Becoming one of six official United Nations languages, English proficiency has become a prominent requirement for students and professionals entering international education and/ or careers, as assessed through standardized English proficiency tests. English learners conducted varied procedures to pursue the minimum test score criteria, including…

Thousands of education institutions worldwide rely on IELTS scores as criteria for accepting international students whose first language is not English. Individual studies have found varying degrees of strength of correlations and conflicting results between IELTS entry scores and subsequent academic success. These conflicting results were…

Elicited Imitation Tests (EITs) are commonly used in second language acquisition (SLA)/bilingualism research contexts to assess the general oral proficiency of study participants. While previous studies have provided valuable EIT construct-related validity evidence, some key gaps remain. This study uses an integrative data analysis to further…

The purpose of our study was twofold: (1) to review the literature on high-stakes accountability testing and English learners (ELs) in the USA, applying qualitative systematic review methodology, and (2) to draw substantive conclusions about the impact of high-stakes accountability testing on ELs, reported in studies published between 2001 and…

For institutions where English is the primary language of instruction, English assessments for admissions such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and International English Language Testing System (IELTS) give admissions decision-makers a sense of a student's skills in academic English. Despite this explicit purpose, these exams…

This study explored how foreign language anxiety in class relates to individualism-collectivism culture. Additionally, to serve as a guideline for foreign language anxiety assessment, the study determined a normative score of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), which is well known and frequently applied for foreign language…

This systematic review presents a synthesis of evidence regarding the effectiveness of language and literacy interventions targeting children with EAL. It updates the systematic review by Murphy and Unthiah [2015. A systematic review of intervention research examining English language and literacy development in children with English as an…

Purpose: Multilingual children are disproportionately represented on speech pathology caseloads, in part due to the limited ability of traditional language assessments to accurately capture multilingual children's language abilities. This systematic review evaluates the evidence for identification of language disorder in multilingual children…

This article reviews a selected sample of 70 empirical studies in journal articles and doctoral dissertations on language assessment in China between 2011 and 2018. Following a brief introduction to the history and current state of language assessment in China, the article presents a critical review of language assessment research on six themes…

This review synthesizes the findings of research compiled between the relationship on international student success and the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). Increasingly, within higher education, IELTS test scores have become not only a benchmark for testing the language proficiency of international students who speak English…

In the present article, we explore the extent to which previous research on register variation can be used to predict spoken/written task-type variation as well as differences across score levels in the context of a major standardized language exam (TOEFL iBT). Specifically, we carry out two sets of linguistic analyses based on a large corpus of…

The current interest in evaluating teachers and teacher education programs provides an opportunity to consider the education of diverse learners in K-12 schools in the United States. We address teaching English language learners (ELLs), a rapidly growing population. Challenges lie in holding content teachers of ELLs accountable as they are not…

The purposes of this study were to investigate the overall effectiveness of extensive reading, whether learners' age impacts learning, and whether the length of time second language learners engage in extensive reading influences test scores. The author conducted a meta-analysis to answer research questions and to identify future research…

This article explores a number of key issues that emerged during the panel discussion that followed the General Language Proficiency Symposium at the Language Testing Forum (LTF) 2010, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the LTF. The key issues that emerged during the discussion should be of interest to a wider audience, as they express current…

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) contracted with Synergy Enterprises, Inc. and edCount, LLC, to complete a study titled Language Instruction Educational Programs (LIEPs): Lessons From the Research and Profiles of Promising Programs. This study includes a review of the foundational literature related to LIEPs, case studies…