stakeholders are fully informed about how the decision
will be made and whether decisions are actually made in the way described to them, and that
test takers have equal opportunity to learn or acquire the ability to be assessed. Finally,
beneficence warrants state that assessment reports of individual test takers are treated
confidentially, that they are reported in a timely manner, and in ways that are clearly
understandable.
2. Absence of bias in the assessment process

Bias can be defined as a difference in the meanings of assessment records for individuals from
different identifiable groups (e.g., by gender, ethnicity, religion, native language) that is not
related to the ability that is assessed. In other words, bias results in interpretations that are not
equally meaningful, relevant, or generalizable for individuals in different groups. The most
obvious instance of bias is when members of a particular group perform better or worse on an
assessment due to factors that are not related to the ability being assessed.
Bias can arise from a number of different sources. One potential source of bias is the format
of the intended response. For example, consider a test intended to measure how well test takers
can comprehend a spoken conversation, in which they are required to write their responses.
Those test takers who are better writers may receive higher scores, so that the scores could not
be interpreted as valid indicators of listening. Another potential source of bias is the content of
assessment itself (e.g., cultural content, specialized topical content). For example, if a test that
is intended to measure ability in a foreign language contains specialized topical content that is
familiar to some groups of test takers and unfamiliar to others, then this might be a source of
bias. In this case, test takers who are familiar with the specialized content might perform better
because of this, and not because of their higher language ability, but because of their knowledge
of the topical content. The test scores could not be interpreted as meaningful indicators of
language ability. Inconsistent scoring can also be a source of bias. For example, if different
raters score the compositions of one group of test takers more severely than others, then this
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will result in biased, inconsistent scoring, and the meaningfulness of the intended
interpretations of these scores would consequently be compromised.
Absence of bias in an AUA

Issues of potential bias in the assessment process, assessment records, and interpretations are
also addressed in several Places in the AUA. Impartiality warrants state that the assessment
tasks do not include response formats specialized content that may either favor or disfavor some
test takers. Potential bias in the scoring method and differential consistency of assessment
records across different groups of test takers are addressed in consistency warrants.
The evaluation of bias in the assessment process is complex and requires both technical,
statistical analysis and expert judgment. What makes this particularly difficult is that
differences in assessment performance across groups are not sufficient to demonstrate bias. We
must also demonstrate that these differences are not due to differences in the ability we want to
assess.
II. Fairness in assessment use

While it is important to investigate the different sources of bias that can lead to different
Testing
interpretations of assessment results, we also need to consider fairness in the decisions we make
using assessment results and the consequences of these decisions. Acceptance or non-
acceptance into an instructional program, advancement or non-advancement from one course
to another, or in a career, employment or non-employment, are all decisions that can have
serious consequences for individuals.
Fair decisions are those that are equally appropriate, regardless of an individual’s group
membership. We need to ask whether the decision procedures and criteria are applied
uniformly to all groups of individuals. Fair test use also has to do with the relevance and
sufficiency of the assessment results to the decision. Thus we need to consider the various kinds
of information, including the assessment results, that could be used in making the decisions, as
well as their relative importance and the criteria that will be used. Is it fair, for example, to make
a life-affecting decision solely on the basis of a single test score?
Finally, fair test use has to do with whether and by what means individuals are fully
informed about how the decision will be made and whether decisions are actually made in the
way described to them. For example, if test takers are told that acceptance into a program will
be based on their test scores and grades, but acceptance is actually based primarily on letters of
reference, we might question the fairness of the decision procedure. Or, if teachers are not told
that raises in their salaries will be made primarily on the basis of their students’ standardized
test scores, and then some teachers are denied raises because their students performed poorly
on the standardized test, we would most likely feel that this is not a fair decision. We need to
ask if the intended consequences of using the assessment and of the decisions made are
beneficial to all stakeholders.
Fairness of assessment use in an AUA

Issues related to the fairness of assessment use are addressed in an AUA in the warrants that
support the beneficence of the consequences, the equitability of the decisions, and the relevance
and sufficiency of the interpretations for the decisions to be made.
Fairness in assessment use is a fundamental consideration in the development and use of
language assessments. It is for this reason that warrants specifically addressing fairness issues
are central to the AUA. If the assessment procedure does not provide assessment records that
are consistent across different groups of individuals, it is not fair. If the interpretations that we
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make of assessment records for individuals who are members of different groups are
differentially meaningful or are not impartial, then they are not fair. If the interpretations are
not generalizable beyond the assessment itself, or are not relevant and sufficient, then the
decisions we make may not be fair. If the decisions we make ignore existing community values
and legal requirements and are not equitable for individuals in different groups, they will not
be fair. If the consequences of using the assessment and of the decisions made are not beneficial,
then these will not be fair.
It is particularly important for developers and users of assessments to address these issues
of fairness in high-stakes assessments, where major, life-affecting decisions are made.
However, even in low-stakes assessments, because the assessment will have some
consequences for individuals, fairness should always be a consideration.

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 See also: Bachman and Palmer (2010, pp. 111-113, 128–131, 158–161, 176); Kunnan
(2018, pp. 80-81)
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Testing
32- According to Bachman’s model of language competence, sensitivity to differences in
register is a part of one’s --------competence.
1) sociolinguistic
2) organizational
3) illocutionary
4) textual
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
For explanation and similar items, refer to Year 93, Item 3; and Year 97, Items 28 and 39.
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33- According to the classical true score model, all of the following are approaches to
estimating reliability EXCEPT ---------- estimates.
1) stability
2) external
3) equivalence
4) internal consistency
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Within the Classical True Score (CTS) model, there are three approaches to estimating
reliability, each of which addresses different sources of error. Internal consistency estimates
are concerned primarily with sources of error from within the test and scoring procedures,
stability estimates indicate how consistent test scores are over time, and equivalence estimates
provide an indication of the extent to which scores on alternate forms of a test are equivalent.
The estimates of reliability that these approaches yield are called reliability coefficients.
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34- Based on item response theory, a test taker’s expected performance on a particular
test item is a function of the --------.
1) discrimination power of the item as well as the test taker’s level of ability
2) difficulty level of the item as well as the test taker’s level of ability
3) discrimination power of the item as well as the test taker’s personality traits
4) difficulty level of the item as well as the test taker’s cognitive style
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Because of the limitations in CTS theory (and G-theory, as well), psychometricians have
developed a number of mathematical models for relating an individual’s test performance to
that individual’s level of ability.” These models are based on the fundamental theorem that an
Testing
individual’s expected performance on a particular test question, or item, is a function of
both the level of difficulty of the item and the individual’s level of ability. Such models are
generally referred to as ‘item response’ models, and the general theory upon which they are
based is called ‘item response’ theory (IRT). (Another common term that is used for this theory
is ‘latent trait’ theory.)
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35- The hypothesis that performance on different tests of the same ability should be
similar, while performance on tests of different abilities should be dissimilar should
provide evidence in support of --------validity.
1) predictive
2) response
3) construct
4) content
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Construct validation is the process of building a case that test scores support a particular
interpretation of ability, and it thus subsumes content relevance and criterion relatedness.
Construct validation goes beyond these two types of evidence, however, in that it empirically
verifies (or falsifies) hypotheses derived from a theory of factors that affect performance on
tests - constructs, or abilities, and characteristics of the test method. In general these hypotheses
specify how individuals should perform on different tests: that performance on different tests
of the same ability should be similar, while performance on tests of different abilities
should be dissimilar.
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 See also: Bachman (1990, pp. 258-263, 290)
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36- The individual characteristics that ensure the element of interactiveness while
accomplishing a test task are -----------.
1) learning style, language ability, and topical knowledge
2) pragmatic knowledge, learning style, and affective schemata
3) language ability, topical knowledge, and affective schemata
4) language ability, pragmatic knowledge, and affective schemata
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Interactiveness
We define interactiveness as the extent and type of involvement of the test taker’s individual
characteristics in accomplishing a test task. The individual characteristics that are most relevant
for language testing are the test taker’s language ability (language knowledge and strategic
competence, or metacognitive strategies), topical knowledge, and affective schemata. The
interactiveness of a given language test task can thus be, characterized in terms of the ways in
Testing
which the test taker’s areas of language knowledge, metacognitive strategies, topical
knowledge, and affective schemata are engaged by the test task.
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37- The two threshold loss agreement statistics are ------------.

1) agreement and kappa coefficients
2) kappa and Cronbach alpha coefficients
3) agreement and Cronbach alpha coefficients
4) Phi(Lambda) and Cronbach alpha coefficients
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Threshold Loss Agreement Approaches
As shown in Brown (1990), two of the threshold loss agreement statistics that are prominent
in the literature are also straightforward enough mathematically to be calculated in most
language teaching situations. These two statistics are the agreement coefficient (Subkoviak
1980) and the kappa coefficient (Cohen 1960). Both of these coefficients measure the
consistency of master/non-master classifications
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 See also: Bachman (1990, p. 217); Bachman (2004, pp. 200-202); Brown (2005, p. 200)
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38- The challenges associated with assessment of foreign language pragmatics are -------.
1) cultural imperialism, abstractness of cultural references, and variety of speech act
functions
2) macrosocial variation, microsocial variation, and variety of speech act functions
3) microsocial variation, variety of speech act functions, and cultural imperialism
4) macrosocial variation, microsocial variation, and cultural imperialism
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Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Challenges and complexities of assessing of pragmatics
Some of the challenges in teaching and assessing pragmatics stem from pragmatic variability
in different community practices. Due to macrosocial variation (Schneider & Barron, 2008)
(e.g., regional, social, gender, ethnic, and generational differences in pragmatic norms), an
appropriate or preferred range of norms of linguistic behavior manifests differently depending
on the interlocutors’ individual personalities and social backgrounds (McNamara & Röver,
2006). At the same time, pragmatic language use is sensitive to various (and often subtle)
contextual factors leading to microsocial variation (Schneider & Barron, 2008), (variation
depending on, e.g., the interlocutors’ relative social status, psychological/social distance, and
degree of imposition). Another layer of complexity comes into play for L2 pragmatics.
Because of their multicultural subjectivity, L2 speakers have been found to intentionally
resist what they perceive as native speaker norms at times despite an awareness and linguistic
command of such norms (e.g., Ishihara, 2006; LoCastro, 2003; Siegal, 1996). Learners’
pragmatic choices, whether an accommodation or a resistance to perceived community norms,
are born out of their negotiation of subjectivity and exercise of agency. Thus, care must be taken
Testing
in instruction not to impose native speaker norms on learners’ production (e.g., Kasper & Rose,
2002; Thomas, 1983), and in assessment not to penalize learners for deliberate nontarget-like
behavior. To do so could be interpreted as linguistic imposition or even cultural imperialism
(e.g., Canagarajah, 1999; Kasper & Rose, 2002; Phillipson, 1992). In fact, a key to teacher-
based assessment of pragmatics may be to use distinct evaluative strategies for learners’
receptive awareness and productive skills. Teachers need to assess learners’ pragmatic
comprehension based on the range of L2 community norms so that learners can eventually
interpret community members’ intended meaning accordingly in social interaction. At the same
time, teachers must evaluate learners’ pragmatic use of language not in terms of how much it
approximates native speaker norms but based on learners’ intended meanings and the nuances
they choose to communicate, whether they elect to converge on or diverge from community
norms. Given that language proficiency (and in this case, pragmatic competence) is context-
bound (McNamara & Röver, 2006), learners’ pragmatic language use would ideally be assessed
in authentic social interaction, taking into account how they negotiate their message, identity,
and cultural affiliation in that particular context.
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 See also: Ishihara (2009, pp. 446-447)
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39- Which of the following statements is TRUE about calculating reliability through K-
R21?
1) It produces a very serious underestimate for some tests like the cloze procedure, but
does not give a serious underestimate for multiple-choice tests.
2) It produces a very serious underestimate for some tests like multiple-choice, but does
not give a serious underestimate for the cloze procedure.
3) It produces a very serious underestimate for both multiple-choice tests and the cloze
procedure.
4) It produces an overestimate for both multiple-choice tests and the cloze procedure.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Brown (2005) indicates that in his experience the K-R21 usually does not give a very serious
underestimate for multiple-choice language tests. However, for some types of tests, like the
cloze procedure, the K-R21 may produce a very serious underestimate, as compared to other
approaches for estimating internal consistency reliability.
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 See also: Brown (1996, p. 199); Brown (2005, p. 180)
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40- Which of the following is NOT a communicative test-setting requirement?

1) Authentic situation
2) Creative language output
3) Unpredictable language input
4) Success in getting meaning across
Answer: 4
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Testing
Explanation:
Brown (2005) characterizes communicate tests are follows:
Characteristics of communicative tests

Communicative test-setting requirements
Meaningful communication
Authentic situation
Unpredictable language input
Creative language output
All language skills (including reading, writing, listening , & speaking)
Bases for ratings:

Success in getting meanings across
Use focus rather than usage
New components to be rated
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 See also: Brown (2005, pp. 21-22)
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41- The questions "How old are you? Are you living in Australia?" are samples of -------
questions, respectively.
1) demographic and close-ended
2) close-ended and demographic
3) demographic and open-ended
4) close-ended and open-ended
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
In surveys and interviews, researchers often make use of ‘demographic’, ‘open-ended’, and
close-ended’ questions.
 Demographic questions are questions about respondent characteristics such as age,
gender, employment status, income, and marital status.
 Close-ended questions, which are designed to gather information in short bursts.
Typically close-ended questions start with "Are you... ", "Did you..." "Will you... Can
you...’ and there are a few others: Questions that start like this will usually result in short
answers - "Yes", "Sometimes", "No", "Maybe", etc.
 Open-ended questions are designed to get longer, more informed answers, typically start
with "Why...?", "How...?", "Tell me about...", Describe for me...
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 See also: Anderson (2003, pp. 150-151)
Research
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42- Which of the following is NOT a mixed method design?

