Authenticity and sampling in C-Tests: A schema-Based and Statistical Response to Grotjahn’s Critique

Abstract

The paper aims to respond to Grotjahn‟s (2012a) critique of Khodadady and Hashemi‟s (2011) paper “Validity and C-Tests: The Role of Text Authenticity” by employing reduced redundancy (RR) and schema theories. It counter argues that developing conventional C-Tests on several short texts and modifying their contents do not render them “genuine” for RR has nothing to do either with the number and length of texts to be chosen or with mutilating a set number of words constituting those texts. Without acknowledging, however, the conventional C-Test designers resort to the macrostructural view of schema theory to justify measuring “special knowledges” assumed to be conveyed in several texts. They do, nonetheless, utilize its micro structures, i.e., their constituting words, when they mutilate every second word from the second sentence and onwards. Based on the RR and schema theory as well as the texts selected and the data presented by several authors, the points raised by Grotjahn are discussed and suggestions are made for future research