The Design and Analysis of Pragmatic Competence-based Assessments for Improving Linguistics Skills of EFL Learners

Following a thorough survey of the available literature and concentrating on the wax and wane of testing pragmatic competence so far, the present study firstly is an attempt to develop a comprehensive test of inter-language pragmatics mainly focusing on academic situations in the Iranian context. Secondly, the study aims to investigate the criteria required for the selection of speech acts of academic situations. Reliability, expert judgment validity, internal validity, and content validity of the test will be obtained through analyzing the data gathered through administering the test to native and non-native participants. Various methods of calculating reliability and validity of an MCDT employed in the present study could also pave the way for further research in the domain of assessing inter-language pragmatics and developing more valid and reliable tests. The present study findings could contribute to the fields of second language testing and assessment in general and testing inter-language pragmatics in particular.