1) Embedded design
2) Semi-experimental design
3) Convergent parallel design
4) Exploratory sequential design
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Semi-experimental design (a.k.a. quasi-experimental design) is a quantitative experimental
research design. Quasi-experimental designs lack randomization but employ other strategies
to provide some control over extraneous variables. They are used, for instance, when intact
classrooms are used as the experimental and control groups. Thus, true experimental designs
have the greatest internal validity, quasi-experimental designs have somewhat less internal
validity, and the preexperimental designs have the least internal validity (Ary et al., 2014, p.
325).
Mixed methods designs

Various typologies of mixed methods designs have been proposed. Creswell and Plano
Clark’s (2011) typology of some “commonly used designs” includes six “major mixed
methods designs”. Our summary of these designs runs as follows:
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 Convergent parallel design: the quantitative and qualitative strands of the research are
performed independently, and their results are brought together in the overall
interpretation,
 Explanatory sequential design: a first phase of quantitative data collection and
analysis is followed by the collection of qualitative data, which are used to explain the
initial quantitative results,
 Exploratory sequential design: a first phase of qualitative data collection and analysis
is followed by the collection of quantitative data to test or generalize the initial
qualitative results,
 Embedded design: in a traditional qualitative or quantitative design, a strand of the
other type is added to enhance the overall design,
 Transformative design: a transformative theoretical framework, e. g. feminism or
critical race theory, shapes the interaction, priority, timing and mixing of the qualitative
and quantitative strand,
 Multiphase design: more than two phases or both sequential and concurrent strands are
combined over a period of time within a program of study addressing an overall
program objective.
Most of their designs presuppose a specific juxtaposition of the qualitative and quantitative
component. Note that the last design is a complex type that is required in many mixed methods
studies.
The following are our adapted definitions of Teddlie and Tashakkori’s (2009) five sets of
mixed methods research designs (p. 151):
 Parallel mixed designs: In these designs, one has two or more parallel quantitative and
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qualitative strands, either with some minimal time lapse or simultaneously; the strand
results are integrated into meta-inferences after separate analysis are conducted; related
QUAN and QUAL research questions are answered or aspects of the same mixed
research question is addressed.
 Sequential mixed designs: In these designs, QUAL and QUAN strands occur across
chronological phases, and the procedures/questions from the later strand
emerge/depend/build on the previous strand; the research questions are interrelated and
sometimes evolve during the study.
 Conversion mixed designs: In these parallel designs, mixing occurs when one type of
data is transformed to the other type and then analyzed, and the additional findings are
added to the results; this design answers related aspects of the same research question,
 Multilevel mixed designs: In these parallel or sequential designs, mixing occurs across
multiple levels of analysis, as QUAN and QUAL data are analyzed and integrated to
answer related aspects of the same research question or related questions.
 Fully integrated mixed designs: In these designs, mixing occurs in an interactive
manner at all stages of the study. At each stage, one approach affects the formulation of
the other, and multiple types of implementation processes can occur. For example,
rather than including integration only at the findings/results stage, or only across phases
in a sequential design, mixing might occur at the conceptualization stage, the
methodological stage, the analysis stage, and the inferential stage.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 339); Ary et al. (2019, pp. 260); Creswell and Plano Clark
(2011, pp. 77, 82, 91-92, 87, 100- 101)
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43- Which of the following is NOT a threat to validity?

1) Power
2) Mortality
3) Maturation
4) Hawthorne
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Power is the ability to reject a null hypothesis when it is false.
For explanation and similar items, refer to Year 91, Item 55; Year 92, Item 36; Year 96, Items
41, 42, and 43; and Year 97, Items 41, 42, and 55.
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44- Which of the following refers to a within subject design? Research design in which --
----------.
1) subjects in the experimental and control groups are equated on one or more variables
before the experiment
2) each subject experiences only one of the conditions in the experiment
3) each subject has an equal chance of being placed in every condition
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4) each subject experiences every condition of the experiment
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Experiencing conditions
1. Within-subjects experiment: Within-subjects experiment is a research design in which
each subject experiences every condition of the experiment. In other words, different
subjects experience each condition, in some experiments each subject experiences every
condition. In such an experiment, instead of having a control group, we have a control
condition. When each subject experiences every condition, we say that each subject serves
as his or her own control. An experiment of this kind is called a within-subjects experiment
because the differences between conditions are tested within individual subjects.
2. Between-subjects experiment: Between-subjects experiment is a research design in
which each subject experiences only one of the conditions in the experiment. In such an
experiment, we have a control group. An experiment in which different groups of subjects
experience different conditions is a between-subjects experiment because the differences
between conditions are tested between different subjects.
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 See also: McBurney and White (2009, p. 195)
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45- The purpose of descriptive statistics is to -------.

1) predict based on correlation
2) draw inferences from the data
3) summarize the collected data
4) measure the degree of relationship
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Statistics is of two main types: Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics.
1. Descriptive statistics are techniques for organizing, summarizing, and describing
observations.
2. Inferential statistics are Procedures that permit one to make tentative generalizations
from sample data to the population from which the sample was drawn.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2019, pp. 127-128, 164, 557, 559)
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46- Which of the following figures shows a situation in which there is a correlation
between variables but it is not a perfect one?
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Answer:
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Explanation:
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47- Which of the following refers to a non-linear relationship?

1) One or more of the dependent variables will change when the independent variable
changes.
2) When the slope showing the relationship changes as the value of one of the variables
changes.
3) When the value of the independent variable increases, the value of the dependent variable
decreases.
4) When the value of the independent variable increases, the value of the dependent variable
increases.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Graphs of Relationships
1. Linear
In a linear relationship (or regression), when the value of the independent variable increases,
the value of the dependent variable either decreases or increases without any change in the slope
– the slope will remain the same.
2. Non-linear (or curvilinear)

A nonlinear relationship is a relationship between two variables that changes over the range of
the variables’ values. The slope of a nonlinear function changes at every point on it,
reflecting the changing relationship between the variables. If a relationship between two
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variables is not linear, the slope changes at different points on the curve. These variables are
said to have a nonlinear relationship. In other words, a nonlinear curve is a curve whose slope
changes as the value of one of the variables changes.
Rittenberg and Tregarthen (2009) indicate that a “nonlinear relationship between two
variables is one for which the slope of the curve showing the relationship changes as the value
of one of the variables changes. A nonlinear curve is a curve whose slope changes as the value
of one of the variables changes” (p. 524).
For more explanation and similar item, refer to Year 92, Item 43 (see Lack of linearity); and
Year 96, Item 52.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 145-146); Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, 427-429, 437-438);
Rittenberg and Tregarthen (2009, p. 524)
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48- Which of the following is WRONG?

1) A continuous variable is a variable that can only take on a certain number of values.
2) Arranging the age of students in a class from youngest to oldest yields ordinal data.
3) A variable whose values are observed by counting something must be a discrete
variable.
4) A variable which can take any real-number value in the interval [0,1] is a continuous
variable.
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Types of Variables
There are different typologies for describing variables. One typology is categorical (or
qualitative) versus numerical (or quantitative), and within numerical, discrete, and continuous.
A categorical variable is a qualitative variable that describes categories of a characteristic or
attribute. Examples of categorical variables include political party affiliation (Republican = 1,
Democrat = 2, Independent = 3), religious affiliation (e.g., Methodist = 1, Baptist = 2, Roman
Catholic = 3), and course letter grade (A = 4, B = 3, C = 2, D = 1, F = 0).
A dichotomous variable is a special, restricted type of categorical variable and is defined
as a variable that can take on only one of two values. For example, biologically determined
gender is a variable that can only take on the values of male or female and is often coded
numerically as 0 (e.g., for males) or 1 (e.g., for females). Other dichotomous variables include
pass/fail, true/false, living/dead, and smoker/nonsmoker.
A numerical variable is a quantitative variable. Numerical variables can further be
classified as either discrete or continuous. A discrete variable is defined as a variable that can
only take on certain values. For example, the number of children in a family can only take on
certain values. Many values are not possible, such as negative values (e.g., the Joneses cannot
have −2 children) or decimal values (e.g., the Smiths cannot have 2.2 children). In contrast, a
continuous variable is defined as a variable that can take on any value within a certain range
given a precise enough measurement instrument. For example, the distance between two cities
can be measured in miles, with miles estimated in whole numbers. However, given a more
precise instrument with which to measure, distance can even be measured down to the inch or
millimeter.
When considering the difference between a discrete and continuous variable, keep in
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mind that discrete variables arise from the counting process and continuous variables arise
from the measuring process. For example, the number of students enrolled in your statistics
class is a discrete variable. If we were to measure (i.e., count) the number of students in the
class, it would not matter if we counted first names alphabetically from A to Z or if we counted
beginning with who sat in the front row to the last person in the back row—either way, we
would arrive at the same value. In other words, how we “measure” (again, count) the students
in the class does not matter—we will always arrive at the same result. In comparison, the value
of a continuous variable is dependent on how precise the measuring instrument is. Weighing
yourself on a scale that rounds to whole numbers will give us one measure of weight. However,
weighing on another, more precise, scale that rounds to three decimal places will provide a
more precise measure of weight. Here are a few additional examples of the discrete and
continuous variables. Other discrete variables include a number of CDs owned, number of
credit hours enrolled, and number of teachers employed at a school. Other continuous variables
include salary (from zero to billions in dollars and cents), age (from zero up, in millisecond
increments), height (from zero up, in increments of fractions of millimeters), weight (from zero
up, in increments of fractions of ounces), and time (from zero up, in millisecond increments).
Variable type is often important in terms of selecting an appropriate statistic.
More on discrete variables vs. continuous variables

A discrete random variable is one that can take on only values that are integers (positive and
negative whole numbers and 0). The values of a discrete random variable can have a finite
stopping point, like –1, 0, and 1, or they can go to infinity (for example, 1, 2, 3, 4, . . . ).
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Examples:
 A number of books takes on only positive integer values, such as 0, 1, or 2, and thus is
a discrete random variable.
 The number of cars registered in a state must be a non-negative integer, such as 0, 1,
or 2, and thus is a discrete random variable.
 The number of bird species takes on non-negative integer values, such as 0, 1, or 2,
and thus is a discrete random variable.
A continuous random variable takes on all possible values within an interval on the real
number line (such as all real numbers between –2 and 2, written as [–2, 2]).
Examples:
 The amount of rain that falls on a city in a year can take on any non-negative value on
the real number line, such as 11.45 inches or 37.9 inches, and therefore is continuous
rather than discrete.
 A proportion can take on any real number between 0 and 1 on the real number line and
is therefore continuous.
 The amount of gasoline can take on any value on the real number line that’s greater
than or equal to 0 and is therefore continuous.
 The amount of money spent by a household for food during a year is considered
continuous because of all the possible values it can take on (even though the amounts
would be rounded to dollars and cents).
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For more explanation and similar items, refer to Year 96, Item 46; and Year 97, Items 47 and
48.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 29, 40-41); Hahs-Vaughn and Lomax (2012, pp. 7-8);
Hatch and Lazaraton (1991, pp. 60-62)
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49- Which of the following refers to a hypothesis?

1) It is a well-substantiated, unifying explanation for a set of verified factors and is backed
by evidence.
2) It describes, explains and predicts a phenomenon in order to help us understand it and
thereby provide insights as to how it may be controlled.
3) A formal statement made about the predicted relationship between variables in a
research study, which is directly tested by the researcher.
4) A simple way of assessing whether a test measures what it claims to measure.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Scientific Method
Scientific Method makes use of objective, measurable, and repeatable techniques to gather
information which involves a constant cycle of theorizing, empirical testing of the resulting
hypotheses, and revision of theories. It indicates that theories must be revised or elaborated as
new observations confirm or refute them
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Hypothesis
A hypothesis is either a suggested explanation for an observable phenomenon, or a reasoned
prediction – i.e. a tentative proposition – of a possible causal correlation among multiple
phenomena. A hypothesis is only a suggested possible outcome, and is testable and falsifiable.
It is a testable idea. Scientists do not set out to "prove" hypotheses, but to test them. Often
multiple hypotheses are posed to explain phenomena and the goal of research is to eliminate
the incorrect ones.
Theory
In science, a theory is a tested, well-substantiated, unifying explanation for a set of verified,
proven factors. A theory is always backed by evidence. Theories may be supported, rejected,
or modified, based on new evidence.
Ary et al. (2014, p. 14) state that in science, a theory is defined as a set of interrelated
constructs and propositions that presents an explanation of phenomena and makes predictions
about relationships among variables relevant to the phenomena.
To compare, a hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be

a scientific hypothesis, it needs to tested using scientific method(s). Scientists generally base
scientific hypotheses on previous observations that cannot be explained otherwise. A scientific
hypothesis is a proposed explanation of a phenomenon, until it is rigorously tested. In contrast,
a scientific theory has undergone extensive testing and accepted to be the accurate explanation
behind an observation.
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Hypothesis Theory
A suggested explanation for an In science, a theory is a well-
observable phenomenon or substantiated, unifying explanation
Definition prediction of a possible causal for a set of verified, proven
correlation among multiple hypotheses.
phenomena.
Suggestion, possibility, projection or Evidence, verification, repeated
Based on
prediction, but the result is uncertain. testing, wide scientific consensus
Testable Yes Yes
Falsifiable Yes Yes
Is well- No Yes
substantiated?
Is well-tested? No Yes
Usually based on very limited data Based on a very wide set of data
Data
tested under various circumstances.
Specific: Hypothesis is usually based General: A theory is the
on a very specific observation and is establishment of a general principle
Instance limited to that instance. through multiple tests and
experiments, and this principle may
apply to various specific instances.
To present an uncertain possibility To explain why a large set of
Purpose that can be explored further through observations are consistently made.
experiments and observations.
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https://quizlet.com/71884581/scientific-method-theory-hypothesis-flash-cards/
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 7, 15-17, 667, 684)
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50- Which of the following is related to quantitative methods?

1) More in-depth information on a few cases.
2) Unstructured or semi-structured response options.
3) Primarily deductive process used to test pre-specified concepts, constructs, and
hypotheses that make up a theory.
4) Include focus groups, in-depth interviews, and reviews of documents for types of
themes.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Qualitative vs. Quantitative Research
Quantitative Inquiry Qualitative Inquiry
Research
Philosophical Roots
Positivism, logical empiricism Phenomenology, symbolic interaction
Purpose
To generalize findings To contextualize findings
To predict behavior To interpret behavior and intention
To provide causal explanations To understand perspectives
To provide a collective understanding or To describe individuals’ behaviors and
fact perspectives
To confirm To discover
To test pre-selected concepts that create a To formulate (grounded) theories
theory inductively
To measure views, and opinions (possibly To provides awareness into the core reasons
testing the hypothesis created in the of a problem or generating ideas
qualitative research)
Approach
Uses theory to ground the study May create theory grounded in the findings
Uses manipulation and control of variables Portrays the natural context
Deductive then inductive Inductive then deductive
Seeks to analyze discrete components Searches for larger patterns
Looks for the norm Looks for complexity
Reduces data to numbers Relies on words and only minor use of
numbers
Reports written in precise, abstract language Reports written in descriptive, holistic
language
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Assumptions
There is an objective reality Reality is socially constructed
It assumes a fixed reality It assumes a dynamic and negotiated reality
The world is stable The world is not stable
Variables can be identified and measured Complex variables are difficult to measure
It is rooted in logical empiricism It is rooted in symbolic interactionism
Role of Researcher
Detached and impartial Personally involved
Objective portrayal Empathic understanding
Inquiry should be as value free as possible Inquiry is always value bound
Methods
Focused on quantity (how much, how many) Focused on quality (nature, essence)
Experimental, empirical, statistical focus Fieldwork, ethnographic, naturalistic focus
Predetermined, structured methods, precise Flexible, evolving, emergent methods
Time expenditure heavier on the planning Time expenditure lighter on the planning
end and heavier during the analysis phase end and heavier during the analysis phase
Sample and Sampling
Random sampling is the ideal (used for Typically uses purposive sampling
generalizability purposes)
Usually a large number of participants Usually uses a small number of pre-selected
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representing a population of interest that participants (i.e. a small sample size)
have been randomly selected (for
generalizability purposes)
Instruments, Data analysis, and reporting
Uses fixed response options (i.e. close- Uses unstructured or semi-structured
ended responses) response options (i.e. open-ended responses)
Fixed response options, use numbers to Open-ended response options: Interviews
define relationships via closed-ended and focus groups use semi-structured but
answers, experimental, empirical means open-ended questions/formats
Uses inanimate instruments (scales, tests, Researcher as the primary instrument
questionnaires, observation checklists, etc.) (observations, interviews, document
analysis)
Uses experiments, surveys, etc. Uses focus groups, in-depth interviews, and
reviews to provide in-depth information
Data are collected through measuring things Data are collected through participants
observation and interviews
Data are analyzed through numerical Data are analyzed by themes from
comparisons and statistical inferences descriptions by informants
Data are reported through statistical analyses Data are reported in the language of the
informants
Uses statistical tests to analyze data Lacks statistical tests
Data lends itself to generalization Data does not lend itself to generalization
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Technicalities
Reliability (in NRT), and dependability (in Dependability/trustworthiness/
CRT) replicability/consistency
Internal validity Credibility (or truth value)
External validity (or Generalizability) Transferability (or applicability)
Objectivity Confirmability (or neutrality)
Major research designs
A. Experimental research 1) Convergent parallel design,
1) True-experimental 2) Explanatory sequential design,
2) Quasi- or semi-experimental 3) Exploratory sequential design,
3) Pre-experimental 4) Embedded design,
B. Non-experimental research 5) Transformative design, and
1) Survey (or descriptive) 6) Multiphase design
2) Correlational
3) Ex post facto

