This study evaluates Large language models (LLMs)' performance on Chinese Postgraduate Medical Entrance Examination (CPGMEE) as well as the hallucinations produced by LLMs and investigate their implications for medical education. We curated 10 trials of mock CPGMEE to evaluate the performances of 4 LLMs (GPT-4.0, ChatGPT, QWen 2.1 and Ernie 4.0).…

There now exists an established body of work outlining the challenges international students can face as part of the acculturation process, including a range of academic and non-academic pressures to overcome. For many students, writing essays in academic English for the first time is problematic. This article considers pedagogical approaches for…

In the context of examination-oriented education and the pressure of college entrance examinations (known as the "Gaokao"), Chinese high school students often experience academic burnout. Previous research has shown that effort-reward imbalance (ERI) is an important predictor of academic burnout among high school students, but the…

Research on Portuguese language exams in the language assessment field remains scarce. To bridge this gap, this study examined washback from the large-scale, high-stakes Portuguese proficiency tests created by the Center of Evaluation of Portuguese as a Foreign Language ("Centro de Avaliação de Português Língua Estrangeira," or CAPLE as…

The Pearson Test of English Academic (PTE-A), a widely used high-stakes language proficiency test for university admissions and migration purposes, underwent a notable change from a three-hour to a two-hour version in November 2021. The implementation of the new version has prompted inquiries into the washback effects on various stakeholders.…

This study investigates washback effects of IELTS test on university teachers' adoption of teaching materials in the classroom in China and see how a high-stake language exam affects their teaching practices and how they and their students perceive the effectiveness of the pedagogic adjustments. To this end, individual interview to five teacher…

High-stakes language tests are used around the world as a gatekeeping tool under the internationalization of higher education. However, the predictable aspect of the high-stakes language tests is seldom discussed, especially from students' perspectives. This study aims to address this gap by aiming to better understand how certain factors and…

The purpose of this study was to compare pre-service teachers' views of ethical issues in assessment practices in the US and China. Focus group interviews were conducted among 16 pre-service teachers from the US and 15 pre-service teachers from China. Results indicated that the inclusion of effort in grading is a key issue for the pre-service…

Despite the increasing ownership of mobile devices among Chinese postgraduate EFL learners, relevant studies regarding mobile English learning resources (MELR) use by postgraduate learners are still lacking. This study tries to understand the uses and the motivation behind language learners' selection of MALL resources. In this research, 95…

Existing literature indicates that assessment is a critical aspect of teaching and learning language; the outcomes of testing are vital. The history of assessment can be traced back to when exams primarily served two significant purposes in China: choosing candidates for admission into government offices and preventing corruption. Washback as a…

This paper adds an organizational dimension to the body of literature on international student mobility. Existing studies examine push/pull factors and student motivations, neglecting that students' motivations and demands are not necessarily spontaneous, but can be shaped by external forces. Drawing on interview, archival and observation data…

This study examined the perceived effects of test preparation for College English Test Band 4 (CET4) on development of language ability and test performance, which has not received sufficient attention previously. A total of 79 undergraduate students from two classes in a Chinese university participated in the study. At the end of the CET4…

The "county high school phenomenon" of Chinese rural high school education to pursue higher education has attracted much attention from the education field and society. Earlier studies were mostly from the perspective of education and believed that the "county high school education model" was contrary to education's essence…

As a neoliberally-driven test, China's postgraduate entrance exam is gaining an increasing attention nationwide due to the intense competition in the local market and the dramatic size of Chinese students taking the exam. Under the neoliberal mechanism, Chinese candidates are ideologically self-regulated and emotionally-driven to mobilize their…

This study measured the effectiveness of three tasks (cloze, editing and writing) on the learning of phrasal verbs for students learning English as a foreign language (EFL). A total of 72 low-to-intermediate EFL learners were recruited. This study employed pre- and post-test designs. The performance of the learners who completed the three tasks…