Video is used widely in language education as a learning tool and a production tool for students to demonstrate oral competence. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Irish language lecturers at Dublin City University (DCU) set asynchronous video assessment tasks for students on teacher education programmes. Tasks were completed using the…

Comparative Judgement (CJ) has emerged as a technique that typically makes use of holistic judgement to assess difficult-to-specify constructs such as production (speaking and writing) in Modern Foreign Languages (MFL). In traditional approaches, markers assess candidates' work one-by-one in an absolute manner, assigning scores to different…

This volume is an important output of the ASSESSnet, an EU-funded project that aimed at investigating assessment practices in Virtual Exchange (VE) projects in Foreign Language (FL) courses at tertiary level. It starts with the discussion of selected aspects of VE and assessment design, and a summary of ASSESSnet project results. The following…

Assessment of students' work in Virtual Exchange (VE) frequently focuses on their participation in the activities and may also include an evaluation of students' learning. In this chapter, we discuss a two-sided approach to assessing students' work in an intercultural VE project. On the one hand, we evaluated students' engagement in the exchange…

This chapter examines whether commonality can be found across different institutions' approaches to assessment in language teacher education, and whether elements of individuality in these unique settings can be incorporated into a common framework, which can then be used as a model to be adapted to suit each partner's needs and requirements.…

In language courses, oral skills are frequently a source of anxiety for students. Moreover, in some occasions, students are unfamiliar with the evaluation criteria used to assess their performances, increasing their level of stress when facing the oral exam. This article describes a series of activities based on the introduction of several…

This chapter outlines the ASSESSnet project [ASSESSnet: Language assessment in Virtual Mobility (VM) initiatives at tertiary level -- teachers' beliefs, practices and perceptions; grant number 845783; https://www.assessnet.site/home]. First, its underlying mission is explained in this introduction, before a detailed description of the compilation…

This chapter examines the responses of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to assessment-related challenges introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic. The sudden move to online teaching and assessments required institutions to re-think their approaches to current practices and provide alternative solutions almost overnight. Our survey aimed to gather…

Institution-Wide Language Programme (IWLP) modules are a popular option for international students at the University of Reading. Student feedback and module results show that some of these students face particular challenges in relation to their peers. In this paper, we describe how a team teaching Beginners French -- Common European Framework of…

Although a reader's text-level comprehension is affected by the comprehension of individual sentences in a text, little attention has been paid to the difficulty of sentences. This study investigates whether measures (features) of text difficulty affect the "gradience" observed in sentence difficulty judgments. We examine two traditional…

Assessing student presentations can be made more reliable with video-recording and post-performance rating. Further, self assessment and peer assessment can aid in the learning process by students when using specific, easy-to-understand rubrics. A ten-year action research study involved video-recorded performance assessment tasks using a free,…

Most Second Language (L2) Teacher Training Assessment and Testing courses focus on testing. Through the development of a Master of Arts (MA) in a computer assisted language learning module (based on a constructivist and "practise what you preach" approach, entailing that the teachers experience firsthand the assessment types they were…

The Innovative Language Pedagogy Report presents new and emerging approaches to language teaching, learning, and assessment in school, further education, and higher education settings. Researchers and practitioners provide 22 research-informed, short articles on their chosen pedagogy, with examples and resources. The report is jargon-free, written…

Assessing pragmatic knowledge in the instructed setting is seen as a complex but necessary task, which requires the design of appropriate research methodologies to examine pragmatic performance. This study discusses the use of two different research methodologies, namely those of Discourse Completion Tests/Tasks (DCTs) and verbal reports. Research…

In contrast to standardised assessment, dynamic assessment (DA) simultaneously combines teaching and assessment activities. The key difference between standardised and dynamic approaches lies in the fact that, in the latter, an expert is allowed to provide assistance to a novice during the assessment process. Mediation, whether in the form of…