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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 450, 639); Tulchinsky and Varavikova (2014, p. 144)
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51- Which of the following is FALSE?
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1) It is possible for a measure to be valid but not reliable.
2) It is possible for a measure to be reliable but not valid.
3) Reliability is mostly a matter of consistency; validity is mostly about accuracy.
4) Reliability is mostly a matter of accuracy; validity is mostly about consistency.
Answer: 1 and 4
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Explanation:
Choosing from the multiplicity of measuring instruments available to the researcher requires
the use of criteria for the evaluation of these instruments. The two most important criteria for
measuring devices are validity and reliability. The reliability of an instrument is the degree of
consistency with which it measures whatever it is purported to measure. This quality is essential
in any measurement.
Validity is the extent to which theory and evidence support the proposed interpretations of
test scores for an intended purpose. In the process of assessing validity, the researcher gathers
various types of supporting evidence from multiple sources. Three types of evidence are
gathered: (1) content-related evidence, which assesses how well the instrument samples the
content domain being measured; (2) criterion-related evidence, which assesses how well the
instrument correlates with other measures of the variable of interest; and (3) construct-related
evidence, which assesses how well the instrument represents the construct of interest (Ary et
al., 2014, p. 277).
Relationship between Reliability and Validity

Reliability is concerned with how consistently you measure that which you are trying to
measure. It is not concerned with the meaning and interpretation of the scores, which is a
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validity question. We express the relationship between these two concepts as follows: Scores
from an instrument can be reliable without being valid, but cannot be valid unless first
determined to be reliable. For example, someone could decide to measure intelligence by
determining the circumference of the head. The measures might be very consistent over time
(i.e. reliable), but this method would not yield valid inferences about intelligence because
circumference of the head does not correlate with any other criteria of intelligence, nor is it
predicted by any theory of intelligence. Thus, scores from a test can be very reliable but
consistently yield scores that are meaningless (Ary et al., 2014, p. 256).
To be able to make valid inferences from a test’s scores, the test must first be consistent in
measuring whatever is being measured. Reliability is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition
for valid interpretations of test scores.
Reliability equals consistency (Fulcher & Davidson, 2012, pp. 351-352)

Reliability in assessment means something rather different to its everyday use. ‘Reliable’ in
common parlance is a synonym of ‘trustworthy’ or ‘accurate’. Feldt and Brennan (1989: 106)
point out that ‘in everyday conversation, “reliability” refers to a concept much closer to the
measurement concept of validity’, that is, it implies that a test gives accurate and correct
results. However, in testing reliability has the narrower meaning of ‘consistent’. This is
indeed one aspect of trustworthiness, as when we speak of a reliable friend, car or train service.
But usages such as ‘trust John to make a mess of things,’ or ‘you can rely on the trains breaking
down in winter’ remind us that consistency has no inherently positive connotation. Ennis (1999)
argues that simple misunderstanding of the term on the part of test users has led to a damaging
focus on reliability at the expense of other test qualities. He proposes that ‘reliability’ should
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be renamed ‘consistency’, although there is no evidence of this proposal catching on.
A reliable test is consistent in that it produces the same or similar result on repeated use;
that is, it would rank-order a group of test takers in nearly the same way. But the result need
not be a correct or accurate measure of what the test claims to measure. Just as a train service
can run consistently late, a test may provide an incorrect result in a consistent manner. High
reliability does not necessarily imply that a test is good, i.e., valid. Nonetheless, a valid test
must have acceptable reliability, because without it the results can never be meaningful.
Thus a degree of reliability is a necessary but not sufficient condition of validity.
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 253, 256, 277); Fulcher and Davidson (2012, p. 351)
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52- Parameter is to ---------as statistic is to ---------.

1) standard error; mean
2) population; sample
3) mean; standard error
4) measurement; sampling
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Ary et al. (2014, p. 161) define parameters as characteristics of populations and statistics as
characteristics of samples. Some of these characteristics are charted below:
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Parameters Statistics
Number of members of sample or population N n
Mean μ (Mu) or μx X̅ (x-bar)
Median (none) M or Med or x̃ “x-tilde”
Variance σ² s²
Standard deviation σ “sigma” or σx s
Coefficient of linear correlation ρ “rho” r
Proportion p p̂ “p-hat”
It seems appropriate to define “sampling error” here. Sampling error is any difference between
a population parameter and a sample statistic which is due to our sampling.
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53- The Kuder-Richardson coefficient, or KR-20, comes closest to what type of reliability?
1) multiple forms
2) inter-rater
3) test-retest
4) split-half
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
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Reliability estimates based on item variances
In estimating reliability with the split-half approach, there are many different ways in which a
given test could be divided into halves. Since not every split will yield halves with exactly the
same characteristics in terms of their equivalence and independence, the reliability coefficients
obtained with different splits are likely to vary, so that our estimates of reliability will depend
greatly on the particular split we use. One way of avoiding this problem would be to split the
test into halves in every way possible, compute the reliability coefficients based on these
different splits, and then find the average of these coefficients. For example, in a four-item test,
the three possible splits would be: (1) items 1 and 2 in one half and items 3 and 4 in the other;
(2) 1 and 3, 2 and 4; (3) 1 and 4, 2 and 3. This approach soon becomes impractical, however,
beyond a very small set of items, since the number of reliability coefficients to be computed
increases geometrically as a function of the number of items in the test. Thus, while with four
items there are only three possible splits and three coefficients to compute, with eight items
there are 35 possible splits and 595 coefficients to compute.’ With a relatively short test of only
30 items we would have to compute the coefficients for 77,558,760 combinations of different
halves!
Kuder-Richardson reliability coefficients

Fortunately, there is a way of estimating the average of all the possible split-half coefficients
on the basis of the statistical characteristics of the test items.
For more explanation and similar items, refer to Year 93, Item 55.
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54- Which statistic relies upon information provided in a crosstab to see if a relationship
is statistically significant?
1) ANOVA
2) R-squared
3) Chi-square
4) Pearson’s correlation coefficient
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
For explanation and a similar item, refer to year 94, Item 59.
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55- Which of the following is WRONG?

1) A correlation coefficient of .01 between two tests indicates a weak association.
2) Pearson’s correlation coefficient can range from 0 to l.
3) The square root of the variance as a measure of dispersion is always the standard
deviation.
4) ANOVA and the difference of means test is typically used whenever the independent
variable is nominal and the dependent one is interval or ratio.
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Answer: 2
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Explanation:
Pearson’s correlation coefficient ranges –1 to l.
Ary et al (2014, pp. 129, 683) define standard deviation as a measure of the extent to which
individual scores deviate from the mean of the distribution; as the square root of the variance;
and a measure of dispersion used with interval data.
For explanation regarding choice (1), refer to Year 94, Item 49; and Year 97, Item 53.
For explanation regarding choice (2), refer to Year 96, Item 48.
For explanation regarding choice (4), refer to Year 91, Items 53, and 56; Year 92, Item 34;
Year 93, Item 43; Year 94, Items 52 and 59; Year 97, Item 54.
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56- The time it takes the participants to take a test is approximately normal with a mean
of 70 minutes and a standard deviation of 10 minutes. Using the 68%, 95% and
99.70% rule, what percentage of students will complete the exam in less than an hour?
1) 5%
2) 16%
3) 32%
4) 68%
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Answer: 2
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Explanation:
As indicated in the test item above, we are dealing with a normal distribution. In a normal
distribution with “the 68%, 95% and 99.70% rule”, the following percentages of data lie
between each depicted zone:
2.2% 2.2%
.2% 13.6% 34% 34% 13.6% .2%
–4 –3 –2 –1 0 1 2 3 4
–1 = 60 X̅ = 70
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.2 + 2.2 + 13.6 = 16%
The test asks “what percentage of students will complete the exam in less than an hour?” It is
given that the mean is 70 minutes, and each standard deviation is 10 minutes. So, one standard
deviation below the mean is 60 minutes. To calculate the percentage of students who will
complete the exam in less than an hour, we add up the percentages below -1 standard deviation
and end up with 16%.
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57- In order to assess the students’ opinion at a university on indoor smoking, a reporter
interviews the first 20 students he meets who are willing to express their opinion. The
method of sampling used is --------.
1) clustered sampling
2) stratified sampling
3) convenience sampling
4) simple random sampling
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
For explanation and similar items, refer to Year 91, Item 60; Year 96, Item 51.
For a more complete classification of probability and non-probability sampling, refer to Cohen
et al. (2011, pp. 153-163).
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 See also: Ary et al. (2014, pp. 163-170); Cohen et al. (2007, pp. 110-117; 2011, pp. 153-
163); Dörnyei (2007, pp. 97-99)
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58- Which of the following is NOT true regarding a normal distribution?

1) Normal distributions are defined by two parameters, the mean and the standard
deviation.
2) 68% of the area of a normal distribution is within one standard deviation of the mean.
3) The area under the normal curve is equal to 1.0.
4) Normal distributions are less dense in the center and denser in the tails.
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Properties of the normal distribution
A normal distribution possesses the following properties:
1. It is bell shaped (unimodal).
2. It requires two parameters for complete definition of the curve, viz.: its mean, which
determines its location along the horizontal axis — its standard deviation, which
determines its ‘width’, as shown in the figure below.
3. It is symmetrical around the mean (i.e. the same shape below an above the mean).
4. Its mean, median and mode values coincide. The mean, median, and mode of a normal
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distribution are equal.
5. It is denser in the center and less dense in the tails
6. It is asymptotic: the tails never touch the vertical axis.
7. The area under the normal curve is equal to 1.0 (and 100% if multiplied by 100). That
is, the area under the distribution curve represents probability, such that:
— about 68.3% of values are within one standard deviation of the mean
— about 95.4% of values are within two standard deviations of the mean
— about 99.7% of values are within three standard deviations of the mean
8. It follows from the preceding point that there is a decreasing chance of values occurring
at increasing distance from the mean, such that:
— about 32 % of values are more than one standard deviation from the mean (i.e. 13.6
+ 13.6 + 2.2. + 2.2 + .2 + .2)
— about 4.8% of values are more than two standard deviations from the mean
— about 0.4% of values are more than three standard deviations from the mean
715
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 See also: Campbell and Swinscow (2002, p. 14); Sim and Wright (2000, p. 191)
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59- This is an incomplete reference. The edition and the place of publication are missing.
Choose the correctly punctuated format for the missing information from the choices
below.
McMillan, A. & Cleave, J. (2011). Community and wellness: Primary healthcare in
practice edition place Elsevier.
1) (4th ed.). Chatswood, Australia
2) 4th edition, Chatswood, Australia:
3) 4th ed. Chatswood, Australia
4) (4th ed.). Chatswood, Australia:
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Citing an Edition of a Book in APA Style
When citing an edition of a book in APA Style, use the following template:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of book (xx ed.). Location: Publisher.
Research
Example:
Smith, P. (2012). Cut to the chase: Online video editing and the Wadsworth constant (3rd
ed.). Washington, DC: E & K Publishing.
For a similar item, refer to Year 96, Item 56; and Year 97, Item 59
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 See also: American Psychological Association (2010, pp. 180, 203)
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60- There are different types of quantitative research designs including all the following
EXCEPT for:
1) descriptive
2) narrative
3) correlational
4) quasi-experimental
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
716
Major research types
Quantitative Qualitative
A. Experimental research 1) Basic interpretative studies
1) True-experimental 2) Case studies
2) Quasi- or semi-experimental 3) Content analysis
3) Pre-experimental 4) Ethnography
5) Grounded theory
B. Non-experimental research 6) Historical research
1) Survey (or descriptive) 7) Narrative inquiry
2) Correlational 8) Phenomenological studies
3) Ex post facto
For explanation see the table in Year 98, Item 50.

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Research
717
61- Which of the following is a feature of consciousness-raising activities?

1) The learners are required to produce sentences containing the targeted feature.
2) The learners will be provided with opportunities for repetition of the targeted feature.
3) The learners are expected to utilize intellectual effort to understand the targeted
feature.
4) The learners receive feedback on whether their performance of the targeted feature is
correct or not.
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Consciousness-raising, as used by Larsen-Freeman, involves an attempt to equip the learner
with an understanding of a specific grammatical feature – to develop declarative rather than
procedural knowledge of it. The main characteristics of consciousness-raising activities are the
following:
1. There is an attempt to isolate a specific linguistic feature for focused attention.
2. The learners are provided with data which illustrate the targeted feature and they may
also be supplied with an explicit rule describing or explaining the feature.
3. The learners are expected to utilize intellectual effort to understand the targeted feature.
4. Misunderstanding or incomplete understanding of the grammatical structure by the
learners leads to clarification in the form of further data and description or explanation.
5. Learners may be required (although this is not obligatory) to articulate the rule describing
the grammatical structure.
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62- Research findings show that bilingual teachers often use the students’ L1 to ensure
all of the following EXCEPT -----------.
1) providing background information to explain cultural terms
2) bringing about desired changes in the curriculum
3) explaining difficult vocabulary and grammar
4) highlighting important information
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Research on classroom code-switching demonstrates why teachers use the Ll. Liu, Ahn, Back,
and Han (2004), for example, found that the Korean high school teachers they observed used
Korean for the following purposes:
1. To explain difficult vocabulary and grammar
2. To provide background information to explain cultural terms
3. To save time
4. To highlight important information
5. To manage students’ behavior
718
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 See also: Mckay and Brown (2015, p. 34)
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63- According to Nation, which four strands should a well-balanced language course
provide?
1) Vocabulary development, corrective feedback, grammar work, and language functions
2) Meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, grammar work, and language
functions
3) Meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning, and
corrective feedback
4) Meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning, and
fluency development
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Opportunities to focus on both meaning and form
Some word learning requires explicit attention, while other learning takes place incidentally
when learners are engaged in meaningful interaction. Learners need opportunities to focus on
both meaning and form, and they need opportunities to produce the word. I. S. P. Nation
proposes what he calls “the four strands,” which include a balance between meaning and form:
(1) focusing on meaning-focused input; (2) focusing on meaning-focused output; (3) focusing
on language-focused learning; and (4) focusing on fluency development. This approach
highlights the importance of providing a balanced variety of opportunities for learners to
produce the word and to focus on both form and meaning.
For more explanation and a similar item, refer to Year 94, Item 66; and Year 95, Item 20.
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 See also: Celce-Murcia et al. (2014, p. 292); Nation and Macalister (2010, pp. 90-93)
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64- Which of the following are the most common methodologies for form-focused
materials?
1) Teach-test-teach, content and language integrated learning, and whole language learning
2) Whole language learning, task-based language teaching, and presentation- practice-
production
3) Task-based language teaching, content and language integrated learning, and text-driven
approaches
4) Task-based language teaching, content and language integrated learning, and
presentation-practice-production
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Should Materials be Forms Focused or Form Focused?
Forms-focused materials are those that focus on teaching a predetermined language item or
language feature. Typically, the teaching point is selected from a prescribed syllabus which has
719
been developed for a particular type or level of learner and it is taught to the learners explicitly
through exemplification, generalization, controlled practice, guided practice, and elicited
production. The theory is that, by isolating the teaching point, the learners are being helped to
focus, by providing so much concentrated experience the teaching point is being made salient
and by gradually increasing the difficulty the learners are being helped to learn. In our
experience, most L2 classrooms around the world still feature forms-focused teaching and most
L2 coursebooks feature it too. For example, we have just taken the first coursebook we came
to in our bookcase, English unlimited pre-intermediate (Tilbury, Clementson, Henra, & Rea,
2010).The table of contents specifies the vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation points for
each unit together with goals, skills and “Explore” activities, which are connected with these
points. For example, the grammar points for Unit 1 are “present simple, past simple, present
progressive,” the vocabulary points are related to music, deciding what to do, sports, exercises,
and interests, and the pronunciation point is word stress. The activities are interestingly
personalized but they all focus on one or more of the teaching points, they are mainly practice
activities, and none of them involve contextual communication in order to achieve an outcome.
Form-focused materials pay attention primarily to meaning and use. Their texts and
activities are chosen for their potential to engage the learners and not to illustrate or provide
practice in any particular language item or feature. The learners focus on understanding the
meaning of texts and on communicating meaning to others and in doing so they experience a
variety of language items and features. Although their focus is on meaning, the students will
pay some attention to form either when they are having problems understanding or
communicating meaning or when attention is subsequently drawn to a particular form by the
materials or their teacher. While PPP (presentation, practice, production) is the most
common methodology in forms-focused materials and in most coursebooks, task-based
language teaching (TBLT), text-driven approaches and content, and language integrated
learning (CLIL) are typical methodologies for form-focused materials. Task-based
language teaching provides the learners with a task requiring the achievement of an effective
outcome. Text-driven approaches provide the learners with a potentially engaging text to
respond to. Content, and language integrated learning provides the learners with experience of

