Technically, a word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetic value. Typically a word will consist of a root or stem and zero or more affixes. Words can be combined to create phrases, clauses, and sentences. A word consisting of two or more stems joined together is called a compound. It is...
A new theory of language and language use that exerted significant influence on language teaching and therefore language testing from the early 1970s was the theory of communicative competence Communicative competence is a linguistic term which refers to a learner’s second language ability. It refers to a learner’s ability to: apply and use grammatical rules form correct utterances...
All language tests are not of the same kind. They differ mainly in terms of design (method) and purpose. In terms of method, a broad distinction can be made between pen-and-paper language tests and performance tests Paper-and-pen tests are typically used for the assessment of separate components of language (grammar, vocabulary …) receptive understanding (listening & reading...
Lexicon is a word of Greek origin meaning vocabulary. It is a list of words together with additional word-specific information (i.e. a dictionary) In linguistics the definition of lexicon is slightly more specialized – it includes lexemes used to form words A lexeme is a unit of linguistic analysis that: belongs to a particular syntactic category has particular meaning. Lexemes may be:...
What is a Test? A test can be defined as any one of the following: procedure for critical evaluation; a means of determining the presence, quality, or truth of something; series of questions, problems, or physical responses designed to determine knowledge, intelligence, or ability. basis for evaluation or judgment: So we could conclude that testing is a form of assessment used for evaluation...
Linguistics is the scientific study of language The main questions addressed in linguistics are: What is language? How is it represented in the mind? Linguists focus on describing and explaining language and are not concerned with the prescriptive rules of the language, neither are they required to know many languages nor are they interpreters The underlying goal of the linguist is to try to...
We will define seven MAJOR word classes: Some may include different word classes from these; they may also define the boundaries between the classes in different ways. E.g. some may treat pronouns as a separate word class, but we will consider them a subclass of nouns, which we will look at in a bit more detail next class. Differences like these highlight an important principle in grammar —...
Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units in words There are two main types of morphemes — Free morphemes & bound morphemes Bound morphemes are of two types — Derivational morphemes & Inflectional morphemes Derivational morphemes are morphemes that have the effect of changing the lexical category or the central meaning of the word to which they are attached to Inflectional...
In order to talk about language at this level we need to make many distinctions that we did not overtly think about when studying grammar at school First, we must note that languages are organized on two levels: – level of expression’ in which the message is encoded – level of content this level encompasses both the organization of words into sentences and the meanings that are...