This study aimed to compare selection patterns of distractors (incorrect options) according to test taker proficiency regarding Japanese students' summarization skills of an English paragraph. Participants included 414 undergraduate students, and the test comprised three summarization process types--deletion, generalization, and integration.…

Advancements in technology have greatly influenced how students write, the ways they interact with readers, and the genres they create. In order to reflect real-world writing behaviors in the assessment setting and to be able to generalize test-takers' performance from the assessment to their true writing ability, the current study investigated…

In this research, we investigated the suitability of implementing "e-rater"® automated essay scoring in a high-stakes large-scale English language testing program. We examined the effectiveness of generic scoring and 2 variants of prompt-based scoring approaches. Effectiveness was evaluated on a number of dimensions, including agreement…

The content that test-takers attempt to convey is not always included in the construct definition of "general" English oral proficiency tests, although some English-for-academic-purposes (EAP) speaking tests and most writing tests tend to place great emphasis on the evaluation of the content or ideas in the performance. This study…