In this research report, we describe the design and empirical findings for a large-scale study of essay writing ability with approximately 2,500 high school students in Germany and Switzerland on the basis of 2 tasks with 2 associated prompts, each from a standardized writing assessment whose scoring involved both human and automated components.…

This study investigated the effects of auditory and audiovisual text presentation on the three levels of mental representations assumed in theories of discourse processing. A sample of 106 children aged 7, 9, and 11 years listened to 16 short narrative texts, 8 of which were accompanied by a series of pictures illustrating the content.…

Placement and screening tests serve important functions, not only with regard to placing learners at appropriate levels of language courses but also with a view to maximizing the effectiveness of administering test batteries. We examined two widely reported formats suitable for these purposes, the discrete decontextualized Yes/No vocabulary test…

For this study we examined collaborative assessment in counseling 820 German students who were going abroad and who were exposed to the Test to Measure Intercultural Competence (TMIC). A randomized pretest-posttest control group design was used. The control group did not get any test feedback. The remaining groups received written feedback or…

This article explores ways in which learners' achievements can be assessed and reflected in both the domains of linguistic performance and subject-content learning. The content and language integrated learning (CLIL) approach adopted by the authors is one in which language learning and content learning are truly integrated and where neither…

Despite the current need for reliable and valid test instruments in different countries in order to monitor the sign language acquisition of deaf children, very few tests are commercially available that offer strong evidence for their psychometric properties. This mirrors the current state of affairs for many sign languages, where very little…

The article compares three different methods to estimate effects of task characteristics and to use these estimates for model-based proficiency scaling: prediction of item difficulties from the Rasch model, the linear logistic test model (LLTM), and an LLTM including random item effects (LLTM+e). The methods are applied to empirical data from a…