C-test and Vocabulary Knowledge
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Volume one, Issue four
December 2011
C-test and Vocabulary Knowledge NEDA KARIMI Islamic Azad University, Najafabad Branch Bio Data: Neda Karimi received her master's degree in applied linguistics from Islamic Azad University, Najafabad Branch, Iran. She has presented papers in national and international conferences. She has also taught English in private Institutes for about five years. Her major research interests include language testing and sociolinguistics. Abstract This study aims to investigate the applicability of C-test in vocabulary assessment. Doing so four C-tests, two different in terms of their lexical richness (measured through P_Lex) and the other two different in terms of their lexical variation (measured through type/token ratio), were developed and the performance of 74 and 77 Iranian TEFL MA students on these tests was examined. These C-tests were identical in every term except lexical characteristics. The results revealed that the test takers performed significantly different in both situations. This led to the conclusion that C-test has the potential to tap vocabulary knowledge and with the consideration of lexical characteristics of Ctest texts we can tailor C-tests that are suitable for vocabulary knowledge assessment. Keywords: C-test, lexical richness, lexical variation, P_Lex, type/token ratio Introduction C-test, an integrative written test of general language proficiency, belongs to the family of reduced redundancy tests. It consists of five to six short, authentic, and complete texts. In these texts the first and the last sentences are left standing. From second sentence of the text the 'rule of two' is applied: beginning at word two in sentence two the second half of every second word is deleted. Numbers, proper names and one letter words are left undamaged, but otherwise the deletion is 7 | P a g e
Language Testing in Asia
Volume one, Issue four
December 2011
entirely mechanical. The process is continued until the required number of blanks has been produced. Texts are arranged in order of difficulty with easiest texts first. First proposed in 1981 by Klein-Braley as an alternative to Cloze test, C-test has been the subject of a massive bulk of empirical researches since its introduction to the field of language testing, some on validating C-test as a measure of general language proficiency through qualitative and quantitative methodologies (Eckes & Grotjahn, 2006; Babaii & Ansary, 2001; Dörnyei & Katona, 1992), some particularly on comparison of C-test with cloze test procedure (Jafarpur, 1995; Jafarpur, 2002), and others on studying the C-test takers' performance, the strategies used and the processes involved in C-test taking (Feldmann, & Stemmer, 1987, Babaii & Ansary, 2001; Stemmer, 1991; Kamimoto, 1992). C-tests are usually not associated with vocabulary measurement and are used to measure overall language proficiency however, second language researchers, Singleton and Little, have suggested that Ctest can be used in vocabulary research (Singleton & Little, 1991; Sing
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