This paper analyzes writing tasks in academic writing textbooks for Japanese university students, focusing on the organization and difficulty of these tasks based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). A total of 411 writing tasks from 30 textbooks were coded by two experienced Japanese English teachers. The author…

This study investigated the effects of two types of classroom instructions on EFL learners' oral proficiency by implementing teachers' judgment. Two intact classes of EFL university students studied a compulsory subject of their department under two different types of classroom instruction. The first group of students was trained with explicit…

A writer's L1 is generally believed to influence their L2 English writing significantly. However, the extent to which L1 backgrounds influence Asian learners' L2 English writing has not been wholly elucidated due to the lack of data covering various learners in Asia. Therefore, this study analysed more than one-million-word essays written by 2,318…

Scholars have argued for the inclusion of different spoken varieties of English in high-stakes listening tests to better represent the global use of English. However, doing so may introduce additional construct-irrelevant variance due to accent familiarity and the shared first language (L1) advantage, which could threaten test fairness. However,…

The purpose of this study was to map the Chulalongkorn University Test of English Proficiency, or the CU-TEP, to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) by employing a standard setting methodology. Thirteen experts judged 120 items of the CU-TEP using the Yes/No Angoff technique. The experts decided whether or not a borderline student at…

This survey was conducted to investigate how university students gain or lose confidence in English communicative domains over four years at university. Self-assessment has been a useful instrument for measuring learners' English proficiency, and the students in this study were required to self-assess their confidence levels in TOEIC Can-Do list…