and/or instruction about a content subject (e.g. physics, football, ballet). All three of these
approaches are form focused because they concentrate on the creation and understanding of
meaning but also encourage attention to form when this could help or interest the learners.
Although form-focused approaches (and the three methodologies mentioned above) are
advocated by many researchers, very few coursebooks make use of them.
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 See also: Tomlinson and Masuhara (2018, pp. 33-34)
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65- The main types of planning in task-based language teaching are -----------.
1) pre-task planning and rehearsal
2) pre-task and within-task planning
3) pre-task planning and strategic planning
4) within-task planning and strategic planning
Answer: 2
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720
Explanation:
Principal types of task planning
Figure 1 distinguishes two principal types of task-based planning – pre-task planning and
within-task planning. These are distinguished simply in terms of when the planning takes place
– either before the task is performed or during its performance.
Pre-task planning is further divided into rehearsal and strategic planning. Rehearsal
entails providing learners with an opportunity to perform the task before the ‘main
performance’. In other words, it involves task repetition with the first performance of the task
viewed as a preparation for a subsequent performance. Strategic planning entails learners
preparing to perform the task by considering the content they will need to encode and how to
express this content. In pre-task planning, the learners have access to the actual task materials.
It is this that distinguishes strategic planning from other types of pre-task activity (e.g.
brainstorming content; studying a model performance of the task; dictionary search).
Within-task planning can be differentiated according to the extent to which the task
performance is pressured or unpressured. This can be achieved most easily by manipulating
the time made available to the learners for the on-line planning of what to say/write in a task
performance. In an unpressured performance learners can engage in careful on-line planning
resulting in what Ochs (1979) has called ‘planned language use’. In pressured performance
learners will need to engage in rapid planning resulting in what Ochs calls ‘unplanned language
use’ (although, of course, all language use involves some level of planning). Ochs documents
a number of linguistic differences between the two types of discourse. For example, unplanned
discourse tends to manifest non-standard forms acquired early whereas planned discourse
contains more complex, target-like forms.
Figure 1. Types of task-based planning
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 See also: Ellis (2005, pp. 3-4)
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721
66- Which of the following statements is correct about grammar teaching?

1) Intensive grammar teaching refers to instruction over a sustained period of time
concerning a single grammatical structure, while extensive grammar teaching refers to
instruction concerning a whole range of structures within a short period of time.
2) Extensive grammar teaching refers to instruction over a sustained period of time
concerning a single grammatical structure, while intensive grammar teaching refers to
3) Intensive grammar teaching refers to instruction over a sustained period of time
concerning a single grammatical structure, while output-based grammar teaching refers
to instruction concerning a whole range of structures within a short period of time.
4) Extensive grammar teaching refers to instruction over a sustained period of time
concerning a single grammatical structure, while distributed grammar teaching refers to
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
A focus on grammar
Grammar concerns how words connect to each other in a sentence in ways that make sense. In
grammar research, explicit and implicit knowledge is often referred to, and both dimensions
relate to linguistic knowledge, but they are separate constructs (Ellis, 2005). As Ellis (2006)
points out,
Explicit knowledge consists of the facts that speakers of language have learned. These facts
are often not clearly understood and may be in conflict with each other. They concern
different aspects of language including grammar. Explicit knowledge is held consciously,
is learnable and verbalisable, and is typically accessed through controlled processing when
learners experience some kind of linguistic difficulty in using the L2. In contrast, implicit
knowledge is procedural, is held unconsciously, and can only be verbalized if it is made
explicit. It is accessed rapidly and easily and thus is available for use in rapid, fluent

communication. Most SLA researchers agree that competence in an L 2 is primarily a
matter of implicit knowledge. (p. 95)
Traditionally, grammar teaching has been defined with an overly narrow scope as the
presentation and practice of discrete grammatical structures. However, grammar teaching is
more complex than that and does not necessarily involve presentation or practice. Ellis (2006)
offers a broad view on grammar teaching, stating that it
involves any instructional technique that draws learners’ attention to some specific
grammatical form in such a way that it helps them either to understand it
metalinguistically and/or process it in comprehension and/or production so that they can
internalize it. (p. 84)
The current trend of learning grammar is one that combines form, meaning and functions
(Larsen-Freeman, 1991). These three dimensions interact and should be considered together in
teaching. That is, learning grammar perhaps should focus on not only mastering the rules but
also considering the meanings and function of these rules in communication where social
factors are important. Understanding intended meanings in a social context has more to do with
the pragmatic awareness of a learner than with grammatical competence. So when we focus on
grammar teaching, we do not just help learners to develop their grammatical competence or the
722
accuracy of structure, including morphology and syntax; we also need to address pragmatics —
the appropriateness of language use in a given situation. Clearly, grammatical development
does not guarantee a corresponding level of pragmatic development, and there is no direct link
between grammatical competence and pragmatic competence.
Research suggests that instructed learning is beneficial for grammar acquisition, but in
order to be effective, grammar should be taught in a manner that is compatible with the natural
processes of acquisition (e.g. Long, 1988). Grammar can either be taught intensively or
extensively.
Ellis (2001) considered three broad types of form-focused instruction, namely ‘Focus on
forms’, ‘Planned focus on form’ and ‘Incidental focus on form’. Ellis (2006) outlined the
differences of these three types of instructions as follows:
 Focus on form: refers to instruction involving a structure-of-the-day approach, and the
primary focus of learning is on form (i.e. accuracy) and the activities are directed
intensively at a single grammatical structure.
 Planned Focus on form entails a focus on meaning with attention to form arising out of
the communicative activity. This focus is planned so as a predetermined grammatical
structure can be elicited.
 Incidental focus on form means that attention to form in the context of a communicative
activity is not predetermined but rather occurs in accordance with the participants’
linguistic needs as the activity proceeds.
There is some theoretical disagreement regarding which of these types of instruction is most
effective in developing implicit knowledge. Whereas some believe that focus on form is more
beneficial and effective because learners are involved in meaningful communication (e.g. Long,
1988, 1991; Doughty, 2001), others argue that a focus-on-forms approach is more effective and
appropriate (e.g. DeKeyser, 1998).
Intensive grammar teaching refers to instruction over a sustained period of time (which
could be a lesson or a series of lessons covering days or weeks) concerning a single

grammatical structure or, perhaps, a pair of contrasted structures (e.g., English past
continuous vs. past simple).
Extensive grammar teaching refers to instruction concerning a whole range of structures

within a short period of time (e.g., a lesson) so that each structure receives only minimal
attention in any one lesson (Ellis, 2006).
It is important to note that in both vocabulary and grammar teaching, the use and function of
the language and its related context are emphasized. This view is in line with a sociocultural
perspective of language learning. However, vocabulary and grammar teaching and learning are
also highly influenced by other theories, such as cognitive learning theory, which emphasizes
the importance of the cognitive level of knowledge acquisition through enhancing a learner’s
noticing ‘form’ and by providing opportunities for practice.
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 See also: Li (2017, p. 113-115)
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723
67- Which of the following shows the interface position?

1) Implicit knowledge can convert into explicit knowledge if the learner is ready to acquire
the targeted feature.
2) Explicit knowledge becomes implicit knowledge if learners have the opportunity for
plentiful communicative practice.
3) Explicit and implicit knowledge are entirely distinct with the result that explicit
knowledge cannot be converted into implicit knowledge.
4) Implicit knowledge of a grammatical structure makes it more likely that learners will
attend to the structure in the input and carry out the cognitive comparison between what
they observe in the input and their own output.
Answer: 2
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Explanation:
The interface hypothesis addresses whether explicit knowledge plays a role in L2

acquisition. Three positions can be identified.
1. According to the non-interface position (Krashen 1981), explicit and implicit knowledge
are entirely distinct with the result that explicit knowledge cannot be converted into
implicit knowledge. This position is supported by research that suggests that explicit and
implicit memories are neurologically separate (Paradis 1994).
2. The Interface position argues the exact opposite. Drawing on skill-learning theory
(DeKeyser 1998), it argues that explicit knowledge becomes implicit knowledge if
learners have the opportunity for plentiful communicative practice.
3. The weak Interface position (Ellis 1993) claims that explicit knowledge primes a
number of key acquisitional processes, In particular ‘noticing’ and ‘noticing the gap’
(Schmidt 1994). That IS, explicit knowledge of a grammatical structure makes it more
likely learners will attend to the structure in the Input and carry out the cognitive
comparison between what they observe in the input and their own output. These positions

continue to be argued at a theoretical level.
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68- All of the following are characteristics of learning objectives EXCEPT they---------.
1) can be interpreted in many different ways
2) provide a basis for the organization of teaching activities
3) describe learning in terms of observable behavior or performance
4) describe what the aim seeks to achieve in terms of smaller units of learning
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Stating curriculum outcomes
Aims
In curriculum discussions, the terms goal and aim are used interchangeably to refer to a
description of the general purposes of a curriculum and objective to refer to a more specific and
concrete description of purposes. We will use the terms aim and objective here. An aim refers
724
to a statement of a general change that a program seeks to bring about in learners. The purposes
of aim statements are:
 to provide a clear definition of the purposes of a program
 to provide guidelines for teachers, learners, and materials writers
 to help provide a focus for instruction
 to describe important and realizable changes in learning
Aims statements reflect the ideology of the curriculum and show how the curriculum will
seek to realize it.
Objectives
Aims are very general statements of the goals of a program. They can be interpreted in
many different ways. For example, consider the following aim statement:
Students will learn how to write effective business letters for use in the hotel and
tourism industries.
Although this provides a clear description of the focus of a program, it does not describe the
kinds of business letters students will learn or clarify what is meant by effective business letters.
In order to give a more precise focus to program goals, aims are often accompanied by
statements of more specific purposes. These are known as objectives. (They are also sometimes
referred to as instructional objectives or teaching objectives. An objective refers to a statement
of specific changes a program seeks to bring about and results from an analysis of the aim into
its different components. Objectives generally have the following characteristics:
 They describe what the aim seeks to achieve in terms of smaller units of learning.
 They provide a basis for the organization of teaching activities.
 They describe learning in terms of observable behavior or performance.
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 See also: Richards (2001, p. 123)
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69- According to the principle of expanding rehearsal, learners should review new
material ----------.
1) a rather long time after the initial encounter, and then at gradually increasing intervals
2) a rather long time after the initial encounter, and then expand the learning intervals
3) soon after the initial encounter, and then at gradually increasing intervals
4) soon after the initial encounter, and then at gradually decreasing intervals
Answer: 3
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Explanation:
Vocabulary Learning Requires Consolidation
We have seen the recycling of vocabulary is essential to learning. However, consolidating
previously met vocabulary entails more than just recycling. It is also important how the students
revise their vocabulary. The way human memory works plays a part in this, particularly how
the mind forgets information. It seems that when learning new information, most forgetting
occurs soon after the end of the learning session. After that major loss, the rate of forgetting
decreases (Figure 1).
725
By understanding the nature of forgetting, it is possible to organize a recycling program

which will be more efficient. The forgetting curve in Figure 1 indicates that it is critical to have
a review session soon after the learning session, but less essential as time goes on. The principle
of expanding rehearsal was derived from this insight, which suggests that learners review new
material soon after the initial meeting and then at gradually increasing intervals (Baddeley,
1990; Pimsleur, 1967). One explicit memory schedule proposes reviews 5–10 min after the end
of the study period, 24 h later, one week later, one month later and finally six months later
(Russell, 1979). In this way, the forgetting is minimized (Figure 2). Students can use the
principle of expanding rehearsal to individualize their learning. They should test themselves on
new words they have studied. If they can remember them, they should increase the interval
before the next review, but if they cannot, they should shorten the interval.
Figure 1. Typical pattern of forgetting (Schmitt, 2000: 131)

Figure 2. Pattern of forgetting with expanding rehearsal (Schmitt, 2000: 131)
Landauer and Bjork (1978) combined the principle of expanding practice with research results
demonstrating that the greater the interval between presentations of a target item, the greater
the chances it would be subsequently recalled. From this, they suggest that the ideal practice
interval is the longest period that a learner can go without forgetting a word. Research by
Schouten-van Parreren (1991) shows that some easier words may be overlearned (in the sense
that more time is devoted to them than necessary), while more difficult abstract words are often
underlearned. A practice schedule based on the expanding rehearsal principle may help in
avoiding this problem.
Another memory-based technique is attaching ‘new’ knowledge to established knowledge.
The main way of doing this is by finding some preexisting information in the long-term memory
726
to ‘attach’ the new information to. In the case of vocabulary, it means finding some element
already in the mental lexicon to relate the new lexical information to. This can be done in
various ways. One is through imaging techniques like the Keyword Approach. Another is
through grouping a new word with already-known words which are similar in some respect.
The new word can be placed with words with a similar meaning (prank: trick, joke, jest), a
similar sound structure (prank, tank, sank, rank), the same beginning letters (prank: pray,
pretty, prod), the same word class (prank: cow, greed, distance), or other grouping parameter,
although by far the most common must be meaning similarity. Since the ‘old’ words are already
fixed in the mind, relating the new words to them provides a ‘hook’ to remember them by so
they will not be forgotten. New words which do not have this connection are much more prone
to forgetting.
Although grouping can work well when attaching new information to established
knowledge, it does not work well when simultaneously introducing new information which is
similar in some way. In fact, if two or more similar words are initially taught together, it might
actually make them more difficult to learn. This is because students learn the word forms and
learn the meanings, but confuse which goes with which (cross association). As a beginning
teacher I often confused my students in this way by teaching left and right together in the same
class. After extensive drilling, I would ask the students at the end of the class to raise their left
hands. To my consternation, a large number always raised their right. The problem was that the
words were too similar, with all the semantic features being the same except for ‘direction’.
Research shows that cross association is a genuine problem for learners (Higa, 1963; Tinkham,
1993; Waring, 1997), with Nation (1990) suggesting that about 25% of similar words taught
together are typically cross associated. Antonyms are particularly prone to cross association,
because they tend to come in pairs like deep/shallow or rich/poor, but synonyms and other
words from closely related semantic groupings (e.g. days of the week, numbers, foods, clothing)
are also at risk. Nation (1990) suggests the way to avoid cross association is to teach the most
frequent or useful word of a pair first (e.g. deep), and only after it is well established introducing
its partner(s) (e.g. shallow).
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 See also: Schmitt (2000, pp. 129-132)
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70- Based on the beginner’s paradox, one wonders how beginners can ---------------.
1) read fluently while they have not mastered the General Service List (GSL)
2) read intensively while they have not mastered a minimum of about 3,000 words
3) learn enough words to learn vocabulary through intensive reading while they do not
know enough words to read well
4) learn enough words to learn vocabulary through extensive reading while they do not
know enough words to read well
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Principle 3: Provide Opportunities for the Intentional Learning of Vocabulary

