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THE CONSTRUCT VALIDITY OF GRAMMATICALITY JUDGMENT TESTS AS MEASURES OF IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2013

Xavier Gutiérrez
Xavier Gutiérrez*
Affiliation:
University of Windsor
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Xavier Gutiérrez, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Avenue, N9B 3P4, Windsor, Ontario, Canada. E-mail: xavierg@uwindsor.ca
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Abstract

Grammaticality judgment tests (GJTs) have been, and continue to be, frequently used in the field of SLA as a measure of learners’ linguistic ability in the second language (L2). However, only a few studies have examined their construct validity as measures of implicit and explicit knowledge (Bowles, 2011; R. Ellis, 2005), and even fewer have explored in detail how features of these tests, such as time pressure and task stimulus, affect their construct validity (Loewen, 2009). The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect that time pressure and task stimulus have on the type of knowledge representations on which L2 learners draw when performing GJTs. The results show that the grammatical and ungrammatical sections of a timed and an untimed GJT loaded differently in both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. This finding can be interpreted as indicating that grammatical and ungrammatical sentences constitute measures of implicit and explicit knowledge, respectively. Additionally, the results show that time pressure and task stimulus have significant effects on learners’ performance on GJTs.

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Articles
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Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , September 2013 , pp. 423 - 449
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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