Abstract:
Pragmatic rating is considered one of the novel and crucial aspects of second language education which has not been maneuvered upon in the literature. To address this gap, the current study aimed to inspect the matches and mismatches, to explore rating variations, and to assess the rater consistency between the holistic and analytic rating methods of the speech act of agreement in L2 by non-native English teachers. In this regard, 12 discourse completion tests (DCTs) for agreement accompanied by EFL learners’ responses to each situation were rated by 50 non-native English teachers. Initially, they were asked to rate it holistically, and the content analysis of raters’ comments revealed twelve agreement criteria. Grammatical structure was the prominent criterion which suggested that the raters were predominantly concerned with pragmalinguistics. In particular, the results of descriptive statistics demonstrated that there was a degree of divergence in the frequency of the criteria applied. Additionally, the teachers were asked to rate the pragmatic outputs analytically which showed that the raters were more consistent in the analytic phase. Finally, the findings indicated that there was a convergence between the two rating methods. The results of the present study implicated the necessity of rater training with regard to the rubric-based pragmatic rating. This study offers crucial pedagogical implications for syllabus designers, materials developers, language testers, and some suggestions for further research studies.
Machine summary:
Non-native English Speaking Teachers’ Pragmatic Criteria in the Holistic and Analytic Rating of the Agreement Speech Act Productions of Iranian EFL Learners 305.
To address this gap, the current study aimed to inspect the matches and mismatches, to explore rating variations, and to assess the rater consistency between the holistic and analytic rating methods of the speech act of agreement in L2 by non-native English teachers.
Keywords: Holistic and Analytic Rating, Pragmatic Rating Criteria, Speech Act, Agreement, Non-Native English Speaking Raters 311.
In addition, Alemi and Khanlarzadeh (2016) conducted a study so as to explore the pragmatic rating criteria which non-native Iranian raters applied regarding the request speech act.
What are the criteria used by non-native English speaking raters for rating the speech act of agreement produced by EFL learners?
Is there any significant relationship between the analytic and holistic ratings of non-native English speaking raters in relation to the speech act of agreement produced by EFL learners?
Also, among the new favored criteria, “justification and reasoning” was correspondingly mentioned in other speech acts through different labels such as “explanation” by Tajeddin and Alemi (2014) in the case of apology by native raters, Tajeddin, Alemi, and Razzaghi (2014) in the case of apology and perceptions of impoliteness by both native English speakers and EFL learners, Fraser (1981), Olshtain and Cohen (1983), Holmes (1990), Sydorenko, Maynard, and Guntly (2015), and Alemi and Khanlarzadeh (2016).
Pragmatic criteria in the holistic and analytic rating of the disagreement speech act of Iranian EFL learners by non-native English speaking teachers.