The incidental learning of vocabulary may eventually account for a majority of advanced
learners’ vocabulary; however, intentional learning through instruction also significantly
contributes to vocabulary development (Nation, 1990; Paribakht & Wesche, 1996; Zimmerman,
727
1997). Explicit instruction is essential for beginning students whose lack of vocabulary limits
their reading ability. Coady (1997b) calls this the beginner’s paradox. He wonders how
beginners can “learn enough words to learn vocabulary through extensive reading when
they do not know enough words to read well” (p. 229). His solution is to have students
supplement their extensive reading with study of the 3,000 most frequent words until the words’
form and meaning become automatically recognized (i.e., “sight vocabulary”). The first stage
in teaching these 3,000 words commonly begins with word pairs in which an L2 word is
matched with an L1 translation.
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 See also: Celce-Murcia et al. (2014, p. 291); Richards and Renandya (2002, p. 260)
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71- All of the following are TRUE about bilingualized dictionaries EXCEPT they --------.
1) can be used only by beginners
2) include L2 definitions and L2 sentence examples
3) do the job of both a bilingual and a monolingual dictionary
4) are found to result in better comprehension of new words than bilingual or monolingual
dictionaries
Answer: 1
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Explanation:
Bilingualized dictionaries may have some advantages over traditional bilingual or monolingual
dictionaries. Bilingualized dictionaries essentially do the job of both a bilingual and a
monolingual dictionary. Whereas bilingual dictionaries usually provide just an L1 synonym,
bilingualized dictionaries include L2 definitions, L2 sentence examples, as well as L1
synonyms. Bilingualized dictionaries were found to result in better comprehension of new
words than either bilingual or monolingual dictionaries (Laufer & Hader, 1997). A further
advantage is that they can be used by all levels of learners: Advanced students can concentrate

on the English part of the entry, and beginners can use the translation. For beginners, teachers
may want to examine the bilingualized Longman-Mitsumura English-Japanese Dictionary for
Young Learners (1993), which includes Japanese translations, definitions, and examples.
Currently, neither Collins COBUILD, Longman, nor Oxford (all publishers with access to
large, updated computerized English language databases) has bilingualized dictionaries for
intermediate and advanced learners.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------
72- Which of the following questions is a syllabus designer for a writing course likely to
ask as a part of doing Present Situation Analysis?
1) How do learners learn?
2) Why does the learner need to write?
3) Where will the learner use the language?
4) Who will the learner use the language with?
Answer: 1
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728
Explanation:
Analyzing student needs
Designing an L2 writing syllabus starts with the question "Why are these students learning to
write?" When preparing a course for adolescents in schools or for adults in English for General
Purposes (EGP) contexts, it may be difficult to identify the eventual needs of learners, but
gathering what information we can about students is essential to making a course as effective
as possible. The term needs analysis is used to refer to the techniques for collecting and
assessing this kind of information: the means of establishing the how and what of a course. It is
a continuous process since we modify our teaching to better accommodate our students as we
come to learn more about them. In this way needs analysis actually shades into evaluation the
means of establishing course effectiveness.
What are needs?

Needs is actually an umbrella term that embraces many aspects: What are learners’ goals,
backgrounds, and abilities? What are their language proficiencies? Why are they taking this
course? What kinds of teaching do they prefer? What situations will they need to write in? How
are writing knowledge and skills used in these situations? Needs can be perceived objectively
by teachers or subjectively by learners, can involve what learners know, don’t know, or want
to know, and can be analyzed in a variety of ways (e.g., Brown, 1995).
Once again, needs analysis is not unique to language teaching. It is used widely in corporate
training and aid development programs worldwide as a basis for securing funding and
credibility by linking proposals to genuine needs (e.g., Pratt, 1980). In education contexts, needs
analysis emerged in the 1960s through the ESP movement as the demand for specialized
language programs expanded and, in North America, as the "behavioral objectives" movement
sought to measure all goals with convincing precision and accountability (Berwick, 1989).
Today, needs analysis is a form of educational technology represented in a range of research
methodologies which can be applied before, during, or after a language course.
Despite this apparently straightforward description, needs are not always easy to determine

and can refer to students’ Immediate language skills or future goals, the requirements of
employers, institutions, or exam bodies, or the visions of government organizations acting for
the wider society. While needs are often seen as the gap between current and target needs (often
called "lacks"), this gives a misleading objectivity to the process, suggesting that teachers
simply need to identify and address an existing situation. In reality, needs reflect judgments and
values and as a result are likely to be defined differently by different stakeholders with school
administrators, government departments, parents, employers, teachers, and learners themselves
having different views (Richards, 2001: 54). Teachers construct a picture of what learners need
from a course through their analyses, bringing to bear their values, beliefs, and philosophies of
teaching and learning.
To simplify this, we can distinguish between present situation analysis and target situation
analysis (cf. Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998):
 Present situation analysis refers to Information about learners’ current abilities,
familiarity with writing processes and written genres, their skills and perceptions; what
they are able to do and what they want at the beginning of the course. Data can therefore
be both objective (age, proficiency, prior learning experiences) and subjective (se f-
perceived needs, strengths, and weaknesses).
729
 Target situation analysis concerns the learner’s future roles and the linguistic skills and
knowledge required to perform competently in writing in a target context. This involves
mainly objective and product-oriented data: identifying the contexts of language use,
observing the language events in these contexts, listing the genres employed, collecting
and analyzing target genres.
Present Situation Analysis Target Situation Analysis

Why are learners taking the writing Why does the learner need to write?
course?  study, work, exam, promotion, etc.
 compulsory or optional
 whether obvious need exists What genres will be used?
 personal/professional goals  lab reports, essays, memos, letters, etc.
 motivation and attitude
 what they want to learn from the What is the typical structure of these
course genres?
What will the content areas be?
How do learners learn?  academic subject, professional area,
 learning background & experiences personal interest, secondary school,
 concept of teaching & learning craftsman, managerial
 methodological & materials
preferences Who will the learner use the language
 preferred learning styles & strategies with?
 native or nonnative speakers
Who are the learners?  reader’s knowledge — expert, layman,
 age / sex / nationality / L1 etc.
 subject knowledge  relationship — colleague, client, teacher,
 interests subordinate, superior
 sociocultural background
Where will the learner use the language?
 attitudes to target culture

 physical setting: office, school, hotel
What do learners know about writing?  linguistic context: overseas, home
country
 L1 and L2 literacy abilities
 human context: known/unknown readers
 proficiency in English
 writing experiences and genre
familiarity
 orthography
Source: After Hutchinson and Waters (1987, pp. 62-63)
Figure 1: A framework for needs analysis.
Figure 1 summarizes the Information that the syllabus designer needs to gather about both the
present and target situations in the form of general questions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Hutchinson and Waters (1987, pp. 62-63); Hyland (2003, p. 60)
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730
73- All of the following statements about English as a lingua franca (ELF) are correct
EXCEPT ------------.
1) l) using native-speaker norms is questionable
2) the description and codification of ELF are necessary
3) language variation is pervasive in all different communities of use
4) the need to examine the attitudinal and linguistic implications of the global spread of
English is not urgent
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Seidlhofer (2004) makes the following four statements with respect to ELF:
1. Using native-speaker norms is questionable.
2. Language variation is pervasive in all different communities of use.
3. The need to examine the attitudinal and linguistic implications of the global spread of
English is urgent.
4. The description and codification of ELF are needed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
74- Which of the following are examples of metacognitive listening activities?

1) l) Listening diaries — listening and evaluating
2) Listening diaries — process-based discussions
3) Describing and drawing — simulating and discussing
4) Self-directed listening guide — listening and evaluating
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Explanation:
Incorporating metacognitive activities
Although listening tasks provide learners with valuable listening practice, the learners’
experience is not complete without opportunities to step back from the activities to think about
their learning. These opportunities are found in the use of metacognitive activities before,
during, or after listening, as well as at appropriate times during a language course. By
incorporating metacognitive activities into task-based instruction, teachers can develop
learners’ knowledge about ESL/EFL listening processes and the contribution they themselves
can make to enhance the comprehension and learning process.
Metacognition is our ability to think about our own thinking and learning (Flavell, 1979).
It enables us to move away from doing an activity to analyzing the way we do it, and it is central
to the learning process (Alexander, 2008; Borkowski, 1996). Metacognition plays a key role in
language learning as it enables learners to plan, monitor, and evaluate how they process
information in a new language; it also directs the way they do it (Wenden, 1991). The role of
metacognition is crucial to the development of second and foreign language listening because
listening comprehension, as a largely hidden process that happens inside the head of the
learners, cannot be modified or corrected unless these processes are made visible.
Not only are teachers unable to observe learners’ development and the problems the
learners face; the learners themselves are often unclear about how they listen because they
quickly forget the processes that they engage in unless there are opportunities for them to reflect
731
on these processes, document them, and learn from these reflections. Metacognitive activities
in class can raise learners’ awareness of the processes of comprehension, encourage them to
adopt appropriate strategies and skills and to evaluate and improve their learning processes.
Through metacognitive instruction, learners become more self-directed knowing what to do to
develop their listening) and self-regulated (knowing how to manage challenges and
opportunities). Metacognitive activities in the listening classroom can include the use of one or
more of the following:
 Self-directed listening guide. This is a set of questions and prompts that learners respond
to before and after they listen to materials selected for individual listening practice.
 Listening diaries. Entries are made into a journal or specially prepared reflection sheets
that learners complete individually by answering what, when, how, why, and who questions
about a specific listening event.
 Process-based discussions. Students are given prompts similar to the ones for listening
diaries. They can also be specific ones that refer to the listening skills that the lesson aimed
to develop. Learners form pairs or small groups to discuss how they have approached a
listening task and their goals, comprehension, achievement, problems, and strategies.
 Self-report checklist. Learners have a set of checklist questions that they consider at the
end of every listening lesson. They can also include short comments.
Figure 1. Metacognitive instruction in listening (Goh, 2010, p. 187)
732
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 See also: Celce-Murcia et al. (2014, pp. 81-83); Richards (2010, p. 187)
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75- Which of the following lesson types is created moment by moment in class in response
to questions, problems and options as they come up in class?
1) Rag-bag
2) Logical line
3) Jungle path
4) Topic umbrella
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Planning is a thinking skill
Before you go into a lesson, it helps to be clear about what you want to do. A lot is going to
happen on the spot in the class — you can’t ever completely predict how learners will respond
to anything — but the better prepared you are, the more likely it is that you will be ready to
cope with whatever happens. It is possible to teach (very good lessons sometimes) without any
pre-planning, but planning increases the number of your options — and in doing so, increases
your chances of a successful lesson.
A written plan is evidence that you have done that thinking. It can also serve as a useful in-
lesson reminder to you of your pre-lesson thoughts. Beyond that, however, it is not holy writ.
It is not set in concrete. As a general rule: Prepare thoroughly. But in class, teach the
learners, not the plan. What this means is that you should be prepared to respond to the
learners and adapt what you have planned as you go, even to the extent of throwing the plan
away if appropriate.
Planning lessons and courses

1. Formal lesson planning
2. Alternatives to formal planning
1. Formal lesson planning

On teacher training courses, trainees are often expected to produce a written lesson plan for
each lesson taught. This is not because teachers in the real world always do this for every
lesson, but as:
 training in ‘planning-thinking’;
 evidence to your tutors that you have thought about the lesson;
 a chance for trainers to understand your thinking and find out how to help you better if
things go wrong In the actual lesson.
Formal plans often divide into three distinct sections:

 background information about the class, the teacher, the materials and the overall aims
of the lesson;
 language analysis of items that will be worked on in class;
 a detailed chronological stage-by-stage description of the intended procedure for the
lesson.
In most formal lesson plans, the following are required.
733
 a clear statement of appropriate aims for the whole lesson;

 a clear list of stages in the lesson, with a description of activities, their aims and
estimated timing;
and, if it is a lesson that includes language system work:

 a list of specific target language items (or a statement about how and when they will
be selected).
2. Alternatives to formal planning

Just because you may have been trained into using ‘traditional’ formal lesson plan formats,
don’t assume that they are the beginning and end of planning. There may be good reasons for
not using a standard ‘aims-plus-procedure’ plan. For example, you may feel:
 you haven’t got the time;
 the lesson methodology you wish to use cannot easily be characterized using this format;
 it doesn’t seem an economic or helpful way of describing a lesson’s way of working;
 it might restrict your freedom to respond to learners in class;
 the lesson content and/or aim will emerge during the class rather than being pre-decided;
 your priority is to create a specific atmosphere, a certain type of rapport, etc.;
 you want to experiment or work on specific aspects of your teaching.
Here are some ideas for other approaches to planning. You may like to choose one or more and
try them when preparing lessons.
a. A brief ‘running order’
b. Flow chart
c. Dream through the lesson
d. Focus on the ‘critical learning moments’
e. Half plan
f. Where’s the meat?
g. Plan the ‘critical teaching moments’
h. Lesson images

i. The jungle path
For explanation of these approaches to lesson planning, see Scrivener (2005, pp. 128-131)
The jungle path

Jim Scrivener (2005) uses a metaphor in his book ‘Learning Teaching’ to describe a certain
kind of lesson as having a ‘jungle path’ structure. In his words: “Most lessons involve you pre-
planning a sequence of activities, predicting what language areas will be worked on, what
problems are likely to arise and what the students may achieve in the lesson. An alternative
approach would be to not predict and prepare so much, but to create the lesson moment by
moment in class, with you and learners working with whatever is happening in the room,
responding to questions, problems and options as they come up, and finding new activities,
materials and tasks in response to particular situations. The starting point might be an activity
or a piece of material, but what comes out of it will remain unknown until it happens. You’re
working more with the people in the room than with your material or your plan”. (p. 131)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Jim Scrivener (2005, p.131)
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734
76- Which skills does the speaking competence include?

