With the rapid increase in the number of universities in Turkey, the number of graduates in the field of foreign languages has increased considerably as in every field. Following this, it has become difficult to find employment opportunities at civil service, and individuals have started to search for jobs in different fields. Therefore, there is…

This paper will deal, firstly, with the South African context, that cries out for attention to responsible language assessment. The renewed interest in language testing in South Africa is well illustrated in assessments of language ability for educational purposes generally, and more specifically in the assessment of academic literacy. Secondly,…

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…

The main objective of this article is to demonstrate with the help of learner corpus data the practical relevance of the phraseological dimension of language for writing assessment in higher education. Phraseological competence is now widely recognized as an important part of fluent and idiomatic language use, but its development has not received…

This study investigated the effectiveness of incidental focus on form in promoting second language development in text-based live chats. Sixteen college-level Taiwanese English language learners were partnered with American college students to complete two communicative tasks via synchronous chats on Instant Messenger. Language-related episodes…

Although Reflective Practice is a popular approach to teacher education, there have been some recent criticisms regarding its effectiveness in students learning. Some researchers have put this down to the fact that the concept has not been operationalised, and it is thus impossible to set up empirical studies. The current study was conducted to…

Immigration into the U.S. will continue to increase in the coming years, thereby increasing the postsecondary enrollment of ESL students. Yet there is still a limited amount of research designed to evaluate which ESL placement programs are most effective. This study was designed to determine if the use of correct testing instruments would ensure…

This study examined the second language (L2) development of adult learners of Spanish at three levels of proficiency during and after a semester of instruction. A fundamental goal was to identify cognitive and psychosocial individual differences (IDs) that can explain between-learner variation over time in order to expand our understanding of the…

Addresses the issue of the reliability of grammaticality judgment tests and explores what it is that they measure (i.e., their construct validity). Various methods of examining their reliability demonstrate that the grammaticality judgment tests used in this study had relatively low reliability. (Author/VWL)

Analyzed Francophone university students' (N=182) performance on eight English-As-a-Second-Language cloze tests (in terms of cloze-taking ability, language knowledge, content domain, and knowledge of contextual constraints). Results revealed that cloze performance was dependent on language factors and nonlinguistic-specific knowledge related to…

This study examined the construct validity of the Motivation Orientation and Language Learning Strategy Scales: For Spanish as a Foreign Language (MOLLS). The MOLLS is a Likert-type scale, that has 20 items in 5 broad categories in the motivation orientation scale (MOS) and 18 items in 3 broad categories in the language learning strategies scale…

With the advent of the communicative approach, the role of speaking ability has become more central in language teaching. Consequently, performance testing, especially testing speaking ability, has become one of the most important issues in language testing. There are many limitations in this area because of the nature of speaking ability and the…

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…