Full Description
Comprehensibility is considered central to successful communication (Munro & Derwing, 1995a, 2007). Yet, despite the crucial role it plays in communication and the contribution it makes towards the assessment of spoken language ability, comprehensibility has occupied an ambiguous position in language testing. At times, it is feature-driven, taking a linguistically-atomistic approach with little reference to context or communicative purpose, treating comprehensibility as an abstract construct made up only of linguistic components. At other times, the assessment of comprehensibility is an intuitive action, relying on a holistic sense of understanding by the assessor and rarely going beyond the speaker's utterances to include listener characteristics. The lack of a perspective that encompasses broader linguistic and socio-pragmatic factors that contribute to achieving meaning in spoken language has motivated us to propose the current manuscript as an approach to understanding, defining and assessing comprehensibility. In this monograph, we argue that conceptualising comprehensibility as a multidimensional construct and adopting a broader perspective to understanding and analysing it for communication purposes would benefit the fields of second language assessment and second language acquisition.
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Comprehensibility at the Phonological Level
3. Comprehensibility at Discourse / Text Level
4. Comprehensibility at a Pragmatic Level
5. Comprehensibility and Fluency
6. Technology and Comprehensibility
7. Teaching towards a Comprehensibility Goal
8. Conclusion
Appendices
1. Cambridge B2 First Speaking Task
2. TOEFL iBT Speaking
3. IELTS Descriptors
4. Fluency Indicators
5. Examples of Tests
