Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and epilepsy represent a comorbidity that negatively influences the proper development of linguistic competencies, particularly in receptive language, in the pediatric population. This group displays impairments in the auditory comprehension of both simple and complex grammatical structures, significantly limiting…

The main aim of this study was to investigate how oral fluency is assessed across different levels of proficiency in the Test of English for Educational Purposes (TEEP). Working with data from 56 test-takers performing a monologic task at a range of proficiency levels (equivalent to approximately levels 5.0, 5.5, 6.5, and 7.5 in the IELTS scoring…

A significant number of students experience anxiety when asked to speak in English. This unease, often rooted in factors such as shyness, lack of confidence, uncertainty, and a lack of motivation, can hinder their active participation during English oral exams. One of the most important goals that every English language teacher should strive to…

Language testing research has suggested that placement accuracy can be an important factor in the consequences of placement decision-making. However, previous studies primarily have used a one-shot teacher judgment of placement accuracy, suffering from a lack of students' perspectives of their time-varying experiences. The present study aimed to…

Background/purpose: Language is essential for communication and thought, enabling learners to convey ideas and emotions through structured speech supported by gestures, expressions, and intonation. Oral expression, a key educational skill, involves intellectual, linguistic, and physiological processes shaped by cultural and linguistic factors.…

A language 'test' is a systematic procedure for observing a person's behavior and describing it with the aid of a numerical scale or category system (Cronbach LJ 1971: 26). A test cannot be based on a selection of items chosen on linguistic grounds alone, and that to devise an effective test, it is necessary to specify how an examinee requires to…

This study compared the effects of task repetition only (TR), task repetition with grammatizing (TR+GR), and grammatization with no task repetition (GR) on 94 EFL learners' oral task performances. Participants' productions were measured both in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency as well as receptive knowledge (measured by an error…

The study aims to investigate the impact of implementing the Numbered Heads Strategy on developing oral expression skills among Arabic learners who speak languages, as well as their attitudes towards this teaching method. The research involved 50 participants, both male and female, at the fourth level of a language center within Al al-Bayt…

This paper represents a summary and discussion of the three studies presented at the morning session of the Fall 2022 JALT Vocabulary SIG. The papers, which were written by Ali Al-Hoorie, Masaki Eguchi, Derek Canning, Stuart McLean, Christopher Nicklin, and Joseph Vitta, represent a range of topics and study designs that are common in recent…

The study investigates how the test modality (spoken or written) of classroom weekly quizzes influences vocabulary learning strategies and facilitates learning the spoken and written knowledge of form-meaning connection in L2 words. Japanese university students in academic English courses were assigned to two experimental conditions (spoken test…

The Simple View of Reading (SVR), which posits that reading comprehension is the product of decoding and linguistic comprehension, has been studied extensively with school-age readers. However, little is known about the intricacies of the SVR for adults who struggle with reading. This study addresses notable gaps in this literature, including the…

This manuscript reports on a study carried out at a public university in southeast Mexico aimed to determine whether changes in the instructional design of an online English course benefit students' oral communicative competence. The research followed a quantitative quasi-experimental design that involved two groups of students. One of them took a…

This paper investigates the comparability between the video-conferencing and face-to-face modes of the IELTS Speaking Test in terms of scores and language functions generated by test-takers. Data were collected from 10 trained IELTS examiners and 99 test-takers who took two speaking tests under face-to-face and video-conferencing conditions.…

This study examines the developmental relationship between L2 Chinese oral fluency and self-repair in Dutch students learning Chinese. In this study, 76 junior Dutch students were split into two different groups based on level and were tested at two time periods (T1 and T2) for L2 Chinese fluency, which included the control variables of repetition…

In response to the calls for making key stakeholders' perspectives relevant in the test validation process, the study discussed in this report sought test-taker feedback as part of collecting validity evidence and supporting the ongoing field testing efforts of the new "TOEFL ITP"® Speaking section. Specifically, I aimed to investigate…