Phrase structure rules are ‘formulae’ that describe a given language’s syntax. Phrase structure rules break a natural language sentence down into its constituent parts (also known as syntactic categories. Phrase structure rules are usually of the form: meaning that the constituent A is separated into the two sub-constituents B and C E.g. This means that a sentence...
A Table of Specifications is a two-way chart which describes the topics to be covered in a test and the number of items or points which will be associated with each topic. Sometimes the types of items are described as well. The purpose of a Table of Specifications is to identify the achievement domains being measured and to ensure that a fair and representative sample of questions appear on the...
A phrase is a group of words acting as a single part of speech and not containing both a subject and a verb. It is a part of a sentence, and does not express a complete thought. Noun Phrases Noun phrases must have a Noun (or Pronoun) and may or may not have other modifiers e.g. Adjective phrases An Adjective phrase must consist an adjective (A) and may or may not have an adverb phrase (AdvP) e.g...
A piece of language is said to be coherent (therefore discourse) if it has a discernible, unified meaning. A piece of discourse is said to be cohesive if its components (ie. sentences/phrases/words) are bound together through linguistic and non-linguistic features to form a unified whole. The linguistic features used to link one word/phrase/sentence to another are called formal links. Some common...
Test bias is the presence of some characteristics of an item in the test, that results in differential performance by individuals of the same ability but different sub-group When important decisions are made based on test scores, it is critical to avoid bias which may unfairly influence test-takers’ scores Fairness and bias are not the same thing. Fairness has to do with how a test is used...
Reliability refers to the consistency of a measure. A test is considered reliable if we get the same result repeatedly. E.g. If a test designed to measure a specific trait, then each time the test is administered to a subject, the results should be approximately the same. Unfortunately, it is impossible to calculate reliability exactly but there are several different ways to estimate reliability...
All languages have rules. These rules together form the grammarof that language. These rules are what enables a person to produce an infinite number of phrases/sentences from a finite number of possibilities, that is understood by both the speaker and the listener. It would be rather difficult to learn any language if each sentence had to be learnt separately! Syntax is the areas of linguistics...
Lexical semantics is the subfield of linguistics that studies how and what words of a language denote and thus involves the meaning of individual words. Lexical semantics focuses on theories of: classification and decomposition of word meaning differences and similarities in lexical semantic structure between different languages the relationship of word meaning to sentence meaning and syntax The...
Validity is the extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure. Testing is a matter of making judgments about test-takers competence in view of their performance on certain tasks. These judgments are inferences as tests do not collect concrete evidence about test-takers’ ability, in the natural state, but only abstract inferences Evidence of test performance is used to draw...
Word structure In morphology, word structure is described in terms of roots and affixes Simple words consist one morpheme – the root fun, go, danger Complex words consist more that one morpheme – the root + affix(es) funny, goes, endanger Languages have three principal ways of extending their vocabulary: invention of entirely new words borrowing from other languages formation of new...