A study of general student performance in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland undertaken in 1975 is described, and efforts toward developing a new system of school-leaving examinations are discussed. The study was designed to assess existing student evaluation instruments, create new evaluation techniques and instruments, promote cooperation…

Problems in the testing of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) are examined, focusing on proficiency testing needs and test standardization. Particular attention is paid to listening and reading assessment. The first part of the discussion looks at specific problems with five existing proficiency tests, including such aspects as inadequacy of the…

A study at Brigham Young University (Utah) investigated the feasibility of computer-assisted language placement testing in higher education. Benefits and problems of this approach for test administration, individualization of item selection, and recordkeeping were examined. Four steps were followed in production of a test for Spanish placement:…

This paper, a discussion of the use of written tests to assess second language proficiency and achievement, considers what constitutes a valid writing test task and addresses three questions: (1) To what extent is performance influenced by prior knowledge about the topic? (2) Does it make a difference how the writing task is specified on the test…

The design, administration, revision, and validation of the Southeast Asian Summer Studies Institute proficiency examinations are reported. The examinations were created as parallel language proficiency tests in each of five languages: Indonesian, Khmer, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese. Four tests were developed in each language: multiple-choice…

The traditional multiple-choice reading comprehension test of English as a second language, used in the Dutch school-leaving examinations, has been criticized for its apparent lack of construct validity. The Dutch National Institute for Educational Measurement has conducted a number of studies to determine whether there is a different skill…

Translating achievement tests and questionnaires prepared in one language and culture for use in other languages and cultures has been a long-standing practice. Unfortunately, there is considerable technical evidence that suggests that the quality of test translations varies considerably, and too often the translations are not very good, thus…

The development and validation of a test of listening comprehension for English as a second language at the Dutch National Institute for Educational Measurement (Cito) is described. The test uses two distinct item formats: true-false items and modified cloze items with two options. Both item formats were found to measure foreign language listening…

The selection of papers on language testing includes: "Language Testing in the 1990s: How Far Have We Come? How Much Further Have We To Go?" (J. Charles Alderson); "Current Research/Development in Language Testing" (John W. Oller, Jr.); "The Difficulties of Difficulty: Prompts in Writing Assessment" (Liz Hamp-Lyons,…