Measuring language dominance, broadly defined as the relative strength of each of a bilingual's two languages, remains a crucial methodological issue in bilingualism research. While various methods have been proposed, the Bilingual Language Profile (BLP) has been one of the most widely used tools for measuring language dominance. While previous…

This study examines how foreign language anxiety (FLA) and proficiency relate to second language (L2) utterance fluency during a final oral exam. Thirty-eight learners of Spanish (L1 English) completed unplanned narratives that were coded for ratio and length of pauses between and within Analysis of Speech Units, mean length of run, phonation-time…

English language proficiency assessments (ELPA) are used in the United States to measure annually the English language progress and proficiency of English-language learners (ELLs), a subgroup of language minority students who receive language acquisition support mandated and largely funded by Title III (NCLB, 2001). ELPA proficient and…

Oral fluency and foreign accent distinguish L2 from L1 speech production. In language testing practices, both fluency and accent are usually assessed by raters. This study investigates what exactly native raters of fluency and accent take into account when judging L2. Our aim is to explore the relationship between objectively measured temporal,…

The primary purpose of this study was to provide preliminary validity evidence for a 140-item form of the Vocabulary Size Test, which is designed to measure written receptive knowledge of the first 14,000 words of English. Nineteen native speakers of English and 178 native speakers of Japanese participated in the study. Analyses based on the Rasch…

In order to facilitate the interpretation of test scores from the TOEIC[R] "Bridge" as a measure of English language proficiency, one form of the test was administered to more than 6000 test takers in three South American countries--Colombia, Chile and Ecuador. The appropriateness of the TOEIC "Bridge" test as a measure of…

Analyzes linguistically "naive" native Spanish speakers' evaluations of American students' performance on oral Spanish interviews. Results found considerable divergence in how evaluators viewed particular candidates' proficiency, although evaluators were consistently more strict in their evaluations than was a trained rater. (Author/CB)

This study investigated the feasibility of C-testing as a valid measure of language proficiency, which avoids the problems with cloze testing with native and non-native speakers of English. Results refute the claims on C-testing. (JL)