In an upcoming coverage-comprehension study, we plan to assess learners' meaning-recall knowledge of words as they occur in the study's reading passage. As several meaning-recall test formats exist, the purpose of this small-scale study (N = 10) was to determine which of three formats was most similar to a criterion interview regarding mean score…

This study investigates meaning-making processes in language and literacy assessments. Using a social semiotic perspective, it examines how adult second language learners with emerging literacy self-articulate their understanding of multimodal elements and components utilized in low-stakes assessments, and the strategies they use to make meaning…

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…

This article compares second language test-takers' performance on an academic listening test in an audio-only mode versus an audio-video mode. A new method of classifying video-based visuals was developed and piloted, which used L2 expert opinions to place the video on a continuum from being content-deficient (not helpful for answering…

Cloze procedure, a testing method which systematically deletes words in written prose and then measures the accuracy of the information is reviewed from a historical viewpoint. Redundancy is placed in a verbal context and can be noted on three separate levels of language: (1) surface syntactic structure; (2) deep syntactic structure; and (3)…

The selection of papers on language testing includes: "Language Testing in the 1990s: How Far Have We Come? How Much Further Have We To Go?" (J. Charles Alderson); "Current Research/Development in Language Testing" (John W. Oller, Jr.); "The Difficulties of Difficulty: Prompts in Writing Assessment" (Liz Hamp-Lyons,…