The "Versant Spanish[TM] Test" applies state-of-the-art technology to language assessment in a quick and efficient tool designed for the purpose of "assessing an individual's ability to speak and understand spoken Spanish". According to the developers, the Pearson Education Group, the test is equally useful in academic as well as professional…

SRI International's EduSpeak[R] system is a software development toolkit that enables developers of interactive language education software to use state-of-the-art speech recognition and pronunciation scoring technology. Automatic pronunciation scoring allows the computer to provide feedback on the overall quality of pronunciation and to point to…

This paper presents evidence that supports the valid use of scores from fully automatic tests of spoken language ability to indicate a person's effectiveness in spoken communication. The paper reviews the constructs, scoring, and the concurrent validity evidence of "facility-in-L2" tests, a family of automated spoken language tests in Spanish,…

This paper describes the development and validation of the Cognate Awareness Test (CAT), which measures cognate awareness in Spanish-speaking English Language Learners (ELLs) in fourth and fifth grade. An investigation of differential performance on the two subtests of the CAT (cognates and noncognates) provides evidence that the instrument is…

This is a construct validation study of a second language speaking assessment that reported a language profile based on analytic rating scales and a composite score. The study addressed three key issues: score dependability, convergent/discriminant validity of analytic rating scales and the weighting of analytic ratings in the composite score.…