New Below Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

New Below - Essay Example uage was seen as a matter of knowing grammatical rules and vocabulary and could be measured by measuring the learner’s grammatical and lexical knowledge.’ (Manfred 219). Philosophers and Psychologists have often debated appropriate ways of conceptualizing the nature of language proficiency and its relationship to other constructs like intelligence. ‘Proficiency is a definite, if intuitively held, concept and not just a formal construct.’ (Manfred 219). The question of proficiency in language is central to the resolution of a variety of applied educational issues. Expertise in a language develops as a function of ‘different class rooms treatments different experiences in the environments and different social contexts.’ (Harley 7). To assess proficiency, tests have been designed that have descriptors for various levels of achievement and is usually expressed as a number on a scale. ‘The level of correlation between tests of formal knowledge and tests of practical proficiency seems to depend on the nature of the course or environment in which the language has been learned.’ (Manfred 219). According D E Ingram, Darwin Institute of Technology, Casuarina, Australia, ‘the term â€Å"test† – refers to any activity in evaluating or measuring some part or all of a learner’s language proficiency.’ (Manfred Introduction 215). A five point scale such as the International Second Language Proficiency Rating (ISLPR) formerly called Australian Second Language Proficiency Rating (ASLPR) used the + symbol to make distinctions between the fine points on the scale. There have been considerable developments in linguistic and second language teaching. The evaluation of the concept of proficiency changed the linguistic theory of Chomsky with competence in performance. Reactions against Psycholinguistic distinctions made by Chomsky made people think of competency as not only linguistic but also communicative i.e. use was considered as important as language usage.