It has been argued in the literature on (language) testing that any act of testing/assessment can impact: (1) educators' curriculum design; (2) teachers' teaching practices; and (3) students' learning behaviors. This quality of any given testing situation or act of assessment has been called washback, or backwash if you will. Washback falls into…

This article reviews recent literature (2011-present) on the automated scoring (AS) of writing and speaking. Its purpose is to first survey the current research on automated scoring of language, then highlight how automated scoring impacts the present and future of assessment, teaching, and learning. The article begins by outlining the general…

This study used survival analysis to examine the patterns and factors associated with time to achieving designated score criteria on a test of English as a foreign language. This was modeled using an extension of the Cox regression model, with two criterion score levels defined as achieving a TOEFL iBT® total test scale score at or above the…

Administration of high-stakes language proficiency tests has been disrupted in many parts of the world as a result of the 2019 novel coronavirus pandemic. Institutions that rely on test scores have been forced to adapt, and in many cases this means using scores from a different test, or a new online version of an existing test, that can be taken…

Assessment and technology are two components that are very important in education. Assessment is the core of education, which provides teachers much information from their students and technology helps to achieve the learning goal more easily. Teachers are able to take the advantages of the integration of technology and assessment to get really…

Corpus-based studies have offered the domain definition inference for test developers. Yet, corpus-based studies on temporal fluency measures (e.g., speech rate) have been limited, especially in the context of academic lecture settings. This made it difficult for test developers to sample representative fluency features to create authentic…

Admission in English-medium universities or institutions of higher education depends on the results obtained by candidates in large-scale proficiency tests including Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) internet-based test (iBT). The structure and administration procedure of the TOEFL iBT speaking test leaves no room for carrying out…

This study employed a multi-methods design to investigate the impact of preparation on Chinese test-takers' perceptions of the integrated TOEFL iBT speaking and writing design. Combining results from over 1700 surveys and 10 interviews, it was found that these Chinese test-takers, who are the most vulnerable group in the multimillion testing…

The present study investigates the efficacy of preparation time in four speaking tasks of TOEFL iBT. As the current pre-task planning time offered by ETS is very short, 15 to 30 seconds, we intended to explore how the test-takers' speaking quality would change if the preparation time was added to the response time, giving the respondents a…

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the university admissions and proficiency testing landscape. One change has been the meteoric rise in use of the fully automated Duolingo English Test (DET) for university entrance purposes, offering test-takers a cheaper, shorter, accessible alternative. This rapid response study is the first to investigate the…

The current study addressed the impact of computerized dynamic assessment (C-DA) on the TOEFL "i"BT listening comprehension test administered to Iranian EFL learners (n = 185) who took part in preparation courses on the TOEFL exam in some language centres in Iran. To mediate the test-takers with hints to process the listening questions,…

Drawing from a larger CIPP program evaluation ("Context, Input, Processes, Products") comprised of 11 analyses of the ETS online teacher training course titled "Teaching Academic English with the TOEFL iBT® Test" (TAE), this paper triangulates three qualitatively different data sets and seeks to understand how participants…

The increasing use of computer-based mode in language testing raises concern over its similarities with and differences from paper-based format. The present study aimed to delineate discrepancies between TOEFL PBT and CBT. For that objective, a quantitative method was employed to probe into scores equivalence, the performance of male-female…

This study sought to identify the challenges and needs of TOEFL iBT candidates in achieving C1 level scores in the speaking and writing sections of the exam. To this end, the researcher employed a mixed-method approach to collect data from a population of 46 students, both male and female, between the ages of 22 and 30. The participants were…

Over the past 40 years, second language educators and assessors have come to the realization that investigating the process of writing can shed light on language teaching, learning and assessment practices (Odendahl & Deane, 2018). What L2 writers do and think while writing can provide links between the task, the related construct and the…