1) Phonological, strategic, and extended discourse skills
2) Extended discourse, interactional, and rhetorical skills
3) Phonological, interactional, and speech function skills
4) Genre identification, interactional, and speech function skills
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Speaking competence. For L2 learners to communicate effectively, they must have a reasonable
command of grammar and vocabulary. But this knowledge alone is insufficient. Learners need
to develop a wide range of other skills. Four skill areas of speaking competence are required
for effective communication (Goh, 2007). (See also Goh, this volume.)
l. Phonological skills. Learners need to be able to blend the phonemes of the language they are
learning. In addition, they must use appropriate stress and intonation.
2. Speech function skills. Learners need to achieve specific communicative functions in social
and transactional exchanges, such as agreeing with someone, asking for clarification, or
offering a reason.
3. Interactional skills. In face-to-face exchanges, learners must manage interactions by
regulating turn-taking, redirecting the topic, and negotiating meaning, in addition to initiating,
maintaining, and closing a conversation.
4. Extended discourse skills. Learners must often produce long stretches of uninterrupted
language, and they need to structure what they say so it is easy for others to follow. This requires
the use of established conventions for structuring different kinds of extended spoken language,
such as narrative, procedural, expository, or descriptive discourse.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Celce-Murcia et al., (2014, p. 123)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

77- The four dimensions of method as a construct of marginality are -------------.
1) cultural, economic, political, and social
2) scholastic, linguistic, political, and social
3) linguistic, pragmatic, academic, and cultural
4) scholastic, linguistic, cultural, and economic
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
For explanation and a similar item, see year 1396, Item 85.
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78- Which of the following is an instance of explicit, output-prompting feedback?

1) Repetition
2) Elicitation
3) Didactic recasts
4) Clarification request
735
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
For explanation and a similar item, see Year 91, Items 65, 90, and 98; Year 92, Items 7 and
70; Year 93, Item 13; Year 94, Items 87 and 88; and Year 96, Item 62.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis (2012, pp. 178-181); Ellis (2009); Lyster and Ranta (1997); Mackey
(2007)
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79- Making decisions about what one should teach first and what should come next is an
example of a --------factor in teachers’ decision making.
1) logical internal
2) logical external
3) temporal external
4) temporal internal
Answer: 4
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Explanation:
Reasons for instructional decisions
Some studies have attempted to identify the reasons most commonly cited by practicing
language teachers in explaining their instructional decisions. In Breen (1991), the most
common reason teachers gave for choosing instructional techniques was that they were believed
to engage learners in cognitive processes which facilitated L2 learning. In Gatbonton (1999), a
concern for language management (e.g. explaining vocabulary, creating contexts for
meaningful use) was overall the most common focus of teachers ‘pedagogical thoughts. (The
quantitative analysis in this study yielded the statistic that the two groups of participant teachers
averaged 3.48 and 3.77 pedagogical thoughts per minute respectively.) Nunan (1992), in

contrast with Gatbonton, found that teachers’ comments on their decisions did not reveal a
concern for language (especially in the case of the inexperienced teachers in his study); in this
case, teachers’ concerns related mostly to the pacing and timing of lessons, the quantity of
teacher-talk and the quality of their explanations and instructions. Richards (1996) analyzed
data from a corpus of teacher narratives about their work to suggest that teachers accounted for
their pedagogical choices with reference to maxims (i.e. personal working principles). Similar
principles were reported in the work of Bailey (1996), which I discuss below. The study by
Bartels (1999), grounded in the work of Shulman (1987), was also concerned with the manner
in which teachers realize their lesson plans and in particular with the kinds of knowledge
teachers drew on to do so. His study of 3 EFL teachers in Germany highlighted their use of
three types of knowledge in implementing instruction: knowledge of instructed L2 learning
(e.g. getting students to figure out things for themselves led to more effective learning);
knowledge of students’ interlanguage; and knowledge of curriculum and materials.
Woods (1991, 1996) conducted a longitudinal study of planning and decision-making in
ESL classrooms in Canada which tracked a group of teachers as they went through the process
of planning and teaching their courses. This work provides detailed insight into teachers’
decision-making processes and the factors shaping these. These factors relate not only to
immediate antecedent conditions, but also to influences stemming from teachers’ professional
736
lives as a whole (e.g. their prior language-learning experiences). Woods divides these factors
into two groups, which he labels external and internal.
As an example of the complex range of external (i.e. situational) factors which impact on
the decision-making process, Woods (p. 129) cites the following list which emerged from the
analysis of one teacher’s approach to planning a lesson:
 how many students will probably turn up
 availability of photocopying
 knowledge about students ‘ prior course experience
 a recent conversation with another teacher
 estimation of the complexity of a task estimation of how well the students as a group are
moving
 estimation of what the group can handle
 estimation of how well particular individuals in the class are moving
 estimation of what particular individuals can handle
 class dynamics and individual dynamics in class.
Internal factors relate to temporal and logical relationships among instructional decisions.
Temporally, teachers need to organize instruction chronologically and hence to make
decisions about what comes first, what follows and so on. Logical relationships refer to the
different levels of generality at which planning occurs (e.g. course, lesson, activity, text);
teachers’ decisions are thus also shaped by their understandings of the relationships among
different levels of course units.
Woods’ data also highlighted for him the problems inherent in attempting to distinguish
between constructs such as belief and knowledge. He proposed the notion of BAK (beliefs,
assumptions, knowledge) to reflect his view that, rather than being distinct concepts, beliefs,
assumptions and knowledge are points on a spectrum of meaning.
One obvious difficulty in synthesizing the studies of teachers’ instructional decisions I have
outlined here is that each study utilizes a set of distinct concepts; multiple perspectives have
been brought to bear on the conceptualization of the cognitions underpinning instructional

decision-making and these tend to obscure any substantive overlap which these studies might
have. The distinction between preactive (i.e. planning) and interactive decisions provides a
useful way of separating out different phases of decision-making, but with regard to the latter,
the existence of multiple conceptual frameworks for accounting for the choices teachers make
has hindered the development of research into this issue. What we have, consequently, are
several studies which seemingly fail to build on one another in any structured manner (see,
though, Tsang, 2004, who in a pre-service context does attempt to build on existing concepts
in the study of instructional decision-making).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Borg (2015, pp. 106-108)
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80- Which Input Processing principle holds that learners tend to process items in sentence
initial position before those in final position and those in medial position?
1) The First-Noun Principle
2) The Lexical Semantics Principle
3) The Sentence Location Principle
4) The Lexical Preference Principle
737
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
VanPatten’s theory is concerned with only one of the processes involved in SLA, the initial
process by which learners connect grammatical forms with their meanings as well as how they
interpret the roles of nouns in relationship to verbs. This process is termed input processing (cf.,
Chaudron, 1985). VanPatten indicates that processing is about making form-meaning/function
connections during real time comprehension. It is an on-line phenomenon that takes place in
working memory. Below is discussed the “what” of input processing.
Getting Meaning With the Resources You Have

VanPatten takes as a point of departure the following claims: that during interaction in the L2
(1) learners are focused primarily on the extraction of meaning from the input (e.g., Faerch
& Kasper, 1986; Krashen, 1982),
(2) that learners must somehow “notice” things in the input for acquisition to happen
(Schmidt, 1990 and elsewhere), and that
(3) noticing is constrained by working memory limitations regarding the amount of
information they can hold and process during on line (or real time) computation of
sentences during comprehension (e.g., Just & Carpenter, 1992).
Below, the most basic and overarching principle in input processing are listed:
Principle 1. The Primacy of Meaning Principle. Learners process input for meaning before
they process it for form.
 Principle 1a. The Primacy of Content Words Principle. Learners process content words
in the input before anything else.
 Principle 1b. The Lexical Preference Principle. Learners will tend to rely on lexical
items as opposed to grammatical form to get meaning when both encode the same
semantic information.

 Principle 1c. The Preference for Nonredundancy Principle. Learners are more likely to
process nonredundant meaningful grammatical form before they process redundant
meaningful forms.
 Principle 1d. The Meaning-Before-Nonmeaning Principle. Learners are more likely to
process meaningful grammatical forms before nonmeaninful forms irrespective of
redundancy.
 Principle le. The Availability of Resources Principle. For learners to process either
redundant meaningful grammatical forms or nonmeaningful forms, the processing of
overall sentential meaning must not drain available processing resources.
 Principle 1f. The Sentence Location Principle. Learners tend to process items in
sentence initial position before those in final position and those in medial position.
Principle 2. The First Noun Principle. Learners tend to process the first noun or pronoun they
encounter in a sentence as the subject/agent.
 Principle 2a. The Lexical Semantics Principle. Learners may rely on lexical semantics,
where possible, instead of word order to interpret sentences.
 Principle 2b. The Event Probabilities Principle. Learners may rely on event
probabilities, where possible, instead of word order to interpret sentences.
738
 Principle 2c. The Contextual Constraint Principle. Learners may rely less on the First
Noun Principle if preceding context constrains the possible interpretation of a clause or
sentence.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: VanPatten (2004, p. 14)
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81- Which of the following is NOT true about Complexity Theory?

1) Its genesis lies in the physical sciences.
2) The word "complex" does not mean "complicated."
3) The system is simultaneously interacting with its environment.
4) The word "complex" relates to the emergence of order and structure from the
interactions of components.
Answer: No answer! All choices are true about complexity theory

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Common Misunderstandings
A possible source of confusion is that the genesis of Complexity Theory (CT) lies in the
physical sciences. For this reason, some might find it inapplicable to more human concerns,
such as language development. However, this concern can be put to rest once it is clear that the
explanatory power of the theory extends beyond the physical sciences. Byrne and Callaghan
(2014) assert “that much of the world and most of the social world consists of complex systems
and if we want to understand it we have to understand it in those terms” (p. 8). In its
transdisciplinarity, then, CT is a general framework for understanding, and object theories, such
as a theory of language development, must be consistent with its constructs.
The other, perhaps most prevalent, misunderstanding is that “complex” means

“complicated.” It does not. A complex system may be made up of many heterogeneous
components, but what is of interest is the complex, ordered behavior that arises from their

interactions. In other words, “complex” relates to the emergence of order and structure
from the interactions of components while the system is simultaneously interacting with
its environment.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
82- Which of the following is TRUE about Sociocultural Theory?

1) The ZPD is equivalent to scaffolding.
2) It is grounded in the genetic method.
3) The ZPD is similar to Krashen’s notion of i + 1.
4) It construes language as a cultural tool used to carry out abstract goal-directed activities.
Answer: 2
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Explanation
What Counts as Evidence?
Sociocultural research is grounded in the genetic method, an approach to scientific research
proposed by Vygotsky in which the development of individuals, groups, and processes is traced
739
over time. Consequently, single snapshots of learner performance are not assumed to constitute
adequate evidence of development. Evidence must have a historical perspective. This is not
necessarily an argument for the exclusive use of long-term longitudinal studies. While
development surely occurs over the course of months, years, or even the entire life span of an
individual or group, it may also occur over relatively short periods of time, where learning takes
place during a single interaction between, for example, a parent and child or tutor and student.
Moreover, development arises in the dialogic interaction among individuals (this includes the
self-talk that people engage in when they are trying to bootstrap themselves through difficult
activities such as learning another language) as they collaborate in ZPD activity (Swain et al.,
2009). Evidence of development from this perspective is not limited to the actual linguistic
performance of learners. On the face of it, this performance in itself might not change very
much from one time to another. What may change, however, is the frequency and quality of
mediation needed by a particular learner to perform appropriately in the new language (see also
the following discussion of Dynamic Assessment). On one occasion a learner may respond only
to explicit mediation from a teacher or peer to produce a specific feature of the L2 and on a
later occasion (later in the same interaction or in a future interaction) the individual may only
need a subtle hint to be able to produce the feature. Thus, while nothing has ostensibly changed
in the learner’s actual performance, development has taken place, because the quality of
mediation needed to prompt the performance has changed.
Development within the ZPD is not just about performance per se; it is also about where
the locus of control for that performance resides—in someone else or in learners themselves.
As learners assume greater responsibility for appropriate performances of the L2, they can be
said to have developed, even when they exhibit little in the way of improvement in their overt
performance. This means that evidence of development can be observed at two distinct levels:
overt independent performance and at the level where performance is mediated by someone
else. This second type of evidence will go undetected unless we keep in mind that development
in the ZPD is understood as the difference between what an individual can do independently
and what he or she is able to do with mediation, including changes in mediation over time.
Finally, because SCT construes language as a cultural tool used to carry out concrete goal

directed activities, tasks such as traditional language tests designed to elicit displays of a
learner’s linguistic knowledge offer only limited evidence of development. In sum, evidence of
development in a new language is taken to be changes in control over the new language as a
means of regulating the behavior of the self and of others in carrying out goal-directed activity.
Common Misconceptions about SCT

Because of space limitations, we will focus only on misconceptions that relate to the ZPD,
easily the most widely used and yet least understood of the central concepts of SCT (Chaiklin,
2003). There are two general misconceptions about the ZPD. The first is that the ZPD is
equivalent to scaffolding (or assisted performance) and the second is that it is similar to
Krashen’s notion of i +1 (e.g., Krashen, 1982). Both assumptions are inaccurate.
Scaffolding, a term popularized by Jerome Bruner and his colleagues nearly four decades ago
(Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976), refers to any type of adult–child (expert–novice) assisted
quality, of mediation that is negotiated between expert and novice (Stetsenko, 1999).
With regard to misconceptions about equivalences between ZPD and Krashen’s i + 1, the
fundamental problem is that the ZPD focuses on the nature of the concrete dialogic relationship
740
between expert and novice and its goal of moving the novice toward greater self-regulation
through the new language. Krashen’s concept focuses on language and the language acquisition
device, which is assumed to be the same for all learners with very little room for differential
development (e.g., Dunn & Lantolf, 1998; Thorne, 2000). Krashen’s hypothesis claims that
language develops as a result of learners comprehending input that contains features of the new
language that are “slightly” beyond their current developmental level. As researchers have
pointed out, there is no way of determining precisely the i +1 of any given learner in advance
of development. It can only be assumed after the fact. In terms of the ZPD, development can be
predicted in advance for any given learner on the basis of his or her responsiveness to mediation.
This is what it means to say that what an individual is capable of with mediation at one point in
time, he or she will be able to do without mediation at a future point in time. Moreover, as we
mentioned in our discussion of the ZPD, development is not merely a function of shifts in
linguistic performance, as in the case of Krashen’s model, but is also determined by the type
of, and changes in, mediation negotiated between expert and novice. This principle is illustrated
in the study described in the following section.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: VanPatten and Williams (2015, pp. 207-226)
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83- Teachers can raise students’ awareness of discourse structure at during-reading stage
through all of the following EXCEPT ----------.
1) filling in a graphic organizer
2) highlighting transition words and phrases that signal new sections
3) underlining lexical clues that indicate major organizational patterns
4) reading a teacher-generated summary of the text with irrelevant sentences to be
removed
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:

