The growing diversity among test takers in second or foreign language (L2) assessments makes the importance of fairness front and center. This systematic review aimed to examine how fairness in L2 assessments was evaluated through differential item functioning (DIF) analysis. A total of 83 articles from 27 journals were included in a systematic…

Test preparation has garnered considerable attention in second language (L2) education due to the significant implications that successful performance on a language test may have for academic advancement, future career opportunities, and immigration prospects. Meanwhile, an overemphasis on test preparation has been criticized for encouraging the…

For institutions where English is the primary language of instruction, English assessments for admissions such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and International English Language Testing System (IELTS) give admissions decision-makers a sense of a student's skills in academic English. Despite this explicit purpose, these exams…

This study reviewed conceptualizations and operationalizations of second language (L2) listening constructs. A total of 157 peer-reviewed papers published in 19 journals in applied linguistics were coded for (1) publication year, author, source title, location, language, and reliability and (2) listening subskills, cognitive processes, attributes,…

Rating scale development in the field of language assessment is often considered in dichotomous ways: It is assumed to be guided either by expert intuition or by drawing on performance data. Even though quite a few authors have argued that rating scale development is rarely so easily classifiable, this dyadic view has dominated language testing…

We addressed Deville and Chalhoub-Deville's (2006), Schoonen's (2012), and Xi and Mollaun's (2006) call for research into the contextual features that are considered related to person-by-task interactions in the framework of generalizability theory in two ways. First, we quantitatively synthesized the generalizability studies to determine the…

Elicited imitation (EI) has been widely used to examine second language (L2) proficiency and development and was an especially popular method in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, as the field embraced more communicative approaches to both instruction and assessment, the use of EI diminished, and the construct-related validity of EI scores as a…

Argument-based validation requires test developers and researchers to specify what is entailed in test interpretation and use. Doing so has been shown to yield advantages (Chapelle, Enright, & Jamieson, 2010), but it also requires an analysis of how the concerns of language testers can be conceptualized in the terms used to construct a…

The use of assessments that require rater judgment (i.e., rater-mediated assessments) has become increasingly popular in high-stakes language assessments worldwide. Using a systematic literature review, the purpose of this study is to identify and explore the dominant methods for evaluating rating quality within the context of research on…

Multifaceted Rasch measurement was used in the present study with 91 student and 4 teacher raters to investigate how self- and peer-assessments work in comparison with teacher assessments in actual university writing classes. The results indicated that many self-raters assessed their own writing lower than predicted. This was particularly true for…

Explores the origin of the Test of English-as-a-Foreign-Language, with its distinctive characteristics, in a 1961 conference, and seeks thereby to gain an understanding of how developments in language testing theory--and perhaps theory in general--are blended with the requirements and possibilities of real-life implementation. (Author/JL)

Classical test theory and correlational techniques such as factor analysis have been unable to deal with many language tests' measurement problems. The Partial Credit Model, a latent trait model for the analysis of data scored in ordered categories, is used to construct and analyze an oral interview test of English as a Second Language. (28…

Suggests that language testing should be more performance-based and realigned with a current and richer understanding of the language teaching and learning processes. This kind of testing has questionable validity until a wide range of variables are successfully defined and delimited. (CB)

Reviews developments in language testing research and practice over the last 20 years, and suggests future directions in the areas of professionalizing the field and validation research. Argues that concerns for ethical conduct must be grounded in valid test use, so that professionalization and validation research are inseparable. (Author/VWL)

Outlines research necessary for determining the validity and reliability of Test of Written English, an essay test that directly measures writing ability and complements Test of English-as-a-Foreign-Language's (TOEFL) indirect assessment of writing skills. Research should cover such aspects as construct, criterion-related, concurrent, content, and…