Assessing language for specific purposes

Abstract

The assessment of Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) arises in the context of social, political, and economic imperatives such as skilled migration, globalization, and international education. The focus of LSP assessment is typically an occupational or academic domain in which language mediates particular types of knowledge, experience, and activity. LSP assessment designers are concerned with the degree of specificity of domain knowledge/experience required to do the assessment and the authenticity of the assessment tasks in relation to the domain. Ideally, LSP tasks elicit the domain Codes of Relevance (CoR). CoR encompass all aspects of domain communication: the Linguistic, Discourse, Sociocultural, and Modality patterns that are demonstrably relevant to the intended use of the assessment. Potential CoR range in terms of their specialist content saturation. They include (a) domain-heavy codes, which are used in communication between domain insiders (e.g., nurses talking to nurses); (b) domain-light codes, which are used when domain insiders interact with domain outsiders (e.g., doctors talking to patients); and (c) societal codes, which encompass the linguistic repertoire of the broader social context in which the domain is nested. Assessing CoR increases the likelihood that the assessment will generate washback activity that is relevant to the real world.