CAF: Defining, Refining and Differentiating Constructs

By Gabriele Pallotti. 2009

411 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article critically scrutinizes a number of issues involved in the definition and operationalization of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) constructs. It argues for maintaining clearer distinctions between CAF, on the one hand, and notions such as linguistic development and communicative adequacy, on the other. Adequacy, in particular, should be considered both as a separate performance dimension and as a way of interpreting CAF measures.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0897c9825644d9f9d2e207f3ecc1200b6eef3f79

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In Developmental and Educational Psychology

Citations in the corpus

The Effects of Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency on Communicative Adequacy in Oral Task Performance (2014, methodology): “4 The overwhelming focus on learners’ lexico-grammar appears a shortcoming (Pallotti 2009),”
The flipped classroom in second language learning: A meta-analysis (2020, background): “In one case, a report had two outcome variables; we selected the one with the best construct validity corresponding to modern ‘complexity–accuracy–fluency’ theory (Pallotti, 2009).”
Task-Based Learner Production: A Substantive and Methodological Review (2016, background): “At the primary study level, these values provide critical information regarding the extent to which participants perform uniformly (or not) on a given task or in response to a given treatment (see Pallotti, 2009).”
The Development of Second Language Writing Complexity in Groups and Individuals: A Longitudinal Learner Corpus Study (2012, background): “However, more recently, many prominent researchers have called for employing longitudinal designs with dense developmental data collection (de Bot, Lowie, & Verspoor, 2011); describing the interactionbetween cross‐sectional and longitudinal data (Byrnes, Maxim,&Norris, 2010; Larsen–Freeman, 2006); l”
Defining and operationalising L2 complexity (2012, background): “In terms of the framework of language complexity presented in Section 2, difficulty is a distinct construct from structural complexity, and the correspondence between the two constructs still has to be demonstrated rather than a priori assumed, and there is no guarantee that it holds for all syntac”
Functional adequacy in L2 writing: Towards a new rating scale (2017, background): “…into account, the definition of FA varies greatly and various terms have been employed to designate the construct, such as communicative adequacy (Pallotti, 2009; Kuiken et al., 2010), communicative competence (McNamara & Roever, 2007), communicative effectiveness (Bridgeman, Powers, Stone, &…”
Written corrective feedback from sociocultural theoretical perspectives: A research agenda (2018, background): “Measuring accuracy is notoriously difficult (see Polio 1997; Pallotti 2009), with limitations inherent in the use of any measure of accuracy.”
LINGUISTIC DIMENSIONS OF COMPREHENSIBILITY AND PERCEIVED FLUENCY: AN INVESTIGATION OF COMPLEXITY, ACCURACY, AND FLUENCY IN SECOND LANGUAGE ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH (2019, background): “Thus, considering the ecological validity of findings, L2 comprehensibility research needs to be extended to the investigation of open tasks (e.g., problem-solving, argumentative speech; Pallotti, 2009).”
The Role of Task Complexity, Modality, and Aptitude in Narrative Task Performance (2012, background): “This example illustrates that in certain cases it might be difficult to order tasks in terms of cognitive complexity because tasks might make different and noncomparable demands on different phases of language production (see Pallotti (2009) and Skehan, (2009) for a similar line of argument).”
The effect of collaborative writing in an EFL secondary setting (2019, background): “Pallotti (2009) reported that lexical and syntactical complexity only increase if the task and its goals require it.”