Language proficiency testing serves an important function of classifying examinees into different categories of ability. However, misclassification is to some extent inevitable and may have important consequences for stakeholders. Recent research suggests that classification efficacy may be enhanced substantially using computerized adaptive…

This study investigated the construct validity of a local speaking test for international teaching assistants (ITAs) from a fairness perspective, by employing a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine the impact of task type and examinee first language (L1) background on the internal structure of the test. The test consists of…

Elicited imitation (EI) has been widely used to examine second language (L2) proficiency and development and was an especially popular method in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, as the field embraced more communicative approaches to both instruction and assessment, the use of EI diminished, and the construct-related validity of EI scores as a…

The present study discusses the relevance of measures of lexical diversity (LD) to the assessment of learner corpora. It also argues that existing measures of LD, many of which have become specialized for use with language corpora, are fundamentally measures of lexical repetition, are based on an etic perspective of language, and lack construct…

Testing of second language pragmatic competence is an underexplored but growing area of second language assessment. Tests have focused on assessing learners' sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic abilities but the speech act framework informing most current productive testing instruments in interlanguage pragmatics has been criticized for…

The primary purpose of this study was to provide preliminary validity evidence for a 140-item form of the Vocabulary Size Test, which is designed to measure written receptive knowledge of the first 14,000 words of English. Nineteen native speakers of English and 178 native speakers of Japanese participated in the study. Analyses based on the Rasch…

The use of standards-based classroom assessments to test English learners' language proficiency is increasingly prevalent in the United States and many other countries. In a large urban school district in California, for example, a classroom assessment is used to make high-stakes decisions about English learners' progress from one level to the…

Presents a literature review seeking to answer four questions: (1) What is washback? (2) How does washback work? (3) How can we promote positive washback? and (4) How can we investigate washback? A model is proposed that identifies participants, processes and products which may influence or be influenced by, washback. Strategies for investigating…

An exploratory analysis comparing two test batteries for English-as-a-Foreign-Language reading comprehension used a single framework of communicative language ability and test method facets to investigate construct validity. The framework's use in the content analysis of communicative language tests, and for the comparison of content across tests,…

What C-tests actually measure has been an issue of debate for many years. In the present research, the authors examined the hypothesis that C-tests measure general language proficiency. A total of 843 participants from four independent samples took a German C-test along with the TestDaF (Test of German as a Foreign Language). Rasch measurement…

Despite increasing interest in interlanguage pragmatics research, research on assessment of this crucial area of second language competence still lags behind assessment of other aspects of learners' developing second language (L2) competence. This study describes the development and validation of a 36-item web-based test of ESL pragmalinguistics,…

Survey responses of faculty in six graduate study fields and undergraduate English faculty identified nine listening skills that they perceived as particularly important to academic success in lecture classes. Faculty believed that non-native English speakers had greater difficulty with listening activities. Research suggestions are presented…