Authors : Vahid Parvaresh and Mansoor Tavakoli
Abstract: This study tries to validate three kinds of discourse completion tasks, which are mainly used in order to elicit sociolinguistic data. The discourse completion tasks under investigation will be open written discourse completion task, dramatic written discourse completion task and discourse role play task. Yet as, discourse completion tasks have not yet undergone the rigorous processes of validation-which can be the result of the presence of a large number of pragmatic situations and speech acts-this study does not intend to correlate one newly developed test with an established one, instead it intends to see whether the three common kinds of discourse completion tasks converge in their final results or not. The results of this study disfavor the use of open written discourse completion tasks.
Vahid Parvaresh and Mansoor Tavakoli, 2009. Discourse Completion Tasks as Elicitation Tools: How Convergent Are They?. The Social Sciences, 4: 366-373.