Specialized Discourse in Language Tests Axe: 1

Abstract

Assessing languages for specific purposes refers to the process of making inferences about test takers' language abilities, and about the capacity of using these languages in constrained academic or occupational domains. To make sure that the scores emerging from these tests will reflect the abilities to be measured and nothing else, three types of correspondence need to be provided. First, the characteristics of test takers need to be comparable to those of language users. Second, the constructs intended to be tested should bear some similarities to the competencies of real language users. Finally and most importantly, the test input needs to form a special instance of the specialized discourse related to the examinees' fields of specialty. The main aim of this paper is to highlight the role of specialized discourse in maximizing the interaction between test takers' background knowledge and the test input, which reinforces the concept of construct validity in language tests.