La valutazione dell’adeguatezza funzionale di produzioni orali e scritte in italiano L2 in tipologie di task differenti

Abstract

The paper discusses the role of variation in L2 learning and, more particularly, the influence of diamesic variation and variation in the communicative context, on oral and written performance in Italian L2. In order to do so, the functional adequacy of oral and written L2 production, in terms of successful task completion is investigated, on the basis of data collected by means of three different tasks. For being able to assess functional adequacy, a rating scale was developed, inspired by the conversational maxims of Grice. The rating scale of functional adequacy distinguishes four scale dimensions: content, task requirements, comprehensibility, coherence and cohesion. In the paper the applicability of the rating scale will be discussed, in relation to variation in both task modality (oral versus written) and task type (decision making task, narration task, instruction task). The underlying assumption of the present study is that assessing learner production is not possible without taking into account, next to the linguistic dimension of L2 performance (CAF: complexity, accuracy and fluency), also the functional dimension.