Testing aptitude
العنوان: | Testing aptitude |
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المؤلفون: | Rosa Thomas, Rachel Aspinall, Emily Keey, Vivienne Rogers, Thomas Goss, Paul Meara, Louise Fallon |
المصدر: | EUROSLA Yearbook. 16:179-210 |
بيانات النشر: | John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2016. |
سنة النشر: | 2016 |
مصطلحات موضوعية: | 060201 languages & linguistics, Gender and Language, media_common.quotation_subject, 05 social sciences, 06 humanities and the arts, Second-language acquisition, Vocabulary learning, 050105 experimental psychology, Developmental psychology, Test (assessment), Formal education, 0602 languages and literature, 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences, Multilingualism, Test performance, Aptitude, Psychology, media_common |
الوصف: | Meara (2005) developed the LLAMA tests as a free, language-neutral, user-friendly suite of aptitude tests incorporating four separate elements: vocabulary learning (LLAMA_B), phonetic (implicit) memory (LLAMA_D), sound-symbol correspondence (LLAMA_E) and grammatical inferencing (LLAMA_F) based on the standardised MLAT tests (Carroll & Sapon 1959). Recently, they have become increasingly popular in L2 acquisition research (Grañena & Long 2013b). However, Meara has expressed concern about the wide use of these tests without validity testing (cf. Grañena 2013a). To this end, we investigated several areas relating to the LLAMA tests, i.e. (1) the role of gender in LLAMA test performance; (2) language neutrality; (3) the role of age; (4) the role of formal education qualifications; (5) the effect of playing logic puzzles on LLAMA scores and (6) the effect of changing the test timings to scores. 229 participants from a range of language backgrounds, aged 10–75 with various education levels, typologically distinct L1s, and varying levels of multilingualism were tested. A subset of participants was also tested with varying timings for the tests. The results showed that the LLAMA tests are gender and language neutral. The younger learners (10–11s) performed significantly worse than the adults in the sound/symbol correspondence task (LLAMA_E). Formal education qualifications show a significant advantage in 3 of the LLAMA subcomponents (B, E, F) but not the implicit measure (LLAMA_D). Playing logic puzzles did not improve LLAMA test scores. The timings appear to be optimal apart from LLAMA_F, which could be shortened. We suggest that the LLAMA aptitude tests are not significantly affected by these factors although researchers using these tests should be aware of the possible impact of education level on some components of the tests. |
تدمد: | 1569-9749 1568-1491 |
URL الوصول: | https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_________::ec0f2d3a076ca295ec78962f2ef8aaea https://doi.org/10.1075/eurosla.16.07rog |
حقوق: | OPEN |
رقم الأكسشن: | edsair.doi...........ec0f2d3a076ca295ec78962f2ef8aaea |
قاعدة البيانات: | OpenAIRE |
تدمد: | 15699749 15681491 |
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