Longman Dictionary of

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creole
creole n
a PIDGIN language which has become the native language of a group of
speakers, being used for all or many of their daily communicative needs.
Usually, the sentence structures and vocabulary range of a creole are far
more complex than those of a pidgin language. Creoles are usually classified
according to the language from which most of their vocabulary
comes, e.g. English-based, French-based, Portuguese-based, and
Swahili-based creoles.
Examples of English-based creoles are Jamaican Creole, Hawaiian Creole
and Krio in Sierra Leone, West Africa.
see also CREOLIZATION, POST-CREOLE CONTINUUM
creolization n
the process by which a PIDGIN becomes a CREOLE.
Creolization involves the expansion of the vocabulary and the grammatical
system.
criterion 1 n
an acceptable standard with which a test taker’s response, product, or
performance is compared or against which it is evaluated.
criterion 2 n
see BEHAVIOURAL OBJECTIVE
criterion measure n
(in testing) a standard against which a newly developed test (i.e. a predictor)
can be compared as a measure of its VALIDITY. A criterion measure
may be another test that is well known to be a valid measure of the same
ability or another valid indicator of performance.
see also CRITERION-RELATED VALIDITY
criterion-referenced test(ing) n
a test that measures a test taker’s performance according to a particular
standard or criterion that has been agreed upon. The test taker must reach
this level of performance to pass the test, and a test taker’s score is interpreted
with reference to the criterion score, rather than to the scores of
other test takers, which is the case with a NORM-REFERENCED TEST.
criterion referencing n
in testing, the use of descriptions of what students should be able to do
with language in order to determine the pass score in a test or informal
assessment.
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