The notion of expectancy grammar as a key to understanding the nature of psychologically real processes that underlie language use is introduced by Oller (1979). A central issue in this notion is that expectancy generating systems are constructed and modified in the course of language acquisition. Thus, one of the characteristics of language proficiency is that it consists of such an expectancy...

veryfew attempts have been made in the past to develop instruments to measure pragmatic knowledge of second language (l2) learners. the absence of such instruments in the literature of english language teaching (elt) underscores the need for the researchers to develop new tests that are specifically designed to assess this crucial but less explored aspect of language learners’ (lls) knowledge. ...

This paper documents the third in a series of Benchmark Tests for the DARPA Air Travel Information System (ATIS) common task domain. The first results in this series were reported at the June 1990 Speech and Natural Language Workshop [1], and the second at the February 1991 Speech and Natural Language Workshop [2]. The February 1992 Benchmark Tests include: (1) ATIS domain spontaneous speech re...

Of the many dilemmas facing the assessment of literary competence, one is the extent to which language should constitute part of the target construct intended to be measured. Some argue for the construct-irrelevance of language and hence recommend that it be eliminated or minimized in favor of an exclusive focus on literary competence. In practice, this does not seem to be the case, as language...

Veryfew attempts have been made in the past to develop instruments to measure pragmatic knowledge of second language (L2) learners. The absence of such instruments in the literature of English language teaching (ELT) underscores the need for the researchers to develop new tests that are specifically designed to assess this crucial but less explored aspect of language learners’ (LLs) knowledge. ...