Proficiency Assessment and Language Competence

Dr. Laia Arnaus, University of Wuppertal

One cannot minimize the importance of proficiency and language competence when investigating linguistic phenomena in first and second languages. Many studies have pointed out the need of using an independent variable which goes beyond age. For first language acquisitionists, proficiency can be measured by means of not only quantitative tools, such as MLU (Mean Length of Utterance), Upper Bound (highest number of words in an utterance within a certain period) and fluency in words per minute (cf. Bernardini & Schlyter 2004, Cantone et al 2008, Hager 2014, Schmeißer et al 2016) but also qualitative measures, such as lexicon growth (Goldstein 2006) and passive receptive vocabulary (Arnaus Gil & Müller (in preparation), Sivakumar 2008). For second and third language studies, the most common tools to classify L2/L3 learners according to their proficiency have to do with rather subjective categories, e.g. years of instruction, classroom level or length of residence in the L2 environment (Tremblay & Garrison 2010, Tremblay 2011). Following Tremblay and her colleagues, substantially fewer SLA studies make use of independent tests. Although the factors years of instruction and length of residence in the L2 environment seem to correlate with L2 proficiency (Flege et al 1999, 2002), they argue in favor of applying independent tests, such as cloze tests (i.e. fill-in-the-blank), to assess proficiency in second and third languages. In their survey proficiency assessment of 144 SLA studies between 2000 and 2008, only 36,8% made use of independent tests.

The purpose of this workshop is threefold. First, it aims at introducing and discussing the main methodological tools to assess language competence and language proficiency in the acquisition of first and second languages. Along these lines, we will discuss the sharp division between assessment tools for first vs. second/third language(s) made in the literature and consider possible crossovers.

Second, relevant (internal and external) factors that might influence language competence will be discussed, such as age of the learner, age of language onset and length of residence in one of the L1s or in the L2 environment (in other words, input frequency as proposed by Grosjean 2016). Moreover, a distinction between production and comprehension tasks, quantity vs quality measurements of language production and written vs oral assignments is for proficiency assessment more than pertinent.

Finally, the workshop will consider the role of the learner’s other language(s) for the assessment and competence of the language at stake, something which has been taken into consideration in the research of specific linguistic phenomena in the studied language (due to a possible cross-linguistic influence) but in some way overlooked in its proficiency assessment.

References

Arnaus Gil, L. & N. Müller (in preparation). Frühkindlicher Trilinguismus. Tübingen: Narr Verlag.

Bernardini, P. & S. Schlyter. (2004). Growing syntactic structure and code-mixing in the weaker language: The Ivy-Hypothesis. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7 (1), 49-69.

Cantone, K. F., T. Kupisch, N. Müller & K. Schmitz. (2008). Rethinking language dominance in bilingual children. Linguistische Berichte 215, 307-343.

Flege, J. E., Yeni-Komishian, G. H., & Liu, S. (1999). Age constraints on second language acquisition. Journal of Memory and Language, 41, 78–104.

Grosjean, J. (2016). The Complementarity Principle and its impact on processing, acquisition, and dominance. In C. Silva-Corvalán & J. Treffers-Daller (Eds), Language Dominance in Bilinguals: Issues of operationalization and measurement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 66-84.

Hager, M. (2014). Der Genuserwerb bei mehrsprachig aufwachsenden Kindern - Eine longitudinale Untersuchung bilingualer und trilingualer Kinder der Sprachenkombinationen deutsch-französisch/italienisch/spanisch, französisch-italienisch/spanisch und deutsch-spanisch-katalanisch. Bergische Universität Wuppertal, http://elpub.bib.uni-wuppertal.de/edocs/dokumente/fba/romanistik/diss2014/hager/da1401.pdf.

Flege, J. E., I. A. MacKay & T. Piske. (2002). Assessing bilingual dominance. Applied Psycholinguistics 23, 567–598.

Schmeißer, A., M. Hager, L. Arnaus Gil, V. Jansen, J. Geveler, N. Eichler, M. Patuto & N. Müller (2016). Related but different: The two concepts of language dominance and language proficiency. In C. Silva-Corvalán & J. Treffers-Daller (Eds), Language Dominance in Bilinguals: Issues of operationalization and measurement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 36-65.

Sivakumar, A. (2018). Die Entwicklung des rezeptiven Wortschatzes bei bi-, tri- und multilingual aufwachsenden Kindern. Unpublished project paper. Bergische Universität Wuppertal.

Tremblay, A. (2016). Proficiency assessment in second language acquisition research: “Clozing” the gap. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 33(3), 339-372.

Tremblay, A. &M. D. Garrison. (2010). Cloze tests: A tool for proficiency assessment in research on L2 French. In M. T. Prior, Y. Watanabe, & S.-K. Lee (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the Second Language Research Forum 2008. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, 73–88.