Rod Ellis is an applied linguist who has published widely on second language acquisition and task-based language learning. He is currently a Distinguished Research Professor in the School of Education, Curtin University, Australia and an elected fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. He is a past recipient of the Kenneth W. Mildenberger and Duke of Edinburgh prizes. Carsten Roever is Professor in Applied Linguistics at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His research interests include language testing, second language acquisition and pragmatics with a particular focus on learning and assessment of interactional competence in a second language. Natsuko Shintani is Professor in the Faculty of Foreign Language Studies, Kansai University, Japan. Her research interests encompass the roles of explicit instruction in language learning, second language writing and task-based language teaching. Yan Zhu is Associate Professor at the College of Foreign Languages and Literature, Fudan University, China. Her research focuses on curriculum innovation, task-based language teaching and teacher education.
Theoretically robust and eminently practical, this book describes the process of developing and validating an assessment battery covering three areas of pragmatics – speech acts, implicature and discourse. Adopting the theory of explicit and implicit knowledge, the book uniquely situates pragmatics assessment at the intersection of SLA and psycholinguistics. This is an invaluable resource for researchers and teachers seeking innovative yet thorough ways of assessing pragmatic competence. * Naoko Taguchi, Northern Arizona University, USA * In another tour de force, Rod Ellis and his stellar group of colleagues have pushed the boundaries of existing instructed second language acquisition knowledge, this time regarding the measurement of implicit and explicit second language (L2) pragmatic processing, with implications for the development of L2 pragmatic abilities in instructed contexts. Like Ellis and colleagues’ previous work, this volume provides a rich research agenda that will keep pragmatics researchers busy for years to come. * Shawn Loewen, Michigan State University, USA *