ASSESSING DISCOURSE COMPETENCE

Abstract

Despite the ever-increasing amount of work on developing and testing FL learners’ communicative competence, there remain, nevertheless, some constraints enshrouding assessing types of competence coming under this general concept. This is accounted for by the fact that the very nature of the concept does not lend itself as easily as it may appear to those modes of measurement that are applicable to formal aspects of language. Indeed, the current study attempts at presenting a testing model growing from the idea that contextual features, at the base of discourse competence do not allow for the same assessing rationale and procedures as those found with tests of formal accuracy. In this paper our concern will be to present a brief account of some test features and problems involved in evaluating discourse competence.