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red by the future job. Demon-strating this correspondence provides some justification for using the test scores to predict future capacity for using the foreign lan-guage effectively in the target employment situation. 　　Demonstrating correspondences between test performance and language use is equally important for justifying the use of language tests in applied linguistics research. For example, if we were inter-ested in investigating the interlanguage development of a specific component of ability in a target language, for example, sensitivity to appropriate register, and wanted to use a test as one of our research instruments, we would need to be sure that the test we used mea-sured this aspect of language ability. Similarly, we would want to specify the characteristics of the tasks included in the test, so as to minimize any variations that may arise between performance on this test and other elicitation procedures we may want to use. In this part of the paper I will present a framework that I believe provides a basis for relating test performance to nontest language use. This framework includes a model of language ability for describing the abilities involved in language use and test perfor-mance and a framework of test method characteristics for relating the characteristics of tests and test tasks to features of the language use context. I will then suggest how this framework can be used to clarify our thinking about the notion of authenticity and for design-ing test tasks that are authentic. LANGUAGE ABILITY 　　The language ability of the language user is one feature of language use. When we design a language test, we hypothesize that the test taker’s language ability will be engaged by the test tasks. Thus, in order to relate the abilities we believe are involved in test performance to the abilities involved in language use, we need a model of language ability. The model I will describe here is a refinement of my 1990 model that Adrian Palmer and I are developing (Bachman & Palmer, in press). We define language ability essentially in Widdowson’s (1983) terms as the capacity for using the knowledge of language in conjunction with the features of the language use context to create and interpret meaning. Our model of language ability includes two types of components: (a) areas of language knowledge, which we would hypothesize to be unique to language use (as opposed to, for example, mathematical knowledge or musical knowledge), and (b) metacognitive strategies that are probably general to all mental activity. 　　This view of language ability is consistent with research in applied linguistics that has increasingly come to view language ability as consisting of two components: (a) language knowledge, sometimes referred to as competence, and (b) cognitive processes, or procedures, that implement that knowledge in language use (e.g., Bachman, 1990a; Bialystok, 1990; Spolsky, 1989; Widdowson, 1983). It is also consistent with information-processing, or cognitive, models of mental abilities, which also distinguish processes or heuristics from domains of knowledge (e.g., Sternberg, 1985, 1988). Language use involves the integration of multiple components and processes, not the least of which are those that constitute language ability. It is unlikely that every language test we develop or use will be intended to measure all the components in our model. Nevertheless, even though we may be interested in focusing on only one or a f