Reflecting on words: the formation of words in the Invalsi tests

he present study examines the word formation tasks administered in Careful attention is reserved to the topic of tex translation within th the language awareness section of the Invalsi tests, starting from 2008, field of linguistics. However, t is true that he tr nslation of cassic the first year when the tests were administered, up to 2019. The objeclanguages, widely considered as dead languages", s still unexplored tive of this revision is to gain a deeper understanding of 1) which word This study is based on the syntactic and lexical analysis of scholasti formation processes (e.g., derivation, composition, conversion, etc.) are translations from Latin by high school students a d proposes to outlin put under scrutiny in the tasks; 2) how the tasks are distributed between the patterns of this typology of texts The research intends to demon school levels and levels of difficulty; 3) which variables affect task difstrate how the linguistic code derived from these texts differentiates it ficulty; 4) if the test results allow for the identification of a progression self from the common written and spoken Italian and thus is based on of topics, from the easiest to the most difficult. The analyses reveal that own and artificial norms that make this textual production a simpl most of the tasks investigate the process of derivation and that their diftranslation exercise rather than the creation of a self-standing and au ficulty is influenced by the interaction of several variables. The most tonomous text. Secondly, these patte ns are an lyzed and compare salient variables are the complexity of the task (number of words to with contact language (pidgins, interlanguage) and with a technical an analyse and the format), the degree of abstraction required by the quesguage, scholastic Italian. tion and the frequency of the words to analyse.