This study explores the extent to which topic and background knowledge of topic affect spoken performance in a high-stakes speaking test. It is argued that evidence of a substantial influence may introduce construct-irrelevant variance and undermine test fairness. Data were collected from 81 non-native speakers of English who performed on 10…

Cloze tests have been the subject of numerous studies regarding their function and use in both first language and second language contexts (e.g., Jonz & Oller, 1994; Watanabe & Koyama, 2008). From a validity standpoint, one area of investigation has been the extent to which cloze tests measure reading ability beyond the sentence level.…

While the research literature on second language (L2) fluency is replete with descriptions of fluency and its influence with regard to English as an additional language, little is known about what fluency features influence judgments of fluency in L2 French. This study reports the results of an investigation that analyzed the relationship between…