The purpose of this paper is to (a) establish whether meaning recall and meaning recognition item formats test psychometrically distinct constructs of vocabulary knowledge which measure separate skills, and, if so, (b) determine whether each construct possesses unique properties predictive of L2 reading proficiency. Factor analyses and…

In this study, we define the term "screener test," elaborate key considerations in test design, and describe how to incorporate the concepts of practicality and argument-based validation to drive an evaluation of screener tests for language assessment. A screener test is defined as a brief assessment designed to identify an examinee as a…

This study assessed the factor structure of the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC®) Listening and Reading test, and its invariance across subgroups of test-takers. The subgroups were defined by (a) gender, (b) age, (c) employment status, (d) time spent studying English, and (e) having lived in a country where English is the…

This study compared three common vocabulary test formats, the Yes/No test, the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS), and the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT), as measures of vocabulary difficulty. Vocabulary difficulty was defined as the item difficulty estimated through Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis. Three tests were given to 165 Japanese students,…

Cloze tests have been the subject of numerous studies regarding their function and use in both first language and second language contexts (e.g., Jonz & Oller, 1994; Watanabe & Koyama, 2008). From a validity standpoint, one area of investigation has been the extent to which cloze tests measure reading ability beyond the sentence level.…

The primary purpose of this study was to provide preliminary validity evidence for a 140-item form of the Vocabulary Size Test, which is designed to measure written receptive knowledge of the first 14,000 words of English. Nineteen native speakers of English and 178 native speakers of Japanese participated in the study. Analyses based on the Rasch…

This article describes the National Center Test for University Admissions, a unified national test in Japan, which is taken by 500,000 students every year. It states that implementation of the Center Test began in 1990, with the English component consisting only of the written section until 2005, when the listening section was first implemented…

Although the Word Associates Format (WAF) is becoming more frequently used as a depth-of-knowledge measure, relatively little validation has been carried out on it. This report of two validation studies tackles various important WAF issues yet to be satisfactorily resolved. Study 1 conducted introspective interviews regarding students' WAF…

This article investigates a group oral test as administered at a university in Japan to find if it is appropriate to use scores for higher stakes decision making. It is one component of an in-house English proficiency test used for placing students, evaluating their progress, and making informed decisions for the development of the English…