Comprehending a text involves constructing a coherent mental representation of it and deep comprehension of a text in its entirety is a critical skill in academic contexts. Interpretations on test takers' ability to comprehend texts are made on the basis of performance in test tasks but the extent to which test tasks are effective in directing…

Foreign language testing is a multi-dimensional phenomenon and obtaining objective and error-free scores on learners' language skills is often problematic. While assessing foreign language performance on high-stakes tests, using different testing approaches including Classical Test Theory (CTT), Generalizability Theory (GT) and/or Item Response…

Whether visual information belongs in second language (L2) listening tests has long been a subject for scholarly debate, with L2 learners' performance on and perceptions of video-based tests being the primary sources of evidence. The research into L2 teachers' perceptions, however, is scarce, as is the research into stakeholders' views of content…

The New York State Education Department (NYSED) has a partnership with NWEA for the development of the 2024 Grades 3-8 English Language Arts Tests. Teachers from across the State work with NYSED in a variety of activities to ensure the validity and reliability of the New York State Testing Program (NYSTP). The 2024 Grades 6 and 7 English Language…

The "TOEFL Junior"® Standard test is a tool for measuring the English language skills of students ages 11+ who learn English as an additional language. It is a paper-based multiple-choice test and measures proficiency in three sections: listening, form and meaning, and reading. To date, empirical evidence provides some support for the…

This study explores vocabulary assessment practices in Saudi Arabia's hybrid EFL ecosystem, leveraging platforms like Blackboard and Google Forms. The focus is on identifying prevalent test formats and evaluating their alignment with modern pedagogical goals. To classify vocabulary assessment formats in hybridized EFL contexts and recommend the…

The teaching of English as a foreign language in Indonesia has a long history, and it is always important to ask whether the assessment of the students' language skills has been valid and reliable. A screening of many articles in several prominent databases reveal that a number of evaluation studies have been done by Indonesian scholars in the…

Test development is a crucial, yet difficult and time-consuming part of any educational system, and the task often falls all on teachers. Automatic item generation systems have recently drawn attention as they can reduce this burden and make test development more convenient. Such systems have been developed to generate items for vocabulary,…

Purpose: This study attempts to evaluate the effect of the corpus-based inductive teaching approach with multiple academic corpora (PICA, CAEC and Oxford Corpus of Academic English) and conventional deductive teaching approach (i.e., multiple-choice items, filling the gap, matching and underlining) on learning academic collocations by Iranian…

Language instruction at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC), as it does at colleges and universities, focuses on developing linguistic competence. There is no textbook or teaching materials that explicitly and systematically teach students the pragmatic knowledge of the target language. Such knowledge is either…

The current study explores the impact of varying multiple-choice question preview and presentation formats in a test of second language listening proficiency targeting different levels of text comprehension. In a between-participant design, participants completed a 30-item test of listening comprehension featuring implicit and explicit information…

In 2016, the Office of the Higher Education Commission issued a directive requiring all higher education institutions in Thailand to have their students take a standardized English proficiency test. According to the directive, the test's results had to align with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). In response to this…

Self-efficacy, the system of beliefs that individuals possess which enables them to exercise control and actions when faced with a specific task, is an essential component to language learning, as it has the potential to promote the self-regulatory capacity required for successful language acquisition and performance. One way in which…

Studies from various disciplines have reported that spatial location of options in relation to processing order impacts the ultimate choice of the option. A large number of studies have found a primacy effect, that is, the tendency to prefer the first option. In this paper we report on evidence that position of the key in four-option…

This study sets out to investigate possible effects of previously learned languages on the acquisition of English as a third language by examining six prepositions (in, on, at, behind, over, to) when they denote spatial relations. Two picture description tasks were employed to find out which of the two known languages (L1 and/or L2) is the major…