Relationship between grammatical and pragmatic competence in EFL of Spanish learners through a computer adaptive test

Abstract

The work at hand is part of a wider study by Martín-Marchante (2015), the objective of which was to study the way pragmatics assessment is approached in the Oxford Online Placement Test (OOPT) which is, currently, one of the most profusely administered computer adaptive tests (CAT). This paper aims, now, to find out the degree of difficulty of the pragmatic items in the OOPT and how much importance is given to pragmatic competence in this test. Furthermore, we analyze the relationship between grammatical and pragmatic competence in EFL of a group of Spanish un- dergraduate students, who took this test. To this end, a descriptive analysis and a multiple linear regression analysis was carried out. The results showed that the quality of the pragmatic items in the OOPT could be improved. Also, we have found that the pragmatic items were somehow related to the student’s final score but not so much as other items of the test, such as those related to gram- mar and reading comprehension. Additionally, the results indicated that there was no correlation between the grammatical and the pragmatic competence of this group of students.