Is Two-Register E-mail Writing Task A Better Tool For Assessing Pragmatic Appropriateness?Building A Validity Argument For Score Interpretation

The increasing importance of the ability to effectively use language in a pragmatically appropriate way in the field of language teaching and learning calls for special attention to pragmatic appropriateness in designing and validating test tasks.Previous studies have shown that an e-mail writing task with the same communicative goals in two registers was a valid tool for measuring pragmatic appropriateness.To examine whether the construct of pragmatic appropriateness is better elicited in the two-register（formal and informal）e-mail writing task in comparison with the one-register task,this study intends to gather backings supporting or dismissing the claim of the explanation inference under the framework of Interpretation/Use Argument within a paired-sample mixed-method design.A total of 48 advanced language learners participated in this study.All participants responded to the oneregister task before moving on to the two-register task and 10 of them were invited to report their cognitive process with think-aloud protocols and retrospective interviews.Performance of the participants across the two tasks was compared and analyzed qualitatively and quantitively in terms of task scores,written responses,and cognitive processes.The results provided substantial support for most assumptions of the explanation inference.Results from both qualitative analysis of the rating processes and correlation analysis of task scores and pragmatic strategies which indicated a high level of discrimination between score bands provided supportive evidence for the inference.Results from statistical analysis of task scores and qualitative analysis of cognitive processes indicated that there is an advantage of the two-register e-mail writing task in eliciting pragmatic appropriateness over the one-register task,despite that the seventh assumption about the difference of the ratio of pragmatic strategies between test takers’ responses to the two types of tasks was only partially supported with one of the eight pragmatic strategies.