Pragmatics’ competence test for Chinese students of Spanish as a foreign language

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to present a test to evaluate the pragmatic competence of Chinese students of Spanish as a foreign language. This article describes the process of creation of the test and presents the whole test for its use by Spanish language teachers.

For the creation of this test, two empirical studies were carried out: a preliminary study and a main study. The preliminary study is an ethnographic study that starts from the exemplary generation method, whose final objective is to know the perception of the difficulty that Chinese students have. These students are studying in Spanish universities and are facing different communicative situations in their everyday life. Thus, this preliminary study serves as a starting point for the design of the main study, the elaboration of the test. For the design of the pragmatic comprehension test, a correlation or psychometric methodology is used, through which variables are described and their relationships are analysed from a representative sample of subjects.

This paper shows a final product: a standardized test that meets the requirements of utility (authenticity, interactivity, impact, practicability and assessment, and scoring) proposed by Bachman and Palmer (1996) for language tests and psychometric reliability statistical requirements and validity.

This pragmatic test is published in its entirety and exclusively in this journal so that it can be used by Spanish teachers and researchers with the aim of improving teaching and research in the acquisition of the pragmatics of Spanish as a foreign language.