A Book Review on Assessing Grammar

池玉蓮

Assessing Grammar by James E. Purpura is one of the books in the Cambridge Language Assessment Series, edited by Charles Alderson and Lyle Bachman. Purpara's comprehensive overview of grammar assessment provides readers with a guide to assessing grammar. It deals with some important issues relating to grammar assessment in nine chapters by answering some basic questions: what grammar is, what researches on grammar assessment there has existed, what role grammar plays, what grammar ability is and how the testers design test tasks and tests. In addition, Purpura illustrates both large-scale language assessments and classroom assessments with some vivid examples. Finally, the author poses the challenges and new directions in assessing grammatical ability.

Purpura's introductory chapter begins with the discussion of the most basic issue-the definition ofgrammar'. He firstly introduces linguistic grammars. Generally speaking, linguists adopt either a syntactocentric perspective or a communication perspective of language. With these different views of language, we may take formal grammar or communicative grammar separately. Purpura also discusses several schools of linguistics and their own views ofwhat is meant by grammar', as well aswhat pedagogical grammar is'. Finally, the author shows us how these different notions of grammar have influenced grammar teaching and assessment. All of this has greatly broadened our understanding of grammar.

In the next chapter,Research on L2 grammar teaching, learning, and assessment', Purpura discusses how second language knowledge is acquired and how the teaching, learning and assessment of L2 grammatical ability are intrinsically related. Firstly, Purpura introduces some researches on L2 teaching and learning, such as comparative methods studies, non-interventionist studies and so on; he also talks about the relationship between second language acquisition and language assessment. Secondly, he demonstrates some implications for assessing grammar. Language educators, SLA researchers and language testers can obtain useful information from one another.

It isthe role of grammar in models of communicative language ability' that Purpura turns next in chapter 3. What the author worries about is that the definitions of grammar and grammatical knowledge have been changing over the years and across context, and there exists a dilemma between form and meaning in grammar assessment. What Purpura concerns about in this chapter iswhat grammar is in models of communicative language competence'. After the introduction of both Rea-Dickins' and Larsen-Freeman's definitions of grammar, Purpura presents his own model of grammar, which provides a flexible framework for specifying grammar on the sentence or discourse levels, and accounts for the form and meaning dimensions also provides a distinction between grammar and pragmatics (p81). In so doing, Purpura attempts to specify as many as components of grammar. It is fair to saygrammar' is a definitely complex concept. '

Chapter 4 is about the definition of grammatical ability, that is, what it means toknow' the grammar of a language. In this part, Purpura provides definitions of some key terms---grammatical knowledge, grammatical ability and metalinguistic knowledge. After that, Purpura describes the components of grammatical knowledge from the levels of phonology, lexis, morphosyntax, cohesion, information management and interaction, grounded on a tight identification between form and meaning, in the light of how they might be used for assessment.

Chapter 5 focuses on test-task design. Each test task has its own characteristics, which may significantly impact performance. So this chapter is devoted to the notion of thetask' and the ways to design specific tasks to measure second language learners' grammatical ability. Purpura introduces to readers the basic steps in the test-task development. He adopts the Bachman and Palmer (1996) framework of task characteristics and test usefulness to discuss a wide range of task types that are selected-response, limited-production and extended-production.

After the discussion of test-task development, Purpura turns to the explanation of the process of constructing a grammar test in chapter 6. Firstly, he uses Bachman and Palmer's framework to discuss the qualities of usefulness of grammar tests: reliability, construct validity, authenticity, interactiveness, impact, and practicality, and how and why a particular test emphasizes on one characteristic over another. Secondly, this chapter addresses test construction. Purpura attaches much importance to the principles underlying the design, development and scoring of grammatical assessments. Purpura organizes this section into three small parts: test design, operationalization and administration, based on Bachman and Palmer's idea about the stages of test development. Purpura also describes the scoring procedures in detail. He provides many vivid examples to illustrate every phase of test development, which makes this chapter much easier to understand. However, some more addition of Purpura's personal ideas of test design is greatly welcome and the absence of the descriptions of how to write the descriptors of rating scale is surprising.

In chapter 7, Purpura, in the one hand, attemptsto illustrate how the three large-scale grammar tests-the First Certificate in English Language Test(FCE), the Comprehensive English Language Test(CELT) and the Community English Program (CEP) Placement Test-have been designed and operationalized in light of their purposes, constructs and intended uses. In the other hand, he wants to examine these grammar tests in view of the six qualities of usefulness. In so doing, Purpura neither wants to provide a comprehensive review of all existing grammar tests, nor does he attempts to provide testers with some model examples of grammar tests. Instead, he just takes these three language tests as examples to illustrate how grammar can be tested in either separate sections or along with other components of language ability. In my point of view, it is unnecessary to introduce these large-scale grammar tests in such a comprehensive way, as nowadays all of FCE, CELT and CEP are well-known in many foreign countries and we can also get much information of these tests on the Internet.

After these three large-scale tests, Purpura looks at learning-oriented assessments of grammatical ability in chapter 8. He tells readers how to design classroom- based assessments and how the scoring method could vary to improve students. He also points out the importance of classroom assessments in learning perspective. This chapter has some implications for teaching and learning and bridges the gap between language assessment and second language acquisition.

Purpura devotes the last chapter to some of the changes and new directions, as well as some challenges language educators face in assessing grammatical ability. This chapter is highly informative with the discussion of how grammar assessment has evolved over the years. Purpura points out that not much has changed since the 1960s until recently. What has been changed is that grammatical ability has been assessed in the context of language use under the rubric of testing speaking or writing, alongside other components of communicative language ability.

Purpura's explanation is well-written in a vivid way with many good examples, many of which are familiar to readers and it is such that bring the dry topic to life. Apart from this, at the end of every chapter, Purpura offers readers a conclusive summary that summarizes what has been talked in the previous chapter and what is going to be dealt with in the next part.

However, I feel that in some part of this book, Purpura relies too much on Bachman and Palmer's framework, for example, the test-task and test design, so a lengthier discussion of his own ideas about grammar test design, development is greatly welcome. In addition, some parts are not really done enough justice. For example, the first section, from chapter 1 to 4, talking about some basic issues of grammar tests, is over-discussed and a reordering of this section may be much better.

Apart from such minor reservations, however, Purpura tries hard to provide readers with a practical framework for the design, development and use of grammar tests, with a hope to improve grammar teaching, learning and assessment. All things considered, Assessing Grammar by Purpura is an easy to understand, informative, and attractive book, which will remain a guide for language instructors, language testers and SLA researchers.

References:

[1]Bachman, L.F. Fundamental considerations in language testing.Oxford:Oxford University Press,1990.

[2]Bachman, L.F. and Palmer, A.S. Language testing in practice. Oxford:Oxford University Press,1996.

[3]Swan, M. Grammar. Oxford:Oxford University Press,2005.