The present study aims to explore how second language (L2) speakers process four types of presupposition triggers in an online self-paced reading task and an offline acceptability judgment task. The four types of triggers are definite expressions with "the," the factive verb "know," the change-of-state verb "stop" and…

Background: In testing contexts that are predominately concerned with power, rapid guessing (RG) has the potential to undermine the validity of inferences made from educational assessments, as such responses are unreflective of the knowledge, skills, and abilities assessed. Given this concern, practitioners/researchers have utilized a multitude of…

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…

Background: We have previously presented two educational interventions aimed to diminish causal illusions and promote critical thinking. In both cases, these interventions reduced causal illusions developed in response to active contingency learning tasks, in which participants were able to decide whether to introduce the potential cause in each…

Readers should construct a coherent discourse during reading comprehension. The ability to build coherence has been examined using coherence and cohesion judgment tasks. Although eye-tracking studies have been conducted on building coherence or processing cohesion among native language users, few such studies have been conducted with second…

The digital transition in educational testing has introduced many new opportunities for technology to enhance large-scale assessments. These include the potential to collect and use log data on test-taker response processes routinely, and on a large scale. Process data has long been recognised as a valuable source of validation evidence in…

As a part of a more extensive computerized dynamic assessment (CDA) project delivered through a dedicated website, www.lingeli.com, this study explores EFL learners' perspectives on an online listening comprehension dynamic assessment software focusing on inferential listening skills while trying to minimize the guessing effect. The study…

Analyses that reveal how treatment effects vary allow researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to better understand the efficacy of educational interventions. In practice, however, standard statistical methods for addressing Heterogeneous Treatment Effects (HTE) fail to address the HTE that may exist within outcome measures. In this study, we…

The overall aim of the current investigation was to develop and validate the initial version of the Minnesota Inference Assessment (MIA). MIA is a web-based measure of inference processes in Grades K-2. MIA leverages the affordances of different media to evaluate inference processes in a nonreading context, using age-appropriate fiction and…

This study implemented the principles of dynamic assessment (DA) with computer technology, iSpring Quiz Maker, to (1) identify the English listening difficulties of 172 L2 English learners; (2) diagnose their individual learning needs, and (3) promote their future potential abilities. Upon evaluating the participating junior high school students'…

The premise of this research is that analytical and extensive reading in a digital environment might be used to facilitate second language acquisition at the tertiary education level. Despite the general orientation toward communicative methods in modern second language acquisition, reading methods and techniques have seen an unexpected yet very…

The TOEFL iBT test was introduced in 2005 to better reflect the language demands of real-life academic tasks than did previous versions of the test. The task-based design of the test was intended to support the interpretation of its scores as a trustworthy measure of international students' ability to use English in an academic environment. Until…

We evaluated the validity of an automated approach to learning progress assessment (aLPA) for English written expression. Participants (n = 105) were students in Grades 2-12 who had parent-identified learning difficulties and received academic tutoring through a community-based organization. Participants completed narrative writing samples in the…

Counterfactuals describe imagined alternatives to reality that people know to be false. Successful counterfactual comprehension therefore requires people to keep in mind both an imagined hypothetical world and the presupposed real world. "Counterfactual transparency," that is, the degree to which a context makes it easy to determine…

In the realm of language proficiency assessments, the domain description inference and the extrapolation inference are key components of a validity argument. Biber et al.'s description of the lexicogrammatical features of the spoken and written registers in the T2K-SWAL corpus has served as support for the TOEFL iBT test's domain description and…