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…

To score an essay response, raters draw on previously trained skills and knowledge about the underlying rubric and score criterion. Cognitive processes such as remembering, forgetting, and skill decay likely influence rater performance. To investigate how forgetting influences scoring, we evaluated raters' scoring accuracy on TOEFL and GRE essays.…

This study investigated U.S. undergraduates' perceptions of non-native speakers' (NNS) speech which had received 100% proficiency scores on the TOEFL iBT test. Fifty-five U.S. undergraduates rated 20 speech samples for comprehensibility, accentedness, and acceptability. The speech samples were also analyzed for acoustic fluency. Descriptively,…

With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, online education has been embraced as an instructional delivery mode to ensure continuity in all levels of education including higher education. Given the fact that the success of online learning heavily relies on the learner's ability to autonomously regulate their learning, this study focuses on…

The difficulties with developing high-order reading comprehension skills negatively impact academic success across fields. The current study investigated whether the text structure strategy instruction, delivered through the Intelligent Tutoring of Structure Strategy (ITSS) to adult English learners as a foreign language (EFL), can improve reading…

This research investigated the relationship between reading maturity, reading strategy use, and gender with Iranian EFL undergraduates' reading comprehension. The results revealed that the most preferred strategies were cognitive in nature. Moreover, the Iranian EFL undergraduates were intellectually enriched by most of what they read and enjoy…

This research compared the contributions of lexical inferencing, decoding, and listening comprehension to reading comprehension in Chinese-speaking learners of English as a second language (ESL) enrolled in university bridging programs in the U.S. and Chinese-speaking university learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in mainland China.…

Background: This study aims to empirically answer the question of whether the role of sub-reading skills changes depending on the test format (e.g., multiple-choice vs. open-ended reading questions). The test format effect also addresses the issue of test validity--whether the reading test properly elicits construct-relevant reading skills or…

Lexical richness makes an important contribution to L2 writing quality. To explore its importance, the study aims to identify and explain how lexical richness manifests in argumentative essays written in the final exam of reading and writing class by thirty-five undergraduates. The lexical richness consists of four interrelated elements: lexical…

Although the speaking section of the "TOEFL iBT"® test is used by many universities to determine if international teaching assistants (ITAs) have the oral proficiency necessary to be classroom instructors, relatively few studies have investigated the validity of using TOEFL iBT scores for ITA screening. The primary purpose of this study…

Speaking a language involves more than simply knowing the linguistic components of the message, and developing language skills requires more than grammatical comprehension and vocabulary memorization. In teaching-learning processes, drama method may have some positive effects on ELL students' speaking fluency and accuracy. This study attempts to…

This article will consider using TOEFL scores for purposes of placement and advising for international graduate students at a northern California research university. As the number of international students is on the rise and the funds for the graduate ESL program are diminishing, the way in which the university is handling the influx of…

This study discusses the construct of oral reading fluency and examines its relationship to reading comprehension among adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners of four first language (L1) backgrounds. One hundred and forty-nine adult learners of English with Arabic, Japanese, Spanish and Chinese language backgrounds participated in this…

Do undergraduates whose native language is not English have writing deficiencies leading to academic struggles? The present study showed that the answer to this question was "no" at an American West Coast public university. This university's nonresident undergraduates on average earned B- to B+ in their colleges' English…

The present study aims to find out the relationship between use of the Metacognitive English Language Learning Strategies (MELLSs) for learners of English as a foreign language based on personality traits, and the role of personality traits in the prediction of use of such Strategies. Four instruments were used, which were Adapted Inventory for…