Although automated item generation has gained a considerable amount of attention in a variety of fields, it is still a relatively new technology in ELT contexts. Therefore, the present article aims to provide an accessible introduction to this powerful resource for language teachers based on a review of the available research. Particularly, it…

Background: Language assessment plays a pivotal role in language education, serving as a bridge between students' understanding and educators' instructional approaches. Recently, advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have introduced transformative possibilities for automating and personalising language assessments. Objectives:…

Studies on automatic scoring systems in writing assessments have also evaluated the relationship between human and machine scores for the reliability of automated essay scoring systems. This study investigated the magnitudes of indices for inter-rater agreement and discrepancy, especially regarding human and machine scoring, in writing assessment.…

Over the past 40 years, second language educators and assessors have come to the realization that investigating the process of writing can shed light on language teaching, learning and assessment practices (Odendahl & Deane, 2018). What L2 writers do and think while writing can provide links between the task, the related construct and the…

The use of accommodations is often recommended to remove barriers to academic testing among English Learners (ELs). However, it is unclear whether accommodations are particularly effective at improving ELs' test scores. A growing foundation of empirical work has explored this topic. We conducted a meta-analysis that examined several possible…

This study reports on a review of 286 peer-reviewed articles from 2002-2018 to identify the mainstream assessment tools and strategies adopted for language proficiency assessment in computer-assisted language learning studies. Given the diversity of tools and strategies being adopted for assessment purposes, it was highly critical to trace the…

Technology has paved the way for new modalities in language learning, teaching, and assessment. However, there is still a great deal of work to be done to develop such tools for oral communication, specifically tools that address suprasegmental features in pronunciation instruction. Therefore, this critical literature review examines how…

This article reviews recent literature (2011-present) on the automated scoring (AS) of writing and speaking. Its purpose is to first survey the current research on automated scoring of language, then highlight how automated scoring impacts the present and future of assessment, teaching, and learning. The article begins by outlining the general…

Despite extensive theoretical and empirical research, we do not have estimations of the magnitude of sensitivity to grammatical information during L2 online processing. This is largely due to reliance on null hypothesis significance testing (Plonsky, 2015). The current meta-analysis draws on data from one elicitation technique, self-paced reading,…

Providing both effective feedback applications and reliable assessment practices are two central issues in ESL/EFL writing instruction contexts. Giving individual feedback is very difficult in crowded classes as it requires a great amount of time and effort for instructors. Moreover, instructors likely employ inconsistent assessment procedures,…

Automatic grading of short answers is an important task in computer-assisted assessment (CAA). Recently, embeddings, as semantic-rich textual representations, have been increasingly used to represent short answers and predict the grade. Despite the recent trend of applying embeddings in automatic short answer grading (ASAG), there are no…

This article reviews a selected sample of 70 empirical studies in journal articles and doctoral dissertations on language assessment in China between 2011 and 2018. Following a brief introduction to the history and current state of language assessment in China, the article presents a critical review of language assessment research on six themes…

The present study is part of a larger mixed methods project that investigated the speaking section of the Advanced Placement (AP) Japanese Language and Culture Exam. It investigated assumptions for the evaluation inference through a content analysis of test taker responses. Results of the content analysis were integrated with those of a many-facet…

Automated writing evaluation (AWE) systems are developed based on interdisciplinary research and technological advances such as natural language processing, computer sciences, and latent semantic analysis. Despite a steady increase in research publications in this area, the results of AWE investigations are often mixed, and their validity may be…

The work at hand is part of a wider study the aim of which was to determine what kind of factors influence failures in pragmatic items of an online adaptive placement test taken by a group of 34 Spanish students in their first year at university. A preceding analysis (Carrió & Martín, 2016) showed the type of personal factors, such as lack of…