Raising students’ awareness of discourse structure at during-reading stage. Textbooks do
not often include while-reading activities; thus, teachers must create them to bring text
organization features to students’ conscious attention. Depending on the nature of the text being
read, teachers can ask students to do the following while reading:
 Complete an outline of the text (at one or more points, depending on the length and
nature of the text) that reveals main text units. As part of post-reading discussion,
students can explain what makes each unit identifiable as a separate unit.
 Fill in a graphic organizer (e.g., Venn diagram or time line). As part of the post-
reading discussion, students can explain how the information placed in the graphic
organizer was signaled in the text.
 Underline lexical clues that indicate major organizational patterns (e.g., cause-effect,
comparison-contrast, problem-solution).
 Highlight transition words and phrases that signal new sections (e.g., And finally
used to signal not only continuation but also the last item in a series; conversely used to
signal a contrast). As part of post-reading discussion, students can describe what they
think the phrases and words signal.
 Assign a brief main-idea label to each paragraph (or sets of paragraphs) in the margin.
As part of post-reading discussion, students can compare labels and explore the function
of different paragraphs.
741
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84- Compared to novice writers, expert writers do all of the following EXCEPT ---------.
1) viewing writing as a linear process
2) using a strategy of "knowledge transforming" rather than "knowledge telling"
3) having a greater understanding of the needs and expectations of their audiences
4) spending more time revising their writing for content rather than making small surface
changes
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Considering student background and needs in our approach to writing
The variety of English language learners throughout the world, their linguistic and educational
backgrounds, and their different writing needs make it impossible to prescribe a single approach
to the teaching of writing because so much depends on the particulars of the local context.
However, there are some general principles of writing that are of value to teachers in all
contexts, and it is to these principles we now turn. Specifically, teachers should be aware of
research in such areas as what proficient writers do when they write, what distinguishes good
writers from weaker writers, and what the specific writing problems of English as a second
language (ESL) learners are likely to be.
Research (Pefiuelas, 2008; Sasaki, 2000; Weigle, 2005) has shown that, for expert writers
in particular, writing is not a linear process but involves going back and forth among planning,
writing, rereading, and revising. Furthermore, compared to novice writers, expert writers
spend more time planning and revising their writing and editing their writing for content
and organization than they do making small surface changes to their texts. Expert writers are
able to hold in mind numerous considerations simultaneously and have a greater understanding

of their own limitations, a greater understanding of the needs and expectations of their
audiences, and more highly developed schemata for different genres than novice writers. All
this does not mean that writing is less effortful for experts than for novices, however: Expert
writers are more likely to set greater challenges for themselves and to use a strategy of
“knowledge transforming” (using writing to create new knowledge) rather than “knowledge
telling” (expressing what they already know) in writing (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987, pp. 9-
10).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
85- The term grammaring means that students should be able to -----------.
1) use a grammatical form to ensure transfer appropriate processing
2) transform a grammatical construction from one form to another
3) comprehend a grammatical construction while reading a text
4) notice a grammatical form while doing a listening task
Answer: 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
742
Explanation:
Grammaring
To address the “carry-over” or “inert knowledge problem,” whereby students know the rules
but do not necessarily apply them when they are communicating, Larsen-Freeman (2003)
suggests that grammar instruction needs not only to promote awareness in students but also to
engage them in meaningful production (Toth, 2006). Output production pushes students to
move beyond semantic processing of the input to syntactic processing (Swain, 1985). Then,
too, when students attempt to produce constructions, they have an opportunity to test their
hypotheses on how the construction is formed or what it means or when it is used (Shehadeh,
2003). Following these attempts, they can receive feedback on their hypotheses and modify
them as necessary.
Therefore, Larsen-Freeman maintains that the proper goal of grammar instruction should
be grammaring, the ability to use grammar constructions accurately, meaningfully, and
appropriately. The addition of —ing to grammar is meant to suggest a dynamic process of
grammar using. To realize this goal, it is not sufficient for students to notice or comprehend
grammatical constructions or to repeat or transform them, as in the example lesson at the
beginning of this chapter. Students must also practice the meaningful use of grammar in a
way that takes into account “transfer appropriate” processing (Roediger & Guynn, 1996).
This means that, for students to overcome the inert knowledge problem, they must practice
using constructions to make meaning under psychologically authentic conditions, where the
conditions of learning and the conditions of use are aligned (Segalowitz, 2003).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
86- Which of the following scholars has argued that the acquisition of a second language
is directly linked to the acculturation process, and that learners’ success is determined
by the extent to which they can orient themselves to the target language culture?
1) Merrill Swain

2) James P. Lantolf
3) John Schumann
4) Robert DeKeyser
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Merrill Swain is famous for her ‘Output Hypothesis”. For explanation, refer to Year 91, Item
69; Year 92, Items 66, and 81; Year 93, Item 86; and Year 94, Items 72, and 84.
James P. Lantolf has introduced Sociocultural Theory in Second Language Acquisition. For
explanation, refer to Year 91, Items 64, and 69; Year 92, Items 47, 71, and 87, Year 93, Item
75, and 89; Year 94, Item 86; and Year 96, Item 63.
John Shuman has introduced the Acculturation Model. For explanation, refer to Year 91,
Items 13, and 78; Year 93, Item 4; and Year 96, Item 88.
Robert DeKeyser is well known for his Skill-Acquisition Theory. For explanation, refer to
Year 91, Item 71.
743
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
87- The construct of task-induced involvement includes the three dimensions of --------.
1) need, search, and retention
2) need, search, and evaluation
3) motivation, search, and retention
4) motivation, evaluation, and elaboration
Answer: 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition in a Second Language: The Construct of Task-

Induced Involvement
In their paper, Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) attempt to stimulate theoretical thinking and empirical
research in the domain of L2 vocabulary learning by introducing a construct of involvement
with motivational and cognitive dimensions: Need, Search, and Evaluation. Retention of
hitherto unfamiliar words is claimed to be conditional upon the amount of involvement while
processing these words. Involvement is operationalized by tasks designed to vary in the degree
of need, search, and evaluation. The paper reviews a number of constructs that are currently
debated and investigated in toe literature on cognitive and motivational aspects of L2 learning.
It also re-examines the existing empirical literature on task effect in the light of the proposed
construct of task-induced involvement, stresses the need for deepening and broadening the
construct, and discusses possibilities it offers for research on vocabulary learning.
Task-Induced Involvement
On the basis of the analysis of tasks surveyed earlier and on the basis of our conclusion drawn
from the literature reviewed, we propose to identify the components of incidental tasks which

we believe are conducive to the kind of elaborate processing crucial for learning. This proposal
should be conceived as a first attempt to stimulate researchers as well as practitioners to
operationalize the general labels of ‘attention’ and ‘elaboration’ into concrete task-specific
constructs. For now, three such components will be proposed which, taken together, constitute
the construct of involvement.
Involvement
Our first assumption about determining factors in vocabulary retention is as follows:
Assumption One: Retention of words when processed incidentally, is conditional upon the
following factors in a task: need, search, and evaluation.
Taken together, these three factors combine into what will be referred to as involvement.
Involvement is perceived as a motivational-cognitive construct which can explain and predict
learners’ success in the retention of hitherto unfamiliar words. We use the label cognitive in its
narrow sense, i.e. referring to information processing only, with the exclusion of affective
aspects of cognition, as explained in the preceding review.
744
The need component is the motivational, non-cognitive dimension of involvement. It is

concerned with the need to achieve. We interpret this notion not in its negative sense, based on
fear of failure, but in its positive sense, based on a drive to comply with the task requirements,
whereby the task requirements can be either externally imposed or self-imposed. If, for
example, the learner is reading a text and an unknown word is absolutely necessary for
comprehension, s/he will experience the need to understand it. Or, the need will arise during a
writing or speaking task when the L2 learner wants to refer to a certain concept or object but
the L2 word expressing it is unfamiliar. We propose to distinguish between ‘moderate’ and
‘strong’ need. Need is moderate when it is imposed by an external agent, e. g. the need to use a
word in a sentence which the teacher has asked the learner to produce. Need is strong when
imposed on the learner by him- or herself. A case in point is a decision to express a concept
without knowing the appropriate word for it. In the case of need, moderate and strong subsume
different degrees of drive.
Search and evaluation are the two cognitive (information processing) dimensions of
involvement, contingent upon noticing and deliberately allocating attention to the form-
meaning relationship (Schmidt 1994a, 2000). Search is the attempt to find the meaning of an
unknown L2 word or trying to find the L2 word form expressing a concept (e.g. trying to find
the L2translation of an L1 word) by consulting a dictionary or another authority (e.g. a teacher).
Evaluation entails a comparison of a given word with other words, a specific meaning of a word
with its other meanings, or combining the word with other words in order to assess whether a
word (i.e. a form-meaning pair) does or does not ®t its context. If, for example, during a reading
task, a word that is looked up is a homonym, a decision has to be made about its meaning by
comparing all its meanings against the specific context and choosing the one that fits best.
Another example is an L2 writing task in which an L1 word is looked up in a dictionary and
three L2 alternatives are presented. The translations have to be evaluated against each other and
the most suitable one has to be chosen for the specific meaning the L2 writer is trying to convey.
But unlike in the preceding example, the evaluation in the writing task will involve additional
syntagmatic decisions about the precise collocations of the word which the learner is trying to
use. Evaluation, as illustrated by the two examples above, implies some kind of selective

decision based on a criterion of semantic and formal appropriateness (fit) of the word and its
context. If the evaluation entails recognizing differences between words (as in a fill-in task with
words provided), or differences between several senses of a word in a given context, we will
refer to this kind of evaluation as ‘moderate’. If, on the other hand, evaluation requires making
a decision about additional words which will combine with the new word in an original sentence
or text, we will refer to it as ‘strong’ evaluation.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Laufer and Hulstijn (2001, p. 1)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
88- The phrase "legislation by hypothesis" was coined in order to ----------.

1) argue that task-based language teaching results in impoverished language use
2) suggest that task-based language teaching is not suitable for beginners
3) dismiss the theoretical basis of task-based language teaching
4) suggest that the term "task" has no construct validity
Answer: 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
745
Explanation:
‘Legislation by hypothesis’
Ellis (2013) indicate that some critics view TBLT as an approach dreamed up by SLA
researchers on the basis of a set of unsupported theoretical premises. Swan coined the catchy
phrase ‘legislation by hypothesis’ to dismiss the theoretical basis of TBLT. Along with
Sheen, he argued that there is no empirical evidence to support either the hypotheses that
construct the theoretical rationale for TBLT or to demonstrate that TBLT is superior to
traditional approaches.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis (2013, p. 18); Ellis (2009)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
89- What is the difference between task-based and task-supported language teaching?
1) The former includes only focused tasks, while the latter incorporates only unfocused
tasks.
2) The former includes only output-prompting tasks, while the latter incorporates only
input-providing tasks.
3) The former is based on a linguistic syllabus, while the latter involves no linguistic
specification in its syllabus.
4) The former involves no linguistic specification in its syllabus, while the latter is based
on a linguistic syllabus.
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
Ellis (2013) makes a distinction between task-based language teaching and task-supported
language teaching. The former requires a syllabus in which the content is specified entirely in
terms of the tasks to be performed (i.e., there is no linguistic specification). The latter is based

on a linguistic syllabus: that is, tasks serve as a means of providing opportunities for practicing
pre-determined linguistic items. Such tasks will by necessity be of the ‘focused’ kind. However,
rather than serving as stand-alone activities they fit into the ‘production’ phase of a traditional
present-practice-produce (PPP) methodology.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
90- The cognitive complexity of input involves all of the following EXCEPT ----------.
1) information type
2) context dependency
3) degree of structure
4) familiarity of information
Answer: 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
746
Explanation:
Ellis’s framework for the grading and sequencing of tasks
Criterion Easy Difficult

A Input pictorial →written → oral
1. Medium high frequency low frequency vocabulary;
2. Code complexity vocabulary; complex sentence structure
short and simple
sentences
3. Cognitive complexity static → dynamic → abstract

a. information type few elements / many elements /
b. amount of information relationships relationships
c. degree of structure well-defined structure little structure
d. context dependency here-and-now there-and-then
4. Familiarity of information orientation orientation
familiar unfamiliar
B Conditions
1. Interactant relationship two-way one-way
(negotiation of meaning)
2. Task demands single task dual task
3. Discourse mode required dialogic monologic
to perform task
C Processes
1. Cognitive operations:
a. type exchanging information → exchanging opinions
b. reasoning need → reasoning many steps involved
few steps involved

D Outcomes
1. Medium pictorial → written →oral
2. Scope closed? open?
3. Discourse mode of task lists, descriptions, → instructions, arguments
outcome narratives, classification
Table 1. Criteria for grading tasks
Ellis (2003) proposes a framework for the grading and sequencing of tasks. Ellis states that the
rationale behind the sequencing of tasks is that correctly sequenced tasks will enable the
language teacher / course designer to provide tasks that match the learners’ level of
development in the target language. Although a high level of precision in the sequencing of
tasks is obviously desirable, Ellis (2003, p. 220) points out that it is not necessary to grade tasks
with the same level of precision as is required for the grading and sequencing of linguistic
content. Ellis’s motivation for this is that tasks do not prescribe the exact linguistic and non-
linguistic content learners have to use when performing a task. When performing a task learners
have the freedom to choose the exact linguistic structures they want to use (although the nature
of some tasks may limit this choice), as well as the non-linguistic resources that will be needed
to complete the task and to reach the set outcomes.
747
Ellis’s (2003, p. 221) builds up on the work of Brindley, Candlin, Nunan, Skehan and
Robinson. His proposed framework constitutes a synthesis of the work of these authors on task
complexity. Ellis’s framework aims to account for task complexity in terms of four criteria:
input, conditions, processes and outcomes. Each of these criteria will here be discussed in
some detail. Ellis points out that his framework presents these factors that influence task
complexity taxonomically because current research does not provide sufficient insight into how
these factors are interrelated (2003). Ellis’s framework is charted in the table above.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 See also: Ellis (2003, pp. 222-223, 228)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
748
‫بودجه بندی سواالت‬
‫ تعداد سواالت با شمارگان بودجه بندی یکسان‬،‫به دلیل اینکه گزینه های برخی از سواالت از چندین کتاب طرح شده است‬
.‫نیست‬
Linguistics
No. Exam Year

Source 1391 1392 1393 1394 1395 1396 1397 Total
1 Fromkin et al. (2014) 14 14 11 12 7 9 10 77
2 Yule (2014) 2 2 4 5 2 7 11 33
3 Hudson (2000) --- --- 10 2 4 3 3 21
4 Yule (1996) 1 2 1 4 --- 2 9 19
5 Akmajian et al. (2010) --- 1 --- 5 2 1 3 12
6 Richards & Schmidt (2010) --- 1 --- 4 1 2 2 10
7 Falk (1987) --- --- --- --- 1 2 --- 3
8 Aitchison (2004) --- --- --- --- --- 2 1 3
9 Tallerman (2011) --- --- --- 1 1 --- --- 2
10 Nuccetelli & Seay (2007) --- --- --- 1 --- --- 1 2
11 Halliday & Matthiessen (2013) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
12 Cook (2007) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
13 Whitaker (2009) --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
14 Thornborrow & Wareing (1998) --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
15 Cruse (2000) --- --- --- 1 --- --- --- 1
16 Carnie (2014) --- --- --- 1 --- --- --- 1
17 Hurford et al. (2007) --- --- --- --- 1 --- --- 1
18 Parker & Riley (2012) --- --- --- --- --- 1 --- 1
19 Murphy & Koskela (2010) --- --- --- --- --- 1 --- 1
20 Rowe & Levine (2015) --- --- --- --- --- 1 --- 1
21 Nazari Bagha (2011) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
22 Huang (2007) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
749
Testing
No. Exam Year
Source 1391 1392 1393 1394 1395 1396 1397 Total
1 Bachman (1990) 4 7 9 4 --- 11 4 39
2 J. D. Brown (2005) 2 1 --- 4 --- 3 5 15
3 McNamara & Roever (2006) 4 3 2 2 --- --- --- 11
4 Bachman (2004) 2 2 1 3 --- --- 2 10
5 Bachman & Palmer (1996) 3 --- 1 --- --- 2 2 8
6 Bachman & Palmer (2010) --- 1 --- --- --- --- 5 6
7 H.D. Brown (2010) --- --- --- 5 --- --- --- 5
8 Fulcher & Davidson (2012) --- --- --- --- --- 4 --- 4
9 Gipps (1994) 2 --- 1 --- --- --- --- 3
10 Fulcher & Davidson (2007) 2 --- 1 --- --- --- --- 3
11 Baker (2002) 1 1 --- --- --- --- --- 2
12 Lantolf & Poehner (2004) 1 --- 1 --- --- --- --- 2
13 Read (2001) --- --- --- --- --- --- 2 2
14 Poehner & Lantolf (2005) --- --- --- 1 --- --- 1 2
15 Douglas (2000) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
16 Fulcher (2003) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
17 McKay (2006) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
18 Purpura (2004) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
19 Douglas (2000) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
20 Cheng & Curtis (2004) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
21 Shohamy (2001) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
22 Norris et al. (1998) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
23 Douglas (2014) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
24 Widdowson (1979) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
25 Leighton & Gierl (2007) --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
26 Poehner (2008) --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
27 Chapelle (2012) --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
28 Mislevy & Yin (2012) --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
750
Research
No. Exam Year

Source 1391 1392 1393 1394 1395 1396 1397 Total
1 Ary et al. (2014) 8 15 14 11 --- 18 16 82
2 Hatch & Lazaraton (1991) --- 2 1 2 --- 4 7 16
3 Dörnyei (2007) 1 3 --- --- --- --- 1 5
4 Mackey & Gass (2016) 2 1 1 --- --- --- --- 4
5 Cohen et al. (2007) --- --- 2 1 --- --- 1 4
6 Howitt & Cramer (2011) --- 1 --- --- --- 1 2 4
7 Coolican (2014) --- --- 1 --- --- --- 3 4
8 APA (2010) --- --- --- --- --- 1 1 2
9 Turner (2014) --- --- 1 --- --- 1 --- 2
10 J.D. Brown (2014) --- --- 2 --- --- --- --- 2
11 Larson-Hall (2010) --- --- --- --- --- 1 --- 1
12 Nunan (1992) --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
13 Chaudron (1988) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
14 Neuman (2014) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
15 Tabachnick & Fidell (2013) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
16 Fraenkel & Wallen (2009) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
17 Osborne (2008) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
18 Creswell (2007) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
19 Creswell (2013) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
20 H.D. Brown (2000) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
21 Yockey (2011) --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
22 Kerr, Hall, & Kozub (2002) --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
23 Keith Richards (2012) --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
24 Wiersma & Jurs (2009) --- --- 1 --- --- --- --- 1
25 Hakala (2006) --- --- --- 1 --- --- --- 1
26 Johnson & Christensen (2013) --- --- --- 1 --- --- --- 1
27 Anastas (2000) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
28 Smith, Gratz, & Bousquet --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
(2009)
29 Abu-Bader (2016) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
30 Gravetter & Wallnau (2014) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
31 Van Blerkom (2017) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
751
Language Teaching Issues (Theories/SLA, Skills, Methodology, and Materials Development)

No. Exam Year
Source 1391 1392 1393 1394 1395 1396 1397 Total
1 Celce-Murcia et al. (2014) 1 --- 1 2 5 12 2 23
2 Mitchell & Myles (2004) 8 14 --- --- --- --- 1 23
3 Ellis (2008) 11 3 1 --- 2 --- --- 17
4 Richards & Rodgers (2014) 6 7 --- 4 2 1 --- 17
5 Richards & Renandya (2002) --- --- 2 2 2 --- 6 12
6 VanPatten & Williams (2015) 2 4 --- --- 1 --- 3 10
7 Richards & Schmidt (2010) 2 3 5 2 --- --- --- 12
8 Brown (2014) --- 5 7 3 2 --- --- 11
9 Brown (2001) 1 6 1 2 1 --- --- 11
10 Brown (2000) 2 1 6 1 --- --- --- 10
11 Gass & Selinker (2008) 5 4 --- --- --- --- --- 9
12 Chastain (1988) 9 --- --- --- --- --- --- 9
13 Celce-Murcia (2001) 3 1 --- 2 --- --- --- 6
14 Doughty & Long (2003) --- --- --- --- --- --- 5 5
15 Mitchell, Myles & Mardsen --- 1 --- --- --- 3 1 5
(2013)
16 Oxford (1990) 2 1 2 --- --- --- --- 5
17 Nunan (2003) --- --- 4 --- --- 1 --- 5
18 Nunan (2015) --- --- 3 --- --- 1 --- 4
19 Kumaravadivelu (2006) --- 1 --- --- --- 3 --- 4
20 Brown & Lee (2015) 1 1 --- --- 2 --- --- 4
21 Lyster & Ranta (1997) 3 1 --- --- --- --- --- 4
22 VanPatten & Benati (2015) 2 1 --- --- --- 1 --- 4
23 McDonough et al. (2013) --- --- --- --- --- 1 2 3
24 Larsen-Freeman (2011) --- --- --- 2 1 --- --- 3
25 Ellis (2016) --- --- --- --- --- 1 2 3
26 Ellis (2009) 3 --- --- --- --- --- --- 3
27 Ellis (2012) 1 1 --- --- --- --- --- 2
28 Ellis et al. (2009) --- 1 --- --- 1 --- --- 2
29 Ellis (2003) --- --- --- 1 1 --- 1 2
30 Ellis (1994) 1 --- --- 1 --- --- --- 2
31 Kumaravadivelu (2003) 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1 2
32 Nunan (1988) --- 2 --- --- --- --- --- 2
33 Richards (1990) --- --- --- 1 1 --- --- 2
34 Nation & Macalister (2010) --- --- --- 1 1 --- --- 2
35 Baleghizadeh (2016) --- 1 --- 1 --- --- --- 2
36 Crookes (1993) --- 1 --- 1 --- --- --- 2
37 Badger & White (2000) --- --- 1 --- 1 --- --- 2
38 Mackey (2007) 2 --- --- --- --- --- --- 2
39 Hinkel (2005) 2 --- --- --- --- --- --- 2
40 Mystkowska-Wiertelak & 1 1 --- --- --- --- --- 2
Pawlak (2012)
752
41 Cook & Newson (2007) --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
42 Herschensohn & Young- --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
Scholten (2013)
43 Nunan (1989) --- --- --- 1 --- --- --- 1
44 Nunan (1991) --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
45 Nunan (1999) --- --- 1 --- --- --- --- 1
46 Richards & Rodgers (2001) --- --- 1 --- --- --- 1
47 Richards (1996) --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
48 Thornbury (1997) --- --- 1 --- --- --- --- 1
49 Thornbury (1999) --- --- --- --- --- 1 --- 1
50 Ellis & Shintani (2014) --- --- --- --- 1 --- --- 1
51 Ellis (1997a) --- --- 1 --- --- --- --- 1
52 Ellis (1997b) --- --- --- --- --- 1 --- 1
53 Ellis (2002) --- --- --- 1 --- --- --- 1
54 Ellis (2006) --- --- --- 1 --- --- --- 1
55 Ellis (2013) --- --- --- --- --- 1 --- 1
56 Ellis (2014) --- --- --- --- 1 --- --- 1
57 Schorkhuber (2009) --- --- --- --- 1 --- --- 1
58 Brown & Yule (1983) --- --- --- 1 --- --- --- 1
59 Nattinger & DeCarrico (1992) --- --- --- 1 --- --- --- 1
60 Hunt (1970) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
61 Field (2004) --- --- 1 --- --- --- --- 1
62 Mackey, In Park, & Tagarelli --- --- --- --- --- 1 --- 1
(2016)
63 Lantolf, Thorne, & Poehner (2015) --- --- --- --- --- 1 --- 1
64 Pienemann & Lenzing (2015) --- --- --- --- --- 1 --- 1
65 Richards & Reppen (2014) --- --- --- --- --- 1 --- 1
66 Marashi & Tahan-Shizari (2015) --- --- --- --- 1 --- --- 1
67 Miller & Thompson (2006) --- --- --- --- 1 --- --- 1
68 Rivers & Temperley (1978) --- --- --- 1 --- --- --- 1
69 Murray & Christison (2011) --- --- --- 1 --- --- --- 1
70 White (1988) --- --- --- --- --- 1 --- 1
71 Robinson (2011) --- --- 1 --- --- --- --- 1
72 Smith-Lovin & Heise (1988) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
73 Yule (1996) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
74 Han (2013) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
75 Gass & Mackey (2007) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
76 Loewen (2015) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
77 Markee (2015) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
78 Robinson (2013) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
79 Daniel, et al. (2015) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
80 Lantolf & Thorne (2006) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
81 MacWhinney (1987) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
82 LoCastro (2012) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
83 Hutchinson & Waters (1987) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
753
83 Negro Alousque (2016)) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1

85 Widdowson (2000) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
86 Widdowson (1990) --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
87 Golombek (1998) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
88 Kim (2014) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
89 Read (2000) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
90 Burns & Richards (2009) 1 --- --- --- --- --- --- 1
91 Larsen-Freeman (1997) --- 1 --- --- --- --- --- 1
92 Renandya & Farrell (2011) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
93 Hall (2016) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
94 Hinkel (2011) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
95 Phipps & Borg (2009) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
96 Baleghizadeh (2015) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
97 Brookfield (1995) --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 1
Discourse Analysis and Sociolinguistics

Exam Year
No. Source 1392 1393 1394 Total
1 Paltridge (2012) 5 3 2 9
2 Hudson (2001) 4 2 --- 6
3 Wardhaugh & Fuller (2015) --- --- 3 3
4 Wardhaugh (2010) --- --- 2 2
5 Yule (1996) 1 --- 1 2
6 Richards & Schmidt (2010) --- 1 1 2
7 Fromkin et al. (2014) --- 1 1 2
8 Senft (2014) --- 2 --- 2
9 Cummings (2010) --- 1 --- 1
10 Brown & Levinson (1987) 1 --- --- 1
11 Paltridge (2006) --- --- 1 1
12 Arundale (2006) --- 1 --- 1
13 British Association for Applied Linguistics (1997) --- 1 --- 1
14 Fitch & Sanders (2005) --- 1 --- 1
15 Davies & Elder (2004) --- 1 --- 1
16 Drew & Heritage (2006) --- 1 --- 1
17 Cruse (2000) --- --- 1 1
18 Birner (2013) --- --- 1 1
19 Coulthard (1985) --- --- 1 1
20 Brown & Yule (1983b) --- --- 1 1
21 Flowerdew (2013) --- --- 1 1
22 Fairclough (2013) --- --- 1 1
754
Celce-Murcia et al. (2014)

Exam Year
Chapters 1391 1392 1393 1394 1395 1396 1397 Total
1 -- -- -- -- 2 -- -- 2
2 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
3 1 -- 1 3 3 -- 2 10
4 -- -- -- -- -- 1 -- 1
5 -- -- -- -- -- 1 -- 1
6 -- -- -- -- -- 1 -- 1
7 -- -- -- 1 -- -- -- 1
8 -- -- -- 1 -- -- -- 1
9 -- -- -- -- -- 1 1 2
10 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
11 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
12 -- -- -- -- 1 1 2
13 -- -- -- 1 -- 1 -- 2
14 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
15 -- -- -- -- -- 1 -- 1
16 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
17 -- -- 2 -- 1 -- -- 3
18 -- -- -- -- -- -- 1 1
19 -- -- -- -- 1 1 -- 2
20 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
21 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
22 -- -- -- -- -- 1 -- 1
23 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
24 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
25 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
26 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
27 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
28 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
29 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
30 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
31 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
32 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
33 -- -- -- -- -- 2 -- 2
34 -- -- -- 1 -- 1 -- 2
35 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
36 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
37 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
38 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
39 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
40 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Celce-Murcia (2001)
Chapters Title 1391
7 Skills and strategies for proficient listening 2
15 Considerations for teaching an ESL/EFL writing course 1
18 Cognitive Approaches to grammar instruction 1
19 Vocabulary learning and teaching 2
755
‫منابع‬
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Alderson, J., & Banerjee, J. (2002). Language testing and assessment (Part 2). Language
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Allan, K. (Ed.) (2009). Concise encyclopedia of semantics. Oxford, UK: Elsevier.
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ELT PHD Tests 1391 1398 Final 1

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‫مجموعه سؤاالت و پاسخ تشریحی‬

Methodology (Questions 1 – 15) 2

Methodology (Questions 1 – 15) 138

Methodology (Questions 1 – 15) 256

Methodology (Questions 1 – 15) 346

Linguistics (Questions 1 – 10) 448

Linguistics (Questions 1-20) 470

Issues of Language Teaching (Questions 61-90) 519

Linguistics (Questions 1-20) 544

Issues of Language Teaching (Questions 61-90) 623

Linguistics (Questions 1-20) 656

Issues of Language Teaching (Questions 61-90) 718

Distributions of the Questions 749

‫آزمون تخصصی دکتری‬

Methodology (Questions 1 – 15)

Learning Strategies (O’Malley et al., 1985)

Theory of language and learning

13. In Schumann’s taxonomy of factors influencing second-language acquisition,

14. A T-unit is ------------.

15. Resourcing as a cognitive strategy is ------------.

Linguistics (Questions 16 – 30)

16. Chomskyan linguistics does NOT support ------------.

In brief, observational adequacy just informs us whether a sentence is grammatical or

Universal Grammar: Principles and Parameters

The Innateness Hypothesis

The Critical Period Hypothesis (The Strong Version)

Critical Period Hypothesis under Criticism

Sensitive Period Hypothesis (The Weak Version)

17. Mean length of utterance -----------.

18. Hemispheric lateralization -----------.

The Critical-Age Hypothesis

Monogenetic Theory of Language Origin

20. Lexical gaps refer to -----------.

21. Phonological rules -----------.

il “day” iːl “work”

23. Bottom-to-top language death -----------.

What’s Learned, What’s Not?

Subject, Actor, Theme

Psychological Subject: Theme

We can now relabel Figure 2 as in Figure 3.

this teapot my aunt was given by the duke

28. Words like “brother” and “sister” -----------.

Content Words vs. Function Words

29. In the sentence “whose did Mary borrow pen?” -----------.

Despite these variations, wh movement adheres to certain constraints. Although wh phrases

4. (a) John ate bologna and cheese.

30. In lexical semantics, “argument” refers to -----------.

Testing (Questions 31 – 45)

31. Which of the following statements is FALSE?

Agreement between similar Agreement between different

Figure 1. Relationship between reliability and validity

The advantage of this perspective, I believe, is that it provides a transparent means

Calculating DIF in IRT Models

Table 1: Facets of Validity (after Messick 1980, 1988b)

Functions or Outcomes of Testing

Mislevy is well known for Evidence-Centered Design, evidentiary reasoning, and

The Trichotomy Backwash Model

Table 1: The Trichotomy Backwash Model

Note. Adapted from Hughes, 1993, p. 2; cited in Bailey (1996).

Figure 1: Sources of variation in a two-facet nested design, p x (i:t)

A single-facet crossed design A two-facet fully crossed design

2. Increased logistical problems of:

3. Reliability may be problematic because it depends on: