Testing the Spoken English of Young Norwegians
A Study of Testing Validity and the Role of Smallwords in Contributing to Pupils' Fluency

This book reports on a two-part study: the validation of a test of spoken English for Norwegian secondary school pupils and the corpus-based investigation of the role played by 'smallwords'.

Angela Hasselgreen (Author)

9780521544726, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 24 March 2005

322 pages
22.7 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.5 kg

"What Hasselgreen does examine and develop in a way that no one has done before is the link between gains in fluency and gains in facility in smallword use. This is a book that should appeal to a broad audience. It is well worth reading and is highly recommended."
April Ginther, Purdue University, SSLA

This book reports on a two-part study: the validation of a test of spoken English for Norwegian secondary school pupils and the corpus-based investigation of the role played by 'smallwords', such as 'well', 'sort of', and 'you know', in bringing about fluency. The first study builds on the Messickian six central aspects of construct validity to produce a practical framework for test validation. It identifies potential sources of invalidity in the test being examined particularly relating to 'fluency'. The second study sets about to explore the concept of fluency, and to expose the extent to which it is acknowledged in the literature to be associated with smallwords, albeit under other names. The findings from the corpus study are drawn on to propose new elements to include in descriptors of fluency, and the implications of the study for classroom practices are discussed.

Subject Areas: Applied linguistics for ELT [EBAL]