As access to smartphones and emerging technologies has become ubiquitous in our daily lives and in language learning, technology-mediated social interaction has become common in teaching and assessing L2 speaking. The changing ecology of L2 spoken interaction provides language educators and testers with opportunities for renewed test design and…

This article describes the implementation of a special accommodations policy for a suite of localised English language and numeracy tests, the Workplace Literacy and Numeracy (WPLN) Assessments. The WPLN are computer-delivered assessments, part of the WPLN training and assessment programme, which exists to provide access to workforce skills…

This study investigates whether re-thinking the separation of lexis and grammar in language testing could lead to more valid inferences about proficiency across modes. As argued by Römer, typical scoring rubrics ignore important information about proficiency encoded at the lexis-grammar interface, in particular how the co-selection of lexical and…

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) oral proficiency interview -- computer (OPIc) testing system represents an ambitious effort in language assessment: Assessing oral proficiency in over a dozen languages, on the same scale, from virtually anywhere at any time. Especially for users in contexts where multiple foreign…

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…

In this article, the author reviews the TOEFL iBT which is the latest version of the TOEFL, whose history stretches back to 1961. The TOEFL iBT was introduced in the USA, Canada, France, Germany and Italy in late 2005. Currently the TOEFL test is offered in two testing formats: (1) Internet-based testing (iBT); and (2) paper-based testing (PBT).…