An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

Figure 15.4 Degree of specificity in construct definition
An example comes from a project whose purpose was to develop the Occupational 
English Test in Australia (McNamara, 1996). One of the testing procedures on this 
language test required the examinee to play the role of a physiotherapist who was 
interacting with a patient. The construct of interest in this test was the ability to use 
English for speaking with patients. The detailed construct definition would consist 
of the many questions and statements of advice that physiotherapists would need 
to give as well as the lexico-grammatical constructions required to interact in this 
context. Such a test would not require the examinee to listen to the daily news about 
animals in the wildlife preserve west of Melbourne, nor would the examinee be 
asked to read materials from a textbook on brain surgery. The construct of speaking 
for particular types of medical interactions would define the test tasks.
A general purpose construct definition, in contrast, is intended to assess 
language without reference to a particular context of language use. For example, 
the Vocabulary Levels Test (Schmitt, Schmitt and Clapham, 2001) is intended 
to assess developmental level of vocabulary knowledge in general and therefore 
words are chosen on the basis of their frequencies of occurrence across a wide 
range of linguistic registers. At a mid-point on the continuum would be a test of 
academic English such as the TOEFL, which includes materials that have been 
drawn from a variety of topics but within academic registers.
Construct Perspective and Specificity
At first it may appear that specific purpose constructs and performance type 
constructs may be a natural match, whereas general purpose constructs naturally 

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252 An Introduction to Applied Linguistics
go with ability constructs. In the examples provided above, the Occupational 
English and the Vocabulary Levels Test, this was the case. These two tests would 
be examples for numbers ‘3’ and ‘2’ in Figure 15.5, but one can also find examples 
of tests of specific purpose ability (1) and those intended to assess general purpose 
through performance (4).
Specific purpose
General purpose
1
2
3
4
Language ability
Language performance