The Pearson Test of English Academic (PTE-A), a widely used high-stakes language proficiency test for university admissions and migration purposes, underwent a notable change from a three-hour to a two-hour version in November 2021. The implementation of the new version has prompted inquiries into the washback effects on various stakeholders.…

With recent technological advances, researchers have begun to explore the potential use of spoken dialog systems (SDSs) for L2 oral communication assessment. While several studies support the feasibility of building these systems for various types of oral tasks, research on the construct validity of SDS-delivered tasks is still limited. Thus, this…

This study investigates the validity of syntactic priming as a measure of implicit language aptitude. Syntactic priming refers to the tendency to reproduce a linguistic structure due to a previous exposure to the structure. The validity of the construct was verified by collating evidence for divergent validity--whether it is dissociable from…

Reading self-efficacy performs a fundamental role in gaining academic achievement in college education. Review of the related literature unveils that it needs to be enriched by conducting further research on college students' reading self-efficacy. The paucity of investigations into college students' reading self-efficacy could have a connection…

This study is about the development and validation process of the Computerized Oral Proficiency Test of English as a Foreign Language (COPTEFL). The test aims at assessing the speaking proficiency levels of students in Anadolu University School of Foreign Languages (AUSFL). For this purpose, three monologic tasks were developed based on the Global…

Current research indicates learning effort to be an important determinant of success in learning, yet the field of education lacks an adequate scale for quantifying foreign language learning effort. The Foreign Language Learning Effort Scale (FLLES) has been developed to measure the effort levels of tertiary-level foreign language learners. Data…

Under the framework of item response theory (IRT) and generalizability (G-) theory, this study examined the effects of item difficulty on rating reliability and construct validity on both the constructed-response (CR) items and essay items on English examinations. The data collected for this study were students' scores and responses on the two…

In this study it is aimed to develop a measurement tool to determine the attitudes of foreign language teacher candidates towards a second foreign language. The item pool was prepared by literature review and teacher candidates' views and finalized by taking expert opinions. The 61 item preliminary form was applied to 504 teacher candidates…

There is a growing interest in research on Directed Motivational Currents (DMC) that describes highly robust motivational surges in second/foreign language learning (L2). However, little is known about the validity of DMC as a construct in the Turkish EFL context. Besides, despite the alleged pedagogical significance of the construct, it still…

In recent years, with the rapid development of mobile devices, mobile learning (m-learning) has becoming another popular topic. There is a strong need for both researchers and educators to be aware of adult learners' attitudes toward English mobile learning, yet relevant studies on mobile learning to promote English learning for adult learners are…

This article reports on the updating and validation of a questionnaire for vocabulary learning strategies. An English as a second language (ESL) version of the "Vocabulary Learning Questionnaire" (VLQ), first published in Gu and Johnson (1996), was created based on its latest version. Two response formats were piloted, that is, a paper…

One major threat to validity in high-stakes testing is construct-irrelevant variance. In this study we explored whether the transition from a paper-and-pencil to a computer-based test mode in a high-stakes test in China, the College English Test, has brought about variance irrelevant to the construct being assessed in this test. Analyses of the…

This article provides preliminary validity evidence for the shorter Mandarin version of the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) under the content aspect, technical quality, substantive and generalizability aspect of Messick's (1995) construct validity framework. The shorter version with 177 Chinese university students in three proficiency levels indicates…

This article introduces the notion of individual network of practice (INoP) as a viable construct for analyzing academic (discourse) socialization in second language (L2) contexts. The authors provide an overview of social practice theories that have informed the development of INoP--community of practice (CoP; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger,…

This study compares learners' writing in an impromptu, timed writing (ITW) exam and in a process-based, timed writing (PBTW) exam to investigate the differences between these two types of assessments. A secondary objective of this study is to examine the test takers' attitudes towards the two exams. Forty participants taking ESL writing classes…