C-Test is a gap-filling test designed to measure first and second language proficiency. Over the past four decades, researchers have shown the fit of C-Test data to parametric item response theory (IRT) models, but no study so far has shown the fit of C-Tests to nonparametric IRT models. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the ongoing…

Recently, psychometricians and researchers have voiced their concern over the exploration of language test items in light of Messick's validation framework. Validity has been central to test development and use; however, it has not received due attention in language tests having grave consequences for test takers. The present study sought to…

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages Companion Volume (CEFR CV) emphasizes macro-functions of language (i.e., reception, production, interaction, and mediation). However, there seems to be little consensus on whether the macro-functions are commensurable with CEFR-based proficiency tests. This paper focuses on the Examination…

Recently a novel instrument -- the Core Academic Language Instrument (CALS-I) -- aimed at testing a constellation of school-relevant English language skills was developed and validated for use in the United States (Uccelli, Barr, Dobbs, Galloway, Meneses and Sánchez, 2015. Core Academic Language Skills: An expanded operational construct and a…

Background and Context: Despite the increasing implementation of coding in early curricula, there are few valid and reliable assessments of coding abilities for young children. This impedes studying learning outcomes and the development and evaluation of curricula. Objective: Developing and validating a new instrument for assessing young…

Individuals are controlled by tests in every advanced society when they want to be admitted in educational courses, to proceed from one stage to the next, or to be given a certificate (Shohamy, 2001b). Accordingly, the present study was carried out to construct and validate educational, social, and psychological consequences questionnaires of…

Reverse engineering (RE) can play an important role in the re-designing tests in L2 English. It can also enrich the aim of teaching the same as raising children through academic achievement. In addition, it can play a key role in helping students understand how much their test is valid by using Standard reverse engineering (SRE). This paper is a…

This article provides preliminary validity evidence for the shorter Mandarin version of the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) under the content aspect, technical quality, substantive and generalizability aspect of Messick's (1995) construct validity framework. The shorter version with 177 Chinese university students in three proficiency levels indicates…

Elicited imitation (EI) has been widely used to examine second language (L2) proficiency and development and was an especially popular method in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, as the field embraced more communicative approaches to both instruction and assessment, the use of EI diminished, and the construct-related validity of EI scores as a…

This study determines the fine-grained bottom-up linguistic features involved in successful second language (L2) English academic group oral tutorial discussion through the use of a spoken learner corpus composed of more than 20 hrs of L2 production. Student performances were graded by teacher-raters using a can-do rating scale, which assessed…

Three approaches of validation enquiry were applied on the data obtained from a proficiency test carried out with 3,398 PhD candidates as a partial requirement for entering PhD program in Iran. The data obtained from the reading section were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The EFA yielded nine factors in the reading section.…

This study examined the construct validity of the TOEFL iBT Speaking subsection for the purposes of international teaching assistant (ITA) certification, a purpose for which it was not specifically designed. The factor structure of the new TOEFL was compared with that of another language performance test in use at a major American research…

This study investigates the validity of the Diagnostic College English Speaking Test (DCEST) in the context of EFL teaching and learning in China. The experiment was conducted in three stages over the course of eight weeks at a national key university in China. By means of test administration and questionnaire survey, the researcher gathered…

This study investigates aspects of validity of an alternative measure of productive vocabulary. Lex30, developed by Meara and Fitzpatrick, is a word association task that claims to give an indication of productive vocabulary knowledge. Previous studies of Lex30 have assessed test-retest reliability, performance against native speaker norms,…

This study examined the second language (L2) development of adult learners of Spanish at three levels of proficiency during and after a semester of instruction. A fundamental goal was to identify cognitive and psychosocial individual differences (IDs) that can explain between-learner variation over time in order to expand our understanding of the…