This article provides a single, common-case study of a test retrofit project at one Colombian university. It reports on how the test retrofit project was carried out and describes the different areas of language assessment literacy the project afforded local teacher stakeholders. This project was successful in that it modified the test constructs…

The Pearson Test of English Academic (PTE-A), a widely used high-stakes language proficiency test for university admissions and migration purposes, underwent a notable change from a three-hour to a two-hour version in November 2021. The implementation of the new version has prompted inquiries into the washback effects on various stakeholders.…

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…

This study examines the range of cognitive processes assessed in the English language reading literacy test as part of the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination (HKDSE), the secondary school exit test in Hong Kong. Prior studies have suggested that higher order cognitive processes are often undermined in high-stakes tests and…

Language placement tests (LPTs) are used to assess students' proficiency in a progressive manner in the target language. Based on their performance, students are assigned to stepped language courses. These tests are usually considered low stakes because they do not have significant consequences in students' lives, which is perhaps the reason why…

Turkish and Foreign Languages Research and Application Center (TÖMER) is one of the important institutions for learning Turkish as a foreign language. In these institutions, proficiency tests are applied at the end of each level. However, test applications in TÖMERs vary between each center as there is no shared program in teaching Turkish as a…

The purpose of this article of reflection is to raise awareness of how poor design of language assessments may have detrimental effects, if crucial qualities and technicalities of test design are not met. The article first discusses these central qualities for useful language assessments. Then, guidelines for creating listening assessments, as an…

Background: High-stakes tests have an immense washback effect on what students learn and affect the content of student learning. However, if students fail to recognize the abilities that the test developers intend to measure, they are less likely to learn what the test developers wish them to learn. This study aims to investigate test-taker…

This study focuses, from a bilingual perspective, on how a Swedish national test is intended to promote critical literacy and language development in line with related aims in syllabuses for Swedish and Swedish as a second language. The material consists of reading and writing assignments and prescribed classroom preparations (including…

Meaningful and relevant tests of oral competence in foreign languages must address problems impeding communicative competence such as lack of student motivation, unimaginative questions, inhibitive personal questions, and pictorial tests. Examples of test questions are presented in French. (CB)

This report investigates the selection of appropriate texts for C-Tests, a modified form of the cloze test, for assessing second language learning. The procedure for textbook readability first involved the administration of different texts to sample groups to determine the C-test difficulty of individual texts. At the same time, a variety of…

A study examined difficulties encountered in producing multiple versions of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) exams administered during a 3-week period to students in the United Arab Emirates University Distance Learning Program for English. The challenges faced in production of the exams included: how to equalize and maintain test item and text…

Any systematic approach to the assessment of students' ability implies the use of a model. The more explicit the model is, the more its users know about what they are doing and what the consequences are. The Rasch model is a strong model where measurement is a bonus of the model itself. It is based on four ideas: (1) separation of observable…

This article suggests criteria for evaluating listening comprehension tests. The weaknesses of typical test items are discussed and suggestions for new types of items are given. (CFM)

Six methods of equating Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) test scores for samples consisting of the usual groups of examinees and groups controlled for native language representation were evaluated in terms of scale stability. The equating methods included three item response theory (IRT) variants (fixed b's scaling, a one-parameter…