Investigating the construct validity of a role-play test designed to measure grammatical and pragmatic knowledge at multiple proficiency levels

The role of English as the international language of business and education has grown immeasurably in recent decades. With a burgeoning population of English language learners the world over, there is a clear and increasing need for valid measures of communicative language ability. Business people, international students, and ordinary citizens need the English skills necessary to operate in their target language use domain; the acquisition of English is critical to their educational opportunities, money-making potential, and upward mobility — this is undeniably a high-stakes issue. For better or worse, language tests are critical to language learners and end-users (companies, universities, communities, among others) in that they help determine who is proficient enough to work, study, and survive in the target culture, and who needs further instruction and/or exposure. Therefore, the constructs underlying language tests should reflect theoretical notions of what it means to know a language.