Aim/Purpose: This study examined the experiences of international students writing a typed e-assessment at the on-campus computer lab on the ExamOnline system. Background: After a computer-based typed summative examination was introduced for one of the MSc degree's modules in a UK university, it was critical to ascertain its inclusivity. The…

Language assessment is increasingly computermediated. This development presents opportunities with new task formats and equally a need for renewed scrutiny of established conventions. Recent recommendations to increase integrated skills assessment in lecture comprehension tests is premised on empirical research that demonstrates enhanced construct…

This paper describes an automatic quiz generation system designed to support language learning that utilizes digital textbook logs. Learners often memorize words in digital textbooks while preparing for an examination, and they often use the highlight function for the words. Previous studies regarding annotations and highlights have shown that…

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the university admissions and proficiency testing landscape. One change has been the meteoric rise in use of the fully automated Duolingo English Test (DET) for university entrance purposes, offering test-takers a cheaper, shorter, accessible alternative. This rapid response study is the first to investigate the…

Severity and centrality are two main kinds of rater effects posing threats to the validity and fairness of performance assessments. Adopting Jin and Wang's (2018) extended facets modeling approach, we separately estimated the magnitude of rater severity and centrality effects in the web-based TestDaF (Test of German as a Foreign Language) writing…

This study investigated U.S. undergraduates' perceptions of non-native speakers' (NNS) speech which had received 100% proficiency scores on the TOEFL iBT test. Fifty-five U.S. undergraduates rated 20 speech samples for comprehensibility, accentedness, and acceptability. The speech samples were also analyzed for acoustic fluency. Descriptively,…

This study investigates whether re-thinking the separation of lexis and grammar in language testing could lead to more valid inferences about proficiency across modes. As argued by Römer, typical scoring rubrics ignore important information about proficiency encoded at the lexis-grammar interface, in particular how the co-selection of lexical and…

To what extent does emotional reactivity differ when bilinguals process input in their native (L1) or non-native language (L2)? Does the L1 elicit a significantly stronger emotional arousal or can salient second language experience generate comparably strong associations between emotions and the L2? These questions were addressed through two…

In experiments with univalent target stimuli, task-switching costs can be eliminated if participants are unaware of the task rules and apply cue-target-response associations. However, in experiments with bivalent target stimuli, participants show task-switching costs. Participants may exhibit switch costs even when no task rules are provided in…

The use of integrated tasks to test English-speaking skills raises questions about the impact of comprehension on test score outcomes, and the impact of stimulus materials on test-taker strategic behaviours. This study analysed speaking performances and verbal report data to examine the strategies used by test takers at different levels of…

Investigating the comparability of students' performance on TOEFL writing tasks and actual academic writing tasks is essential to provide backing for the extrapolation inference in the TOEFL validity argument (Chapelle, Enright, & Jamieson, 2008). This study compared 103 international non-native-English-speaking undergraduate students'…

A recent Educational Testing Services report (2016) found that international graduate students with a TOEFL score of 80--the minimum average TOEFL score for graduate admission in the United States--usually possess reading subscores of 20, equating to a 12th-grade reading comprehension level. However, one public flagship university's international…

We investigated how young language learners process their responses on and perceive a computer-mediated, timed speaking test. Twenty 8-, 9-, and 10-year-old non-native English-speaking children (NNSs) and eight same-aged, native English-speaking children (NSs) completed seven computerized sample TOEFL® Primary™ speaking test tasks. We investigated…

This study investigates the relationship between performances on the speaking component of the TOEFL iBTTM with performances on academic oral assessment tasks. For the academic tasks, we recorded and transcribed the performances of five local and five high-achieving international undergraduate students on oral assessment tasks in core first-year…

This paper reports on the implementation of Japanese extensive reading with international students studying at a Japanese university using graded readers (GRs). GRs chosen for the present study were simplified versions of original Japanese literature and were used to support students in acquiring a top-down reading strategy, a wide range of…