View Content #27595

Linda Forrest, CASLS Research Director

In almost any discussion of language learning, the term “proficiency” is soon encountered, followed a short time later by remarks on “how much” proficiency individuals might have. Yet, there is no consensus among language experts about what, exactly, language proficiency is or how, exactly, it can best be measured. Despite this lack of clarity, educators are pressured by administrators, parents, employers, and students themselves to find and administer tests that will answer the question, “how much?”

In broad terms, proficiency is a learner’s ability to use language in spontaneous, real world interactions. Unfortunately, this definition is too vague to be useful to test developers who seek to measure it. They want to know what the component parts of proficiency are. For example, is grammatical accuracy a factor? What about pronunciation and vocabulary? Older theoretical models of proficiency have posited dozens of factors which comprise proficiency, leading to tests constructed to measure single discrete points, such a vocabulary or grammar.

Nowadays, most developers of large-scale language tests have recognized that language proficiency is more than the sum of the parts and have developed tests that provide more wholistic measures. The tests are based on models of language proficiency which identify domains of skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening). While these frameworks acknowledge some overlap between domains, the frameworks are considered distinct and tested separately. As theoretical studies have increasingly recognized the importance of interculturality, these frameworks have added a fifth skill area, often described as “cultural knowledge.”

Although the four-skills framework is widely used, a continual challenge is to measure language as it is actually carried out in spontaneous, real world interactions. Real interactions involve, among other things, extended sequences of conversational turns in an immersive situational context during which interlocuters negotiate meaning by interpreting each others’ intentions irrespective of the actual words used. To succeed in real world interactions, interlocutors need more than “reading, listening, speaking, and listening” skills. Rather, they require interactional and pragmatic skills tuned to a particular cultural context. They do not need to know ‘correct’ grammar so much as they need to know the most appropriate way to encode a specific speech function in a specific situation.

An additional framework would permit assessment of speakers’ ability to understand their interlocutors’ intentions and succeed in achieving their own intended outcomes in culturally appropriate ways without sacrificing the ability to express their own unique personality. One such approach, the Intercultural, Pragmatic, and Interactional Competence (IPIC) framework entails four components – knowledge of language structures and their use, analysis of speaker and hearer intended meaning, subjectivity, or the ability to discern personality behaviors, and awareness of others’ reactions to their remarks. Recent studies conducted at CASLS suggest that assessments developed within this framework capture the realities of spontaneous communication and relate those concepts of proficiency.