The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) has served as one of the most reliable proofs of people's English language proficiency. There have been rumors about the discrepancy in difficulty between the two modules of IELTS, namely Academic (AC) and General Training (GT); however, there is little empirical evidence to confirm such a…

The present study is a partial replication of the most widely cited study of lexical coverage and reading comprehension by Hu and Nation (2000). Ninety-four advanced L2 learners read a short story at one of 90%, 95%, 98%, and 100% lexical coverage and then completed a 14-item reading comprehension test. The results showed that although…

Foreign language (L2) learners' speaking proficiency is often quantified using two dimensions: intuitive human ratings and analytical, linguistic complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) indices. While previous research and assessment practices have predominantly focused on either the subjective approach to L2 speaking or the objective one, it is…

This study presents a comparative analysis of classical reliability measures, including Cronbach's alpha, test-retest, and parallel forms reliability, alongside modern psychometric methods such as the Rasch model and Mokken scaling, to evaluate the reliability of C-tests in language proficiency assessment. Utilizing data from 150 participants…

Picture-in-Picture (PIP) is an effective lecture video design that includes a screen capture video in the center and the instructor's talking head in one corner. Few research studies have directly investigated the usage of PIP lecture design by non-native English-speaking (NNES) instructors. The current study investigated the effects of PIP…

Recent studies have shown that the frequency effect, although long used as a guide to word difficulty, fails to explain all variance in learner word knowledge. As such, a "more than frequency" conclusion has been offered to explain how lexical sophistication accounts for word difficulty. This study presents a multiple regression model of…

This study examined the relationship between complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF), using longitudinal data. Conducted from the perspective of complex dynamic systems theory (CDST), this research adopted four CAF general measures to track the development of five Chinese undergraduates' English speech over a 15-week period. LOWESS graphs supported…

This study investigates how task complexity shapes motivation and performance in second language (L2) pragmatics, a domain that remains underexplored within task-based learning research. To address this gap, 37 secondary school learners of English completed both simple and complex decision-making tasks at three intervals over an eight-week period.…

This study examined how linguistic complexity features contribute to second language (L2) processing effort by analyzing the Dutch English-L2 learners' eye movements from GECO and MECO, two eye-tracking corpora. Processing effort was operationalized as reading rate, mean fixation duration, regression rate, skipping rate, and mean saccade…

In the age of AI, critical thinking skills have proven indispensable for students to achieve a competitive edge and high employability. Theoretically, teacher questions play an important role in fostering this thinking ability during classroom interaction. In reality, nevertheless, classroom questions are predominantly low-cognitive, rarely paying…

The linguistic characteristics of text productions depend on various factors, including individual language proficiency as well as the tasks used to elicit the production. To date, little attention has been paid to whether some writing tasks are more suitable than others to represent and differentiate students' proficiency levels. This issue is…

Recent research focusing on the sources of listening anxiety identified individual and external factors (IEF), listeners' control over input (LC), and perceived level of task difficulty (PTD) as the main causes of anxiety among L2 listeners. This correlational study aims to explore whether the sources of anxiety in L2 listening have a causal…

The aim of this article is to assist TESOL learners in effectively delving into professional literature for both their coursework and future teaching endeavors. It begins by addressing common challenges in critical reading faced by TESOL students, such as complex and technical language, varied writing styles and a lack of familiarity with TESOL…

This study provides an overview of the level of students' cognitive load in learning English in vocational schools. A quantitative descriptive study uses a cross-sectional survey conducted to measure the level of cognitive load of students in learning English in vocational schools. The subjects are 69 respondents who are students from one of the…

This study investigated the thematic and lexical characteristics of high-difficulty English reading items--commonly referred to as "killer questions"--in the Korean College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) between 2018 and 2025. Using text mining methods, including Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and CEFR-based lexical profiling, the…