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Volume 7-2 April 2011.
PDF E-book version
Title
Assessing Iranian Students’ English Ability: Semantic Competence vs. Pragmatic Competence
Authors
Reza Keshavarz (M.A.)
Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch, Iran
Rasool Roozegar (Ph.D. candidate)
Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht Branch, Iran
Bio Data
Reza Keshavarz, M.A. of TEFL at the Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch, Shiraz, Iran. At present, he studies at department of English language. His main research interests are language teaching and the application of Research modeling in social science. He has endeavored to work as a teacher and a tutor during his studying at University.
Rasool Roozegar, Ph.D. candidate of Statistics at Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran. He is a lecturer at the Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht Branch, Marvdasht, Iran. His main research interests are teaching, testing and the application of Statistical modeling in all sciences, especially social science research. He has published and presented papers in national and international conferences and journals.
Abstract
Visiting the problem of current English assessment in Iranian classroom settings a recommendation was made to assess English language ability. Two kinds of test that is semantic and pragmatic competence tests were made and administered to students of Shiraz Iran Language Institute. Among them, 70 are advanced level students (aged from 17 to 19) and 173 are high level students (aged from 13 to 15) which are composed of 55 high1, 59 high2 and 59 high3 students. And the ratio of male and female is roughly equal (126 male and 117 female). They were both males and females sharing the same mother tongue and none of them had ever been in an English speaking country. The data were analyzed through statistical procedures and the results revealed that Iranian EFL students are poor in pragmatic issues and they have a lot of problems. As hypothesized in terms of item percent correct, items measuring both semantic and pragmatic competence will become easier as students progress from high level to advanced levels. Whereas in terms of item discrimination, semantic items are more discriminating than pragmatic items in the current context.
Keywords: Pragmatic Competence, Semantic Competence, item percent correct, item discrimination, EFL learners.
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