This article examines the changes taken place over the decades after a test-based accountability system was in place and proposes an agenda for consequential research of the testing program. The article starts with a review of theories of test-based accountability (Supovitz, Journal of Educational Change 10:211-227, 2009) and a socially grounded,…

This is a case study of supplementary support sessions for Spanish proficiency offered in a bilingual teacher preparation program in Texas throughout an academic year. The support sessions were created to assist pre-service bilingual teachers in further developing their command of Spanish through extra practice, feedback, and test preparation in…

Subjective critiques can often be heard about the quality of English language teaching and learning in higher education in Nepal -- both as being deteriorated and upgraded. This study stemming from the major finding of a previous one -- low grammatical proficiency of B. Ed. English majors studying at a community campus in Nepal -- was an attempt,…

This cross-sectional study examined the effects of English language proficiency on Jordanian EFL students' production and comprehension of apology strategies. The participants were 270 Jordanian EFL learners and 90 native speakers of English. Data were collected using Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) and Multiplechoice Discourse Completion…

This paper aims to examine English as an additional language (EAL) pupils' English proficiency and its impact on attainment to improve our knowledge about EAL pupils. The sample for performance analysis consisted of 2,957 pupils who had completed Key Stage 2 (KS2) and 1,953 General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). The main findings of…

In Saudi Arabia, high school education has always been blamed for students' weaknesses in the English language. Teachers have been accused of overestimating students' scores in English language courses, resulting in evaluations that do not reflect the students' real levels. Consequently, students believe that they are good enough at English and…

The Seal of Biliteracy (SoBL) is a language policy that has gained traction across the United States as stakeholders seek to recognize students' competencies in languages other than English. Despite its potential to enhance language proficiency and encourage participation in language education, the SoBL has been unevenly implemented, with…

Although research on proficiency pairing for collaborative writing in second language (L2) or foreign language (FL) higher education has proliferated in the last few decades, scant attention has been paid to students' perceptions about how they are paired up. This case study revisited proficiency pairing in light of equity theory, examining two…

The Bottleneck Hypothesis argues that properties of inflectional morphology explain why second-language learners may face persistent difficulties in articulating meaning in target-language forms. In particular, the acquisition task proves even harder when first and second languages differ in the way they organize the mapping of functional features…

This study examines the difficulty shown by Spanish-speaking university students in decoding pre-modified noun phrases (NPs) in English. NPs carry a heavy lexical and conceptual load and foreign language (L2) readers may be challenged by first language (L1) crosslinguistic influence triggered by cognate NPs. Therefore, this study also attempts to…

The journey of acquiring proficiency in a second and/or foreign language is lifelong for many learners. In the search for the best educational pedagogies, a study was conducted in which learners' motivations were categorised to analyse each driving effect over learning performance. A retrospective case study of 20 Chinese PhD students learning…

This case study explores the challenges that Master's students encounter when learning to write in academic English as part of a UK postgraduate course, after having achieved the required IELTS entry score. Interviews with six Chinese and Japanese learners at different stages of the Master's study revealed more sophisticated writing difficulties…

This mixed-methods true experimental study aimed at exploring the results of using mobile technology educationally by looking into learner practices and attitudes towards using iPads in language learning, as well as looking into students' language achievement as developed by the paperless classroom. Four research questions guided this study. The…

L2 pragmatics have explored the effects of different factors on different aspects of learners' pragmatic performance, but often not simultaneously. In addition, syntactic complexity is rarely examined in L2 pragmatics. This cross-sectional study aimed to conduct a multidimensional analysis to explore the effects of proficiency and study-abroad…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a blended learning method on the development of foreign language communicative competence of the officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the educational and information environment of a Higher Military Educational Institution. The foreign language training was carried out at 11 military…