Embedded questions (EQs) are islands for filler--gap dependency formation in English, but not in Norwegian. Kush and Dahl (2022) found that first language (L1) Norwegian participants often accepted filler-gap dependencies into EQs in second language (L2) English, and proposed that this reflected persistent transfer from Norwegian of the functional…

The paper presents the first comprehensive look at the language development of Romani-speaking children from resource-poor Roma communities in several European countries. 250 participants aged 3- to 10-years participated. The experimental tasks assess knowledge in eight key areas of grammar and morphology, including fast mapping of novel items.…

With a communicative approach to language testing, performance assessment has taken on a prominent role in testing systems around the world. Specifically, Task-Based Assessment (TBA) is now being used to make inferences about people's language ability and what they can do with this construct under realistic communicative scenarios. This reflection…

The English Resultative Construction (ERC) is a satellite-framed structure with no identical equivalent in Spanish. In a series of studies, we analyzed and compared recognition (acceptability judgment task) and comprehension (sentence comprehension task) of three ERC subtypes with the English Depictive Construction (EDC) (which has a Spanish…

Drawing on Glenn Fulcher's extensive work in performance-based language assessment of speaking, this paper explores the assessment of L2 speaking ability in local language testing contexts. For that purpose, I review Fulcher's influential work that highlights the relationship between the speaking construct, the task, the performance, and the…

We evaluated the effects of tact and listener instruction on the emergence of bidirectional intraverbal relations with 6 typically developing Brazilian children, using an adapted alternating treatment design with pretest and posttest probes. In listener instruction, participants selected pictures that corresponded to spoken foreign-language words.…

This article focuses on the acquisition of mood in early complement clauses of European Portuguese (EP). Two semantic features are involved in the EP mood system--epistemicity and veridicality. An elicited production task administered to 80 children aged 4 to 9 showed that, even though children use the subjunctive in [-- epistemic] contexts, the…

The United States is formally represented around the world by approximately 14,000 Foreign Service officers and other personnel in the U.S. Department of State. Roughly one-third of them are required to be proficient in the local languages of the countries to which they are posted. To achieve this language proficiency for its staff, the State…

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…

This paper reports on an experimental study investigating alternative communication modes to English as a Lingua Franca. The purpose was to examine the effectiveness of different modes of communication and to gain insight in communication strategies used by interlocutors to solve referential conflicts. Findings show that ELF may not necessarily be…

Looking back to the language testing world of the 1980s in the United Kingdom, we need to be aware that how we perceive or remember ourselves to have been then--whether as individual language testing academics or as corporate language testing organisations--will be shaped by multiple influences. Although we may have been present at and shared in…

Leung and Lewkowicz remind us that the debate over the past two decades that is most relevant to ELT (English languge teaching) pedagogy and curriculum concerns test-task authenticity. This paper first reviews how the authenticity debate in the literature of second language acquisition, pedagogy and testing has evolved. Drawing on a body of…

In this article we first summarise the main points raised by Morrow (1979) in the publication that formed the core of the Communicative Language Testing discussions at the original Language Testing Forum (1980). We take into consideration issues raised by the 1980 Forum participants when appropriate. We apply Morrow's ideas and issues emerging…

This article describes a transcription task cycle that was designed to facilitate the development of skills for the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) speaking test at a language school in Japan. The cycle involved practice test, transcription, student correction, teacher correction, and retrial of the original test and…

Since Finnish is not an Indo-European language, studying foreign languages in general and then also studying special fields through the medium of foreign languages may provide an extra difficulty for Finnish students. Most university language centres in Finland have organized reading comprehension courses in several foreign languages for the…