Jumbled sentence items in language assessment have been criticized by some authors as inauthentic. However, unscrambling jumbled sentences is a common occurrence in real-world communication in English as a lingua franca. Naturalistic inquiry identified 54 instances of jumbled sentence use in daily life in Dubai/Sharjah, where English is widely…

This paper discusses the similarities between the Bible record of the Tower of Babel and the resulting confusion of languages and how it relates to modern times and the trend we see of English as an International Language (EIL). This paper then briefly examines the trend of being culturally sensitive in EIL by accepting cultural or "world…

This article reports on an investigation of the role raters' language background plays in raters' assessment of test takers' speaking ability. Specifically, this article examines differences between American and Indian raters in their scores and scoring processes when rating Indian test takers' responses to the Test of English as a Foreign…

This study aims to investigate the applicability of C-test in vocabulary assessment. Doing so four C-tests, two different in terms of their lexical richness (measured through P_Lex) and the other two different in terms of their lexical variation (measured through type/token ratio), were developed and the performance of 74 and 77 Iranian TEFL MA…

Much of the research on the effects of tests on foreign and second-language classrooms has examined the impact or washback effect that commercial/institutional language tests, such as the TOEFL, have on teachers' instructional practices (Hughes, 1998; Wall & Alderson, 1993). Using a case study methodology, this study uncovered the ways in…