CHAPTER 4

Towards a Definition of Grammatical Ability

What it means to "know" grammar will likely change depending on the testing context.
Different situations require a different set of grammatical features for effective communication.
It is essential to define what we mean when we talk about "grammatical knowledge" for any
given testing situation. We will then be able to create tests that measure grammatical ability.
Grammar is referred to as a language system in this book.

Grammatical knowledge is defined as a collection of internalized informational

structures related to the proposed theoretical model of grammar. In grammatical performance,
interactions with other characteristics of the examinee or the test task may obscure a teat-
taker's underlying grammatical ability. The combination of grammatical knowledge and
strategic competence is grammar ability.

What it meant by grammatical ability?

What does it mean to 'know' the grammar of a language so that it can be used to
achieve some communicative goal - i.e. in other words, do you have 'grammatical ability' or do
you need to know how to use a language's grammar to communicate?

Defining Grammatical Constructs

In this book, | will use several theoretical terms from the domain of language testing.
These include Knowledge, competence, ability, proficiency and performance, to name a few.
The many possible ways of interpreting what it means to 'know grammar' highlight the
importance in language assessment of defining key terms. Designing a test requires providing
a clear theoretical definition of the construct(s) to be measured. We can then design tasks to
elicit performance samples of grammatical ability. If these samples reflect the underlying
grammatical constructs - an empirical question - we can then use the test results to make
inferences about the test-takers' grammatical abilities.

Grammatical knowledge
Grammatical knowledge is defined as a set of internalized informational structures
related to the theoretical model of grammar proposed in Figure 3.2 (p. 62) in this model,
grammar is defined in terms of grammatical form and meaning, which are available to be
accessed in language use.

Grammatical ability
Bachman and Palmer (1996) characterize language ability as a combination of
language knowledge and strategic competence. Grammatical ability is, then, the capacity to
realize grammatical knowledge accurately and meaningfully in testing or other language-use
situations. It is defined as a set of metacognitive strategies for the purpose of 'creating and
interpreting discourse in both testing and non-testing situations'.

Grammatical performance
Communicative competence includes the underlying potential of realizing language
ability in instances of language use, whereas language performance refers to the use of
language in actual language events. Carroll (1968) refers to language performance as 'the
actual manifestation of linguistic competence. .. in behavior' (p. 50). Grammatical performance
is defined as the observable manifestation of grammatical ability in language use.

In grammatical performance, the underlying ability of a test-taker may be masked by

interactions with other attributes of the examinee or the test task. The relationships among
grammatical knowledge, ability, and performance are presented in Figure 4.1.
Metalinguistic knowledge
Metalinguistic knowledge refers to informational structures related to linguistic
terminology. It is not a component of grammatical ability but rather a kind of specific topical
knowledge that might be useful for language teachers to possess. Knowing the grammatical
terms of a language does not necessarily mean knowing how to communicate in the language.

What is grammatical ability for assessment purposes?

Grammatical ability is the ability to accurately and meaningfully apply grammatical
knowledge in test-taking or other language-use contexts. A person's strategic
competence is related to his or her ability to access grammatical knowledge in order to
understand and convey meaning. Grammatical ability can interact with pragmatic ability
(pragmatic knowledge and strategic competence) on the one hand, and a
variety of non-linguistic factors like topical knowledge and task characteristics on the other.
Grammatical knowledge is involved when examinees understand or produce grammatically
precise and contextually meaningful utterances. Grammatical form is related to phonology,
lexis, morphosyntax, cohesion, information management, and interaction. These meanings can
be viewed separately or combined to form a speaker is literal and intended meaning.

Knowledge of Phonological or Graphological form and meaning

With the exception of meaning-based orthographies such as Chinese characters,
knowledge of
phonological/graphological form allows us to understand and produce features of the sound or
writing system. Phonological form includes segmentals (vowels and consonants) and prosody
(stress, rhythm,
intonation contours, volume, tempo). These forms can be used alone or in combination with
other grammatical forms to describe phonological meaning. They are used to convey meaning
in situations involving testing or language use.

Knowledge of Morphosyntactic form and meaning

Understanding and producing both the morphological and syntactic forms of the
language requires knowledge of morphosyntactic form. These forms have morphosyntactical
meanings that allow us to interpret and express meanings frozen m inflections like aspect and
time, derivations and agency, and syntax like subjunctive mood or focus, emphasis or contrast
(voice and word order). A student who understands the morphosyntactic meaning of English
conditionals, for example, will be able to express a factual conditional relationship (If this
happens, that happens), a predictive conditional relationship (If this happens, that will happen),
or a hypothetical conditional relationship (If this happened, that would happen).
 On the sentential level, the student morphosyntactic forms and meanings, when
combined, allow us to interpret and express an utterance literal or grammatical meaning. When
a friend asks, & quot that cake any good?" the speaker's intent may be to express
an evaluation of the cake (literal meaning). The question could have been misinterpreted as a
request for cake by the listener (indirect language function-pragmatic meaning).

Knowledge of Cohesion form and management

Cohesion is a term used in linguistics to describe the ways that sentences are
connected, in a way that makes them more understandable as a whole. Cohesion is present in
every type of written communication and depends upon having clearly defined topical, logical
and structural relationships among the various parts. A rhetorically effective essay has a
cohesive structure, meaning it is logical and clear. Cohesion is the links between sentences,
paragraphs and larger structures within a text. Within an essay, cohesion can be used to
create links within and between paragraphs, between essays you write, and even between the
writer and the reader.

Knowledge of Information form and management

There are different types of language forms with different purposes and syntax. We
know that most of language is made up of individual words, which are used according to their
syntactic function and context to create sentences. In this view the sentence is the most
important unit of a linguistic expression in regards to its meaning. However in addition to its
meaning, a sentence also has structure for informational phenomena. When information
comes into the mind, it is not already in a form that is directly interpretable. The question of
what form, or structure, to use in making sense of the information and expressing the results
for another person is one that has no definitive answer.

Knowledge of Interactional form and management

The Interactional form of a discourse is that part of the discourse which precedes,
encodes and interrupts the talk of participants; its structure and functions accounts for the
ways in which speakers make moves or contributions to a conversation (Schegloff, 1982). It is
also referred as triangular bracketing or speech act encoding system. This type of knowledge
requires an interaction-orientation. The observed interaction is the first hand collection of
features which form the analyze material. The purpose of this data gathering process is to
analyse of selected features and their relationship with each other in terms of structuring the
interaction as a whole and in terms of perception, meaning and message development
(Koesisan, 1997).

Submitted by:

Celeste, Daisy Mae

Quinanola, Laica
Paulo, Keith Ashlyn