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Second Language Learners, Assessment of

Assessment of second language (L2) learners can have a variety of purposes including monitoring progress toward the acquisition of an L2 and determining attainment levels for higher education admission and occupational and social prerequisites (e.g., entry into health care and legal professions; requirement for citizenship eligibility). This entry focuses on L2 assessment in educational settings used to inform educators and students about learner language and literacy competencies. Language constructs, assessment types, and contemporary L2 assessment themes (e.g., validity of inferences, dimensionality, influences of age, and uses of technology) are briefly addressed.

L2 Constructs

L2 assessments measure learner’s receptive and expressive language abilities in both oral and written modalities. These abilities and modalities are traditionally described as the domains of listening (receptive/oral), speaking (expressive/oral), reading (receptive/written), and writing (expressive/written). Domains include specific constructs, and two or more domains may be integrated within a single assessment format. For example, speaking includes constructs such as pronunciation, fluency (i.e., the rate of speech and degree of pausing and dysfluency), productive vocabulary, and discourse organization. Reading includes the constructs of phonological processing, vocabulary and grammatical knowledge, and understanding of extended discourse; and writing includes orthographic knowledge, vocabulary and grammatical usage, and organization of text. Advanced statistical modeling such as multidimensional scaling analysis is used to examine the underlying factor structure of these constructs, revealing underlying subskills and whether assessments measure a unitary construct of L2 proficiency. Integrated assessment expressly targets two or more constructs and reflects the authentic ways in which different domains of language are simultaneously processed and used (e.g., a measure integrating constructs within both the listening and speaking domains).

Beyond these fundamental language constructs are additional constructs assessed to further characterize language. Knowledge of linguistic forms and features alone does not result in successful meaning-making with interlocutors; rather, this requires communicative competence. Such knowledge of the functions of language in diverse contexts, while typically neglected in assessment, is an important part of the L2 construct. Pragmatic abilities, for instance, focus on the socially appropriate uses of language such as culturally prescribed politeness routines and knowledge of the registers or conventions for language usage in particular contexts (e.g., the language of academic settings).

Special considerations for the assessment of academic content (e.g., mathematics and science) of L2 learners are outside the scope of the current entry, but the intertwined nature of language and content and related issues of language as a source of measurement error, construct irrelevance, and modifications (i.e., accommodations) to simplify language demands on academic achievement tests have been widely studied.

Assessing Characteristics of L2 Learners

There are also constructs relevant for predicting language-learning outcomes such as L2 learner characteristics. Learner characteristics have frequently been measured because of their value in making suitable placements for instruction and for predicting attainment outcomes. Aptitude for L2 language learning, attitudes, and motivation have long been operationalized and measured in the L2 arena.

More recently, self-regulation (i.e., consciously identifying and planning goals) has been found to predict vocabulary outcomes with L2 learners. An important consideration in the operationalization and measurement of L2 is its distinction from foreign language assessment; learners acquire an L2 in settings where the L2 is the dominant societal language, whereas a foreign language is typically acquired as an academic subject in societal settings where it is not dominant.

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