As a result of the Japanese Ministry of Education's recent edict that students' written and spoken English should be assessed in university entrance exams, there is an urgent need for tools to help teachers and students prepare for these exams. Although some commercial tools already exist, they are generally expensive and inflexible. To address…

To investigate whether the type of keyboard used in exams introduces any construct-irrelevant variance to the TOEFL iBT Writing scores, we surveyed 17,040 TOEFL iBT examinees from 24 countries on their keyboard-related perceptions and preferences and analyzed the survey responses together with their test scores. Results suggest that controlling…

There are some English verbs that can be used both intransitively and transitively. Verbs such as "break," "close," and "melt" can appear in intransitive active, transitive active, and passive constructions. Although native English speakers know in what kind of context a target verb is used in a certain construction,…