Research in validity suggests that stakeholders' interpretation and use of test results should be an aspect of validity. Claims about the meaningfulness of test score interpretations and consequences of test use should be backed by evidence that stakeholders understand the definition of the construct assessed and the score report information. The…

The redesigned four-skills "TOEIC Bridge"® tests were designed to measure the listening, reading, speaking, and writing proficiency of beginning to low--intermediate English learners in the context of everyday life. In this paper, I describe two studies that were conducted to investigate claims about the meaningfulness of redesigned…

This research sought to investigate EFL nursing students' use of vocabulary learning strategies to learn medical terminology and further assess strategies used in relation to learning outcomes measured by two types of vocabulary knowledge: meaning recall (passive recall) and meaning recognition (passive recognition). The participants, 138 EFL…

Local tour guides' English speaking competence determines inbound international tourists' travel experiences. This study investigated student tour guides' English learning by adopting role-play tasks. The communicative tasks were designed to explore how real interactions prepared English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners to become cultural…

This study examined the effectiveness of guided data-driven learning (DDL) activities on helping technological university students with a lower-intermediate proficiency level to learn grammar and vocabulary topics for the TOEIC test. The question of whether inductive learners make more progress than deductive learners was also addressed. A total…

Various forms of pre-listening support, such as the provision of vocabulary and topic information, have been used to help second language (L2) learners better understand what they listen to. Results of studies on the effects of vocabulary support have been mixed. Furthermore, there has been little research on the effects of different quantities of…

To achieve better adaptive learning for mobile-assisted language learning (MALL), individual prior knowledge proficiency, perceptual learning style, and learning behavior should all be considered in system development. While reviewing the existing literature about MALL research, the researchers of this study found very few recent studies exploring…

This article presents a preliminary investigation of the inter-relationships between English learners' tolerance for ambiguity, their classroom work styles, and their level of English proficiency. The study population comprised 46 English as a foreign language (EFL) students attending a technical college in Taiwan. The findings indicated that a…

Many college students who study English as a Foreign Language (EFL) are less-proficient readers as they have few opportunities to negotiate their perspectives for creating meaning through peer questioning in onsite instruction. This study reports on using online peer questioning to enhance less-proficient college students' negotiation of meaning…

This study demonstrated an e-learning system, MyEVA, based on a mixed-modality vocabulary strategy in assisting learners of English as a second language (L2 learners) to improve their vocabulary. To explore the learning effectiveness of MyEVA, the study compared four vocabulary-learning techniques, MyEVA in preference mode, MyEVA in basic mode, an…

This paper reports the compilation of a corpus of Taiwanese students' spoken English, which is one of the sub-corpora of the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI) (Gilquin, De Cock, & Granger, 2010). LINDSEI is one of the largest corpora of learner speech. The compilation process follows the design criteria…

In much of the world, the issue of accountability and measurement of educational outcomes is highly controversial. Exit testing is part of the movement to ascertain what students have learned and hold institutions and teachers to account. However, compared to the large number of teacher washback studies, learner washback research is lacking…

Current literature points to the importance and benefits of extensive reading. Extensive reading provides contextualized clues for better reading comprehension (Krashen, 1982), and substantial linguistic input (Bell, 1998) needed for language development. Several studies have found a correlation between extensive reading and specific linguistic…