Comprehensibility in Language Assessment

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 languag...

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Հիմնական հեղինակներ: Tavakoli, Parvaneh, Cooke, Sheryl
Ձևաչափ: Online
Լեզու:անգլերեն
Հրապարակվել է: University of Toronto Press 2026
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Առցանց հասանելիություն:https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/171436
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author Tavakoli, Parvaneh
Cooke, Sheryl
author_browse Cooke, Sheryl
Tavakoli, Parvaneh
author_facet Tavakoli, Parvaneh
Cooke, Sheryl
author_sort Tavakoli, Parvaneh
collection Directory of Open Access Books
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.This work is licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/The ebook is free of charge and can be accessed from https://equinoxonlinelibrary.com/book/58244/comprehensibility-in-language-assessmentOpen Access funded by University of Reading
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1714362026-02-12T10:28:28Z Comprehensibility in Language Assessment Tavakoli, Parvaneh Cooke, Sheryl Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / General thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CF Linguistics 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.This work is licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/The ebook is free of charge and can be accessed from https://equinoxonlinelibrary.com/book/58244/comprehensibility-in-language-assessmentOpen Access funded by University of Reading 2026-02-12T10:28:24Z 2026-02-12T10:28:24Z 2024 book 9781800504349 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/171436 eng University of Toronto Press f6d46b2a-aef9-4d6a-9c7c-12ec4e383e3a 9781800504349 224 open access
spellingShingle Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / General
thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CF Linguistics
Tavakoli, Parvaneh
Cooke, Sheryl
Comprehensibility in Language Assessment
title Comprehensibility in Language Assessment
title_full Comprehensibility in Language Assessment
title_fullStr Comprehensibility in Language Assessment
title_full_unstemmed Comprehensibility in Language Assessment
title_short Comprehensibility in Language Assessment
title_sort comprehensibility in language assessment
topic Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / General
thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CF Linguistics
topic_facet Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / General
thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CF Linguistics
url https